DEFINE STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION

It is "the process of allocating resources to support the chosen strategies". This process includes
the various management activities that are necessary to put strategy in motion, institute strategic

controls that monitor progress, and ultimately achieve organizational goals.

LIST CHALLENGES IN STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION

 Time horizon

 Risk considerations
 Vision barriers

 Bases of individual rewards

 Bases for group rewards

LIST THE IMPORTANCE OF INTEGRATING STRATEGY

 Increase access to information.

 make more efficient information flows.

 Improve business quickness.

 Facilitate mergers and acquisitions.

 Increase collaboration with business partners.

 Reduce time-to-market the product/services.

 Optimize IT resources and reduce costs.

DEFINE STRATEGIC/BUSINESS PLANNING

It is a stream of decisions & actions which leads to the UTILISATION of an effective strategy to help

achieve corporate objectives, actions, decisions which determine whether an organisation survives
or dies

MERIT & DEMERITS OF STRATEGIC/BUSINESS PLANNING

 Framework for short & derivative plans  Management fails to monitor

  Helps to select proper business plans  Mislead forecast

 Easy to measure & control actions &  Inter group conflicts

decisions

 Mechanism to think long term  Fail to integrate plans

 Framework for developing operating  Inter group conflicts

budget

DEFINE STRATEGIC EVALUATION AND CONTROL

Strategic evaluation and control could be defined “as the process of determining the effectiveness
of a given strategy in achieving the organizational objectives/goals and taking corrective action

wherever required”.
Or

The purpose of strategic evaluation is to evaluate the effectiveness of strategy in achieving

organizational objectives.

DEFINE STRATEGIC AUDIT:

• Strategy audit is one of the methods for evaluating (estimating) the performance of the
chosen strategy.

• It provides a checklist of questions, by area or issue, which enables a systematic analysis of

various organizational functions or activities.

• Audit is an extremely useful diagnostic tool to pinpoint the problems areas and highlights
organizational strengths and weaknesses for corporate planning.
EXPLAIN THE PROCESS OF STRATEGIC CONTROL

Process of strategic control

 The Establishment of Standards:

 Measurement of actual Performance:

 Comparing Measured/ Actual Performance to established Standards:

 Taking Corrective Actions:

The Establishment of Standards:

Because plans are the standards against which controls must be revised, it follows logically that the
first step in the control process would be to accomplish plans. Plans can be considered as the

criterion or the standards against which we compare the actual performance in order to figure out
the deviations.

Examples for the standards

 Profitability standards: In general, these standards indicate how much the company would
like to make as profit over a given time period- that is, its return on investment.
 Market position standards: These standards indicate the share of total sales in a particular

market that the company would like to have relative to its competitors.
 Productivity standards: How much that various segments of the organization should produce

is the focus of these standards.

Measurement of actual Performance:

The measurement of performance against standards should be on a forward looking basis so that

deviations may be detected in advance by appropriate actions. The degree of difficulty in

measuring various types of organizational performance, of course, is determined primarily by the

activity being measured. For example, it is far more difficult to measure the performance of
highway maintenance worker than to measure the performance of a student enrolled in a college

level management course.

Comparing Measured/ Actual Performance to established Standards:

When managers have taken a measure of organizational performance, their next step in controlling

is to compare this measure against some standard. A standard is the level of activity established to
serve as a model for evaluating organizational performance. The performance evaluated can be for

the organization as a whole or for some individuals working within the organization. In essence,
standards are the yardsticks that determine whether organizational performance is adequate or

inadequate.

Taking Corrective Actions:

After actual performance has been measured compared with established performance standards,

the next step in the controlling process is to take corrective action, if necessary. Corrective action is
managerial activity aimed at bringing organizational performance up to the level of performance

standards. In other words, corrective action focuses on correcting organizational mistakes that
hinder organizational performance. Before taking any corrective action, however, managers should
make sure that the standards they are using were properly established and that their
measurements of organizational performance are valid and reliable. At first glance, it seems a fairly
simple proposition that managers should take corrective action to eliminate problems - the factors

within an organization that are barriers to organizational goal attainment. In practice, however, it is
often difficult to pinpoint the problem causing some undesirable organizational effect.

WHAT IS THE IMPORTANCE OF STRATEGIC EVALUATION & CONTROL?

Through the process of strategic evaluation and control, the strategists attempt to answer set of
questions, as below.

 Are the premises made during strategy formulation proving to be correct?

 Is the strategy guiding the organisation towards its intended objectives?

 Are the organisation and its managers doing things which ought to be done?
 Is there a need to change and reformulate the strategy?

 How is the organisation performing?

 Are the time schedules being adhered to?

 Are the resources being utilized properly?

 What needs to be done to ensure that resources are utilized properly and objectives met?

 Strategic evaluation helps to keep a check on the validity of a strategic choice.

 An ongoing process of evaluation would, in fact, provide feedback on the continued relevance

of the strategic choice made during the formulation phase. This is due to the efficacy of
strategic evaluation to determine the effectiveness of strategy.

 During the course of strategy implementation managers are required to take scores of
decisions.

 Strategic evaluation can help to assess (know) whether the decisions match the intended
strategy requirements.

 In the absence of such evaluation, managers would not know clearly how to implement such
decision.

 Strategic evaluation, through its process of control, feedback, rewards, and review, helps in a
successful conclusion of the strategic management process.
 The process of strategic evaluation provides a considerable amount of information and
experience to strategists that can be useful in new strategic planning.
What are the Challenges/Barriers in Evaluation & control?
• Limits of control of plan by top management

• Difficulties in measurement or assessing the performance of different operations &

strategies

• Resistance or obstacles to evaluation by few departments

• Strategic control must be Rely/depends on short-term implications of activities & short term

plan so its difficult

• Requires smart strategist to evaluate the strategies

• Require properly strategic audit per year to know the effectiveness of implemented plan
(strategy).

• Manipulation of data and information by various operational departments.

• Time is main problem for evaluation of strategy effectiveness

EXPLAIN TYPES OF STRATEGIC CONTROLS

The types of strategic controls are:

1. Premise control

2. Implementation control
3. Strategic surveillance

4. Special alert control

Special alert control

• At some point in time, the company will go through a rough patch that’s triggered by some
kind of unexpected/unpredicted occurrence that impacts your business in a negative way.

This could include a sudden crash in the U.S. stock market, a domestic terrorist attack, or
even a natural disaster that affects your customers’ buying habits. Special alert control helps

your business respond to these events without having to change your entire strategy to deal
with this new event. Crises are critical situations that occur unexpectedly and threaten the
course of a strategy. Organization’s that hope for the best and prepare for the worst are in
advantage position to handle any crisis.
  Ex: sudden fall of government

 Unfortunate industrial disaster

 Top management change

Premise Control
 Necessary to identify the key assumptions (government policies, nature of competition ,breakthrough in

R&D) & keep track of any change in them so as to assess their impact on strategy & its implementation
• Premise control is necessary to identify the key assumptions about environmental (external

premises) & organizational factors (internal premises), and keep track of any change in them
so as to assess(find) their impact on strategy and its implementation.
• Premise control serves the purpose of continually testing the assumptions to find out
whether they are still valid or not.

• This enables the strategists to take corrective action at the right time rather than continuing
with a strategy which is based on erroneous assumptions.

• The responsibility for premise control can be assigned to the corporate planning staff that
can identify key assumptions and keep a regular check on their validity.

Implementation control
 This control might be done to find out (analyze/evaluate) whether the implemented plans,

programmes, & projects are actually guiding the organisation to reach their objectives/goals
 Company must use implementation control measures to assess whether or not your plan
needs adjustment. Common types of implementation control include setting performance
standards, measuring actual performance, analyzing the reasons your staff failed to meet

specific performance standards, and developing a plan to correct performance deviations.

Implementation control also includes things such as budgets, schedules, and milestones that

the company is trying to achieve.

Strategic surveillance
 • It’s impossible for the firm to predict every external threat that could impact the success of

your business, which is why strategic surveillance control lets you identify information
sources that monitor these external forces. Examples of these information sources are

financial journals, trade magazines, newspapers, economic forums, and industry conferences.
These sources are often the first to identify the potential challenges that businesses in your

industry will face, and may even offer potential responses to these challenges. This control is
designed to control a broad range of events & outside the company that are likely to

threaten the course of firm’s strategy.

EXPLAIN THE RELATION BETWEEN STRATEGY AND STRUCTURE OR

EXPLAIN THE IMPACT OF STRUCTURE AND STRUCTURE

Strategic management put forwards that the strategy and the organisation structure of the firm
must match.

 The structure of an organisation will determine the manner in which the plan operates and it's
performance.

 Accordingly, organization structure should follow strategy. And if management makes a

significant change in its organization’s strategy, then it will need to modify structure to

accommodate and support that change.

 Structure allows the responsibilities for different functions and processes to be clearly allocated

to different departments and employees.

 The wrong organisation structure will hinder the success of the business.

 Organizational structures should aim to maximize the efficiency and success of the organisation.
 An effective organizational structure will facilitate working relationships between various

sections of the organisation.

 It will retain order and command whilst promoting flexibility and creativity.

 Internal factors such as size, product and skills of the workforce influence the organizational
structure.
 As a business expands the chain of command will lengthen and the spans of control will widen.
 The higher the level of skill each employee has the more the business will make use of the

matrix structure to maximize these skills across the organisation.

The main effectiveness of strategy & structure is

1. Rate of Change

2. Degree of Complexity
3. Market Complexity

4. Competitive Situations

Rate of Change: When the organisation operates in a more dynamic environment, it needs to be
able to respond quickly to the rapid changes that occur. In static environments, change is slow and

predictable and does not require great sensitivity on the part of the organisation. In dynamic
environments, the organisation structure and its people need to be flexible, well coordinated and

able to respond quickly to outside influences. The dynamic environment implies a more flexible,
organic structure.

Degree of Complexity: Some environments can be easily monitored from a few key data

movements. Others are highly complex, with many influences that interact in complex ways. One
method of simplifying the complexity is to decentralize decisions in that particular area. The

complex environment will usually benefit from a decentralized structure.

Market Complexity: Some organisations sell a single product or variations on one product. Others
sell ranges of products that are essentially diverse. As markets become more diverse, there is

usually a need to divisionalise the organisation as long as synergy or economies of scale are
unaffected.

Competitive Situations:
 With friendly rivals, there is no great need to seek the protection of the centre. In deeply
hostile environments, however, extra resources and even legal protection may be needed;
 these are usually more readily provided by central headquarters. As markets become more

hostile, the organisation usually needs to be more centralized.

 The effectiveness of traditional organizational structures can be improved by regular revision

and development of the skill sets held by the employees. If change is not handled correctly, it
can be more devastating than ever before. The management has to identify those employees

that are high performers and have the potential to reflect, discover, assess, and act. The
management has to instill the new focus of connecting the heads, hearts, and hands of people

in the organisation.
 On big problem may be the problem of strategy implementation. The management as well as

the team heads must learn how to motivate others and build an efficient team.
 Structural changes are essential to better position the organisation as compared with its

competitors, focus on client needs and move forward in development and sustainability
programmes. Sometimes reorganization maybe required to provide a framework for longer

term commitment to organizational objectives and vision.

 The management should encourage the entire organisation in general and sub units in

particular to put work teams in place to ensure that each sector integrates staff and services
into a cohesive, focused business unit. Consultation and participation should be made part and

parcel for the programme for the successful development and implementation of
organizational goals and objectives.

 Each work team should be asked to develop an effective process for discussion of major
challenges and opportunities facing the organisation, if possible, over the next decade.

Updated strategic plans should be then developed. These plans should form the framework for
focusing organizational resources on the most strategic areas by using a staged approach.

How the Corporate Culture impact on strategy and Strategic Management

Culture as “the sum total of learned beliefs, values, behavior, norms, language, religion, traditions

and customs that serve to direct the of members of a organisation to achieve the objectives and
strategies”. ... It influences the manner in which a person behaves, as consciously or sub-

consciously, we are all governed by culture.

 Culture within an organization can serve many purposes, including to unify members within

an organization and help create a set of common norms or rules within an organization that
employees follow. It needs to reflect the people who work at your company, complement

your business goals, and be “lived out” by everyone in the company (especially leaders).
 Once a company ’ve got a genuine and strong company culture, it will have an astoundingly

positive impact.
 Goals of company can come into alignment when the organizational culture works to focus

on productivity and getting the organization’s primary mission accomplished. This may
include getting products delivered to customers on time, shipping out more products than

the organization’s chief competitor or similar goals. This will create a domino effect in the
organization that ensures that all work performed by each individual in the company and

work group focuses on performance and on the strategic importance of the company.

 This allows culture to align with strategy implementation at the most basic level. For this
level of unification to work, goal setting must align with and be supported by systems,

policies, procedures and processes within the organization, thereby helping to achieve
strategy implementation and continuing the cultural integrity of the organization.

 A corporate culture that each employee subscribes to helps to create focus among the staff.
When employees stand for by the company's beliefs and values, it gives a unified impression

to vendors, clients and partners. The company can then create a business strategy knowing
that the entire organization will apply the guidelines in a uniform manner and improve the

chances that a strategy will succeed.

 Organizational culture provide a framework within which behaviors of employees take place
When they are engaged they are safer on the job, more productive and more willing and
able to delight customers. It is for these basic reasons that organizational culture matters. It
 is the right thing for an organization to do - to think about the work environment, working

relationships and “how employees do things here.

Impact/ Importance of organizational culture

 Motivation pattern

 Wok ethics( work ethics derived is derived from culture)

 A strong culture is a talent-attractor - The organizational culture is part of the package that

prospective employees look at when assessing the organization.

 A strong culture is talent-retainer
 A strong culture engages people (Engagement creates greater productivity, which can
impact profitability.)

 A strong culture changes the view of “work

 A strong culture makes everyone more successful

 A strong culture helps to set objectives