The success of every organisation be it the manufacturing, sales or service industry relies heavily on the strategies employed in realising the vision of the organisation.
Your strategy is your game plan, how you intend to work towards achieving your overall goals and objectives in an organisation.
There are three key areas to consider when formulating a strategy, namely the organisational mission, its vision and its values. The vision is what you want to be as an organisation. The mission is why an organisation exists, and the values are those things that are important in the organisation. These three factors have tremendous effects on the overall existence and performance of an organisation and must be well captured when formulating a game plan.
The next phase in formulating a strategy is to do a proper analysis of the general environment and industry structure and the organisation’s core competencies. This includes gathering adequate information on what is best practice in the industry and other factors such as market structure, target group, prospective competitors. There must be core competencies of the people you employ in line with the organisation’s vision. When all these are clearly mapped out, then you can say the stage is set for action.
The strategy map translates the strategy into action. The strategy map includes a step by step description of the five distinct tasks for the strategic management of an organisation, namely:
- developing the vision and mission
- Setting organisational, departmental, and individual objectives, and convert mission into performance targets in line with section 8(b) of Labour Act 2003, Act 651.
- Creating a step by step strategy to achieve set objectives.
- Implementing and executing the strategies and
- Evaluating and correction of work done through performance management systems.
A properly formulated strategy will comprise a clear description of:
- What you are trying to do.
- The sequence of events.
- What will be done by who.
- What surprises you should expect.
- How performance will be tracked/measured.
- How it looks from other’s points of view?
Internally, a well-formulated strategy will guide management’s thinking on strategic issues, especially during times of significant change. It will help define performance standards, inspire employees to work more productively by providing focus on common goals, guide employee decision making, help create a framework for ethical behaviour and establish clearly defined roles and unique processes in the organisation.
Some external benefit of strategic outcomes includes satisfied shareholders, delighted customers, creation of closer linkages and better communication with customers, suppliers and alliance.
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