Signalpost

Strategy

The conventional view is that strategy is the business of top management. In this view, it is absolutely vital that top management are clearly seperated frm operational responsibilities, so that they can focus on over all strategy. If top managers are directly involved in such as sales and or service delivery, they are liable to get distracted from the long term perspective.

The role

In the reality, the top management role involves much more than setting directions. Also, different roles are played by different members of the top team, wether cheif executive officers, the top management team or non-executive directors are in play Read more aboute the difficulties being a<manager

Strategy as a design

This takes the view that strategy development can be a local process in which the forces and constraints on the organisation are weighted carefully through analytic and evaluative techniques to establish clear strategy direction. This creates conditions in which carefully planned strategy implementation should occur.

Strategy as experience

Here the view is that future strategies of organisations are heavily influenced by the experience of the managers and others in the organisation based on their previous strategies.Strategies are driven not so mush by clear-cut analysis as by the taken-for-granted assumptions and ways og doing things embedded in the culture of organisations. read more aboute stratigic lenses here

What is this?

Consolidation is where organisations focus defensively on their current markets with current products. Formally, this strategy occupies the same box in the Ansoff matrix as market penetration, but is not orientated to growth. Consolidation can take two forms:

Defending market share

When faxing aggressive competitores bent on increasing their market share, organisations have to work hard and often creatively  to protect what they already have. Although market share should rarely be an end in itself, it is important to ensure that it is sufficient to subtain that business in the long term. read more about consolidation here

What is this?

Diversificaiton is strictly a strategy that takes the organisation away from both its existing markets and its existing products. In this sence, it adically increases the organisation’s scope. In fact, much diversification is not as extreme as implied by the closed boxes of the Ansoff growth matrix.

Ansoff growth matrix

Bow D tends to imply unrelated or conglomerate diversifacation, but a good deal of diversification in practice involves building on relationships with existing products. Frequently too, market penetration and product development entail some diversifying adjustment of products or markets. Diversification is a matter of degree. read more about diversification here

Boards of directors

A common issue increasingly debated is the role of boards of directors and of direktors themselves. Since boards have the ultimate responsibility for the succes or failure of an organisation as well as the benefits received by shareholders or wider stakeholders, they must be conserned with strategy. However, there are two broad choises on how they do this.

Delegate to management

Strategic management can be enturely delegated to management – with the board receiving and approving plans and decisions. Here the stewardship role of the board requires processes that ensure that the purpose of the organisation and its strategies are not captures by management at the expence of other stakeholders. read more about how governing bodies influence strategy here