The process of strategy evaluation is often overlooked in the overall strategic management process. After the flurry of activity in the initial planning stages, followed by the reality check of executing your strategy alongside business-as-usual, strategy evaluation is often neglected. When this occurs, strategies quickly become outdated and out-of-sync with the changing face of the organization.
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What is Strategy Evaluation?
The strategy evaluation process involves analyzing your strategic plan and assessing how well you’ve done against achieving the goals in your strategy. A strategy evaluation is an internal analysis tool and should be used as part of a broader strategic analysis for the organization when making decisions about your strategy.
Typically, the strategy evaluation process involves answering questions such as:
How much progress have we made towards our Vision?
Are our Strategic Focus Areas still relevant?
Which of our Objectives have we completed?
Which Objectives are no longer needed?
Do we have sufficient Projects to deliver incomplete Objectives?
Are our KPIs still effective for measuring progress towards our Objectives?
Where we fell short of our targets, why did this happen?
A strategic review is a structured process to identify new value-creating opportunities within a business. This could be about improving the performance of an existing division or taking advantage of a new market adjacency opportunity. Many companies undertake strategic reviews on an annual basis as part of their strategic planning process. Other businesses will undertake them on a more ad hoc basis when presented with a specific opportunity or problem within the business. A change of ownership or appointment of a new CEO can often trigger the need for a strategic review of the business as a way to clarify the key areas of opportunity and challenges within the existing portfolio. Whatever its origins, a strategic review should be a clear fact-based analysis of the business opportunity or issue. It provides an opportunity to step back from day-to-day operations to assess the strategic foundations on which a business is built. The outcome of a strategic review should be a clear set of strategic recommendations and a future roadmap for the business that charts its course and enables increased and sustained performance now and for the future.
Your working style depends on your organizational structure. The organizational structure defines your role and responsibilities and work culture. This culture includes work environment, reporting system, hierarchy, etc. An organization can adapt to any structure as per their requirements. If they are dealing with the projects, they will choose a projectized organization. However, an organization dealing with operations will stick with a functional structure. Every organizational structure has a different system. In a projectized organizational structure, you report to the project manager. In a functional organizational structure, you report to a functional manager. In a matrix organizational structure, it depends. I have discussed the matrix and projectized structures in other blog posts. Now, we will discuss the functional organizational structure.
What is a Functional Organizational Structure?
A functional structure divides the organization into departments based on their function. Each is headed by a functional manager and employees are grouped as per their role. Functional managers have experience in the roles they supervise. This ensures that employees are using their skills effectively. It helps organizations in achieving their business objectives.
Employees are classified according to their function in this structure. The organizational chart for a functional structure shows the role hierarchy: for example, president, vice president, finance department, sales department, customer service, administration, etc.
Each department has a head responsible for it. This helps the organization control the quality and uniformity of their performance. These employees are very skilled. They are experienced in the same work and they perform excellently; productivity is high in a functional structure.
Functional departments are sometimes referred to as “silos.” This means the system is vertical and disconnected, communication flows through the department heads to the top management.
Here, all authority stays with the functional manager. Usually, the project manager does not have any role in this structure. Their role will be minimal, even if they exist. They will need the functional manager’s approval to use resources and they may act as a coordinator or an expediter.
The functional organization structure is suitable for a business dealing with operations, like manufacturing industries.
Most small industries with only a few products use this structure. The employees are highly skilled due to repetitive work which means high efficiency and the best performance.
Joseph R. Biden Jr. was elected president on his third try, after an extraordinary race in which he campaigned as an elder statesman seeking to restore civility to the nation.
Biden Jr. was elected president of the United States on Saturday, defeating President Trump after campaigning on a promise to restore civility and stability to American politics and to expand the government’s role in guiding the country through the surging coronavirus pandemic.
Mr. Biden, 77, who will become the 46th president and the oldest man ever sworn into the office, secured 273 votes from the Electoral College after Pennsylvania was called for him, though the race was far closer than many Democrats, Republicans and pollsters had expected.
The result also provided a history-making moment for President-elect Biden’s running mate, Senator Kamala Harris of California, who became the first woman, and first woman of color, on a winning presidential ticket.
With his third run for the White House — after unsuccessful bids in 1988 and 2008, and after spending eight years as President Barack Obama’s vice president — Mr. Biden finally attained a goal that he has dreamed of for decades, capping a career in national politics that began with a victory in a 1972 Senate race here in Delaware. He was swept into office this year with the support of a diverse coalition of younger voters, older voters, Black Americans and white college-educated voters, particularly women.
Mr. Biden’s triumph concluded an extraordinary election that was expected to set modern records for turnout, despite being held amid a pandemic that has upended life across the United States. More than 100 million Americans voted before Election Day as states sought to make voting safer, putting the nation on track for the largest turnout in a century once the final vote is tallied.
Mr. Biden also won the popular vote by nearly three percentage points, and, with more than 74 million votes, broke the vote record set by Mr. Obama in 2012. Mr. Trump received more than 70 million votes — far more than the 63 million he received in 2016 when he beat Hillary Clinton while losing the popular vote.
Voters overcame their fears of the coronavirus, long lines at the polls and the vexing challenges of a transformed election system to render a verdict on Mr. Trump’s chaotic and norm-breaking presidency. Mr. Trump was the first incumbent president to lose a bid for re-election since George H.W. Bush lost to Bill Clinton in 1992.
Still, the race was not the landslide many Democrats had hoped for: Mr. Biden lost a number of important battleground states where he had invested time and resources, most notably Florida, amid signs of challenges with a number of Latino constituencies.
The Trump campaign and Republican lawyers have already begun a wide-ranging legal assault to challenge Democratic votes and victories in key swing states, part of a long-telegraphed effort to call the validity of the election into question.
Mr. Trump, who baselessly declared victory early Wednesday, before votes were tallied in multiple states, had regularly questioned the legitimacy of the election as polls showed him trailing, and it was not immediately clear how he would respond to the news of Mr. Biden’s victory.
Much of Mr. Biden’s agenda in office may rest on his ability to work with Congress. Democrats have maintained their hold on the House but had a much narrower path to reclaiming control of the Senate
Definition: Competitive Advantage means superior performance relative to other competitors in the same industry or superior performance relative to the industry average.
What is competitive advantage?
There is no one answer about what is competitive advantage or one way to measure it, and for the right reason. Nearly everything can be considered as competitive edge, e.g. higher profit margin, greater return on assets, valuable resource such as brand reputation or unique competence in producing jet engines. Every company must have at least one advantage to successfully compete in the market. If a company can’t identify one or just doesn’t possess it, competitors soon outperform it and force the business to leave the market.
There are many ways to achieve the advantage but only two basic types of it: cost or differentiation advantage. A company that is able to achieve superiority in cost or differentiation is able to offer consumers the products at lower costs or with higher degree of differentiation and most importantly, is able to compete with its rivals.
An organization that is capable of outperforming its competitors over a long period of time has sustainable competitive advantage.
The following diagram illustrates the basic competitive advantage model, which is explained below in the article:
How a company can achieve it?
An organization can achieve an edge over its competitors in the following two ways:
Through external changes. When PEST factors change, many opportunities can appear that, if seized upon, could provide many benefits for an organization. A company can also gain an upper hand over its competitors when its capable to respond to external changes faster than other organizations.
By developing them inside the company. A firm can achieve cost or differentiation advantage when it develops VRIO resources, unique competences or through innovative processes and products.
Strategic management can be either prescriptive or descriptive. Prescriptive strategic management means developing strategies in advance of an organizational issue. Descriptive strategic management means putting strategies into practice when needed. Both methods of strategic management employ management theory and practices.
While upper management is responsible for implementing strategies, ideas, goals or organizational challenges can come from any member of the company. Many companies employ strategists whose jobs it is to think and plan strategically to improve company function.
There are four steps to strategic management:
Analysis
Formation
Execution
Evaluation
1. Analysis
Before planning a new strategic process, you must evaluate the current process to achieve your goal. What is working? What is not working? What input from organizational stakeholders can you gather? This is the time to answer any questions that will help solidify the necessary elements of the strategic plan. A SWOT analysis, or identification of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, is a useful tool.
2. Formation
Once you have the information you need, it is time to create an action plan for reaching the goal. Make sure the steps are clear, focused and directly related to the goal. Prepare easy to understand implementation guidelines if the process or procedure will impact many people within the organization.
3. Execution
Follow the steps outlined in your strategic plan. Make sure that all stakeholders are implementing the plan as designed for maximum efficiency.
4. Evaluation
Evaluate the final product. Did you achieve your goal? Was the process implemented appropriately company-wide? Based on your answers to these questions, you can reflect and revise as needed.
Achieving organizational goals takes planning and patience. Strategic management can help companies reach their goals. Strategic management ensures the steps necessary to reach a business goal are implemented company-wide. In this article, we will define strategic management, explain how strategic management works, discuss the purpose of strategic management and provide an example of strategic management.
What is strategic management?
Strategic management is the strategic use of a business’ resources to reach company goals and objectives. Strategic management requires reflection on the processes and procedures within the organization as well as external factors that may impact how the company functions. The process of strategic management should guide top-level actions and decisions. Companies of all sizes and in all industries can benefit from the practice of strategic management.
Strategic management includes setting objectives for the company, analyzing the actions of competitors, reviewing the organization’s internal structure, evaluating current strategies and confirming that strategies are implemented company-wide.
Strategic management is the sum of strategic planning and strategic thinking. Strategic planning is the identification of achievable goals. Strategic thinking is the ability to identify the needs of the organization to achieve the goals identified through strategic planning.
The Real World is Here 