Defination
• A strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a
particular goal. The word strategy has military
connotations, because it derives from the Greek word
for general.[1]
• Strategy is different from tactics. In military terms,
tactics is concerned with the conduct of an
engagement while strategy is concerned with how
different engagements are linked. In other words, how
a battle is fought is a matter of tactics: the terms that it
is fought on and whether it should be fought at all is a
matter of strategy.
• Strategies in game theory
• In game theory, a strategy refers to one of the options that a
player can choose. That is, every player in a non-cooperative
game has a set of possible strategies, and must choose one of
them.
• A strategy must specify what action will happen in each
contingent state of the game - e.g. if the opponent does A, then
take action B, whereas if the opponent does C, take action D.
• Strategies in game theory may be random (mixed) or
deterministic (pure). That is, in some games, players choose
mixed strategies. Pure strategies can be thought of as a special
case of mixed strategies, in which only probabilities 0 or 1 are
assigned to actions.
• Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining
its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on
allocating its resources to pursue this strategy, including its
capital and people. Various business analysis techniques
can be used in strategic planning, including SWOT analysis
(Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats ) and
PEST analysis (Political, Economic, Social, and
Technological analysis) or STEER analysis (Socio-cultural,
Technological, Economic, Ecological, and Regulatory
factors) and EPISTEL (Environment, Political, Informatic,
Social, Technological, Economic and Legal).
 Strategic planning is the formal consideration of an
organization's future course. All strategic planning
deals with at least one of three key questions:
 "What do we do?"
 "For whom do we do it?"
 "How do we excel?"
• In business strategic planning, the third question is
better phrased "How can we beat or avoid
competition?". (Bradford and Duncan, page 1).
• In many organizations, this is viewed as a process for
determining where an organization is going over the
next year or more -typically 3 to 5 years, although some
extend their vision to 20 years.
Execution of strategies
 But good strategies fail too, and when that happens,
it's often harder to pinpoint the reasons. Yet despite
the obvious importance of good planning and
execution, relatively few management thinkers have
focused on what kinds of processes and leadership are
best for turning a strategy into results.
Cont’d
 But can better execution be taught?
 You can develop a model.... If people know what the
key variables are, they know what to look for and what
questions to ask."
 While execution can go wrong for a variety of reasons,
one of the most basic may be allowing the focus of the
strategy to shift over time.
Goal- shifting
 The attempt by Hewlett-Packard, after it acquired
Compaq, to compete with Dell in PCs through scale is
a classic example of goal-shifting -- competing on price
one week, service the next, while trying to sell through
often conflicting, high-cost channels. The result: CEO
Carly Fiorina lost her job and HP still must resolve
some key strategic issues.
 Another classic example of mis-synchronization:
United Air Lines' TED, which attempted to set up a
competitive subsidiary to compete against upstarts
such as Southwest. This was a good idea as far as it
went, but United tried to compete using its same old
cost structure -- the main reason it was losing markets
to the low-cost airlines in the first place.
• At other times, plans fail simply because they don't get
communicated to all the people involved.
• Strategies also flop because individuals resist the
change. For example, headquarters might want more
standardization in a product, but a local marketing
executive disagrees with the idea. "He might say, 'I
need more nuts in my chocolate bar' or 'I need a
different pack size,'"
• Many times, there can be sound reasons for resistance.
Sometimes a strategy might make sense at the highest
level, but its full impact on the whole organization has
not been fully considered,
• For example, imagine that the general strategy calls for
promoting one brand throughout the company while
taking resources away from another brand. That might
make sense in one market, yet be completely
counterproductive elsewhere
• Cultural factors can also hinder execution. Companies
sometimes try to apply a tried-and-true strategy
without realizing that they are operating in markets
that require a different approach. Even such a worldbeater at execution as Wal-Mart, for instance, has
sometimes made some missteps because of culture.
One example: When Wal-Mart first moved in to Brazil,
it tried to lay down terms with suppliers in the same
way it does in the U.S., where it carries huge weight in
the market. Suppliers simply refused to play, and the
company was forced to reevaluate its strategy.
 Yet the biggest factor of all may be executive
inattention. Once a plan is decided upon, there is
often surprisingly little follow-through to ensure that it
is executed,
 "Less than 15% of companies routinely track how they
perform over how they thought they were going to
perform,“
 Instead, only the first year's goals are measured -- and
executives often set first-year goals deliberately low in
order to meet a threshold for a bonus.
• One school emphasizes people: Just put the right
people in place and the right things will get done.
However, within the people school, there are also
divisions. Some experts insist that the right people are
hired, not made.
• the key is to improve executive performance through
training, and improve the average employee's
performance through the creation of a culture of
accountability.
 For example, W. James McNerney, Jr., the chairman
and CEO of 3M, argues that by improving the average
performance of every individual by 15%, irrespective of
what his or her role is, a company can achieve and
sustain consistently superior performance.
Five Keys to Getting the Job Done
 Develop a model for execution.
 - Michael Porter's theory of comparative advantage
 Choose the right metrics.
 - sales and market share are always going to be the
dominant metrics of business
• Don't forget the plan.
• - plans are often simply agreed to and then forgotten !
• Assess performance frequently.
• - Performance monitoring is still an annual affair at
most companies. The reason why Wal-Mart is so good
at execution is it knows daily if what it is doing in each
of its stores gets results or not
• By shortening the performance monitoring cycle --
from quarter-by-quarter to month-by-month or weekby-week -- top management can get more "real-time"
feedback on the quality of execution down the line.
• Communicate.
• - companies often go wrong by creating a cultural
distinction between the executives who design a
strategy and people lower down in the corporate
hierarchy who carry it out.
WYDIWYG
 Strategy is Execution. Another way of saying this is
WYDIWG – What You DO Is What You Get.
 Strategy Is . . .
 Strategy is many things: plan, pattern, position,
ploy and perspective. As plan, strategy relates how
we intend realizing our goals.
 As position, strategy is the stance we take: to literally
take the high ground, to be the low-cost provider, to
compete on the basis of value, to price to what the
market will bear, to match or beat the price offered by
any competitor,
 As ploy, strategy is a ruse, it relies on secrecy and often
on deception
 As perspective, strategy is part vantage point and part
the view from that vantage point, particularly the way
this view shapes and guides decisions and actions.
Strategy is Execution
 Strategy is Execution
 Strategy is getting it right and doing it right. On the
one hand, we have to envision the right course of
action. On the other hand, once chosen, we have to
carry it out properly
 If our strategy and its execution are both flawed, the
effort is "doomed from the beginning." Our chances of
success are zero, nil
 If our strategy is sound but its execution is flawed, we
are guilty of muffing it
 Only when our envisioned strategy and its execution
are sound do we stand a pretty good chance of success.
Even then success is not guaranteed
 So, even if we get the strategy right and even if we
carry it out efficiently and effectively, all we can really
say is that the odds are in our favor, that we have "a
pretty good chance.
• In the early 1980s, Tom Peters made a presentation to a
group of senior managers at AT&T in which he used a
slide that read, "Execution is strategy." We can turn
that around and also say that strategy is execution. In
simpler terms, we adapt to changing circumstances
and so does our strategy. Thus it is that strategy as
envisioned or contemplated becomes strategy as
executed or realized
 Organizations that successfully execute even mediocre
strategies far outperform those that fail to execute the
most brilliant of plans! According to Fortune
Magazine, "less than 10% of strategies effectively
formulated are effectively executed."
 Enterprise Strategy Execution (ESE) is a proven
methodology for driving better business results that
encompasses a continuous process of prioritization,
improvement, and control. ESE focuses and
empowers every employee toward the common
strategy.
 How to Get There From Where You Are Today?
 When an organization commits to ESE, it must do so
in steps or stages. Tackling all of the various
components at once -- no matter how focused and
motivated an organization is -- is simply not feasible.
New skills must be learned, new behaviors
encouraged, cultural changes fostered -- all of which
must occur over time to be successful.
 Many managers are comfortable planning, but lag
when it comes to actually putting the plan into action.
 The Execution Challenge
 There are eight areas of obstacles or challenges to
strategy execution. Or, to put it positively, there are
eight areas of opportunity: Handling them well will
guarantee execution success. The areas relating to the
success of execution are as follows:
 Developing a model to guide execution decisions or
actions
 Understanding how the creation of strategy affects the
execution of strategy
 Managing change effectively, including culture change
 Understanding power or influence and using it for
execution success
 Developing organizational structures that foster
information sharing, coordination, and clear
accountability
 Developing effective controls and feedback
mechanisms
 Knowing how to create an execution-supportive
culture
 Exercising execution-biased leadership
 Without guidance, individuals do the things they
think are important, often resulting in uncoordinated,
divergent, even conflicting decisions and actions.
 Having a model or roadmap positively affects
execution success.
 It all begins with strategy. Execution cannot occur
until one has something to execute. Bad strategy
begets poor execution and poor outcomes, so it's
important to focus first on a sound strategy.
 It is vital to get the "right people on the bus, the wrong
people off the bus," so to speak. But it's also important
to know where the bus is going and why.
 It drives the development of capabilities and which
people with what skills sit in what seats on the bus.
 Strategy defines the arena (customers, markets,
technologies, products, logistics) in which the
execution game is played. Execution is an empty effort
without the guidance of strategy and short-term
objectives related to strategy.
 Execution or strategy implementation often involves
change. Not handling change well will spell disaster for
execution efforts.
 Power reflects strategy, structure, and critical
dependencies on capabilities and scarce resources.
Knowing what power is and how to create and use
influence can spell the difference between execution
success and failure.
 Yet managers are often motivated not to share
information or work with their colleagues to
coordinate activities and achieve strategic and shortterm goals. Why? The answer to this question is vital
to the successful execution of strategy.
 Clear Responsibility and Accountability
 This is one of the most important prerequisites for
successful execution, as basic as it sounds.
 Managers must know who's doing what, when, and
why, as well as who's accountable for key steps in the
execution process. Without clear responsibility and
accountability, execution programs will go nowhere.
Knowing how to achieve this clarity is central to
execution success.
 The Right Culture
 Organizations must develop execution-supportive
cultures. Execution demands a culture of achievement,
discipline, and ownership
 But developing or changing culture is no easy task.
Rock climbing, white-water rafting, paint-gun battles,
and other activities with the management team are
fun. They rarely, however, produce lasting cultural
change.
 Leadership
 Leadership must be execution biased. It must drive the
organization to execution success. It must motivate
ownership of and commitment to the execution
process.
 Controls, Feedback, and Adaptation
 Strategy execution processes support organizational
change and adaptation. Making strategy work requires
feedback about organizational performance and then
using that information to fine-tune strategy,
objectives, and the execution process itself.
 Tackling too many execution decisions or actions at
once will surely create problems. "When everything is
important, then nothing is important," is a clear but
simple way of expressing the issue. Priorities must be
set and a logical order to execution actions adequately
defined if execution is to succeed.
 Planning requires anticipating early on what must be
done to make strategy work.
 Managers cannot act in a helter-skelter fashion when
executing strategy. They can't focus one day on
organizational structure, the next on culture, and then
on to "good people," only to find out that strategy is
vague or severely flawed.
 Managers require a "big picture" as well as an
understanding of the "nitty-gritty," the key elements
that comprise the big picture.
 Strategy Development and Execution (Strategy)
 Assess your strategy on three levels (enterprise,
operational, tactical) to be sure they are working
together in an integrated way
 Diagnose whether you should create a new plan, or if
something else is getting in the way
 Link current initiatives to your strategy, suggest
alternatives, or recommend deletions
 Ensure key leaders understand the strategy and their
roles in a
 Organizational Effectiveness (People)
 Assess whether you have the capabilities – and capacity – required to
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achieve defined objectives
Determine if your current capabilities are being used in the most
productive ways or if they might be redeployed or refocused to better
advantage
Analyze the organizational structure to determine if it supports
effective business practices and management behaviors
Coach leaders to help their teams maintain focus on the most critical
issues
Help employees to work effectively across organizational boundaries
(geographies, functional areas, business units, etc.)
 Process Management (Process)
 Focus on core business processes, from ‘end to end’ (e.g. those that are
critical to your business, yet are not the core purpose of your business)
 Assess where it ‘hurts’ to improve performance and better manage
critical touch points, inputs, and outputs along the process
 Evaluate current metrics and key indicators to ensure they are
providing the right information to monitor the effectiveness of the
process
 Ensure everyone knows who is responsible (and accountable) for what
– and why
 ‘‘If you know both yourself and your enemy, you can come
out of hundreds of battles without danger’’, to a higher
ground of defeating an enemy without even fighting, better
strategy by exploring ‘blue oceans’ – untapped and
untargeted markets which hold tremendous growth
potential – rather than going head-to-head against rivals
for a share of the existing market. The latter scenario is
akin to a ‘red ocean’ where competition is based on
outperforming the existing competitive benchmark. In
other words, the best approach to earn a competitive edge
is to gain the first mover advantage over competitors.
 While competitors are the ones who set the agenda
and rule of the game in red oceans, competition
becomes insignificant in blue oceans.
Twelve strategies for instilling a culture of
execution in your organization:
 Build accountability into meetings
 Be realistic. Many strategies fail because leaders don't
make a realistic assessment of whether the
organization can execute the plan.
 Focus on a few priorities. I've seen organizations
with strategic plans that detail twenty large strategies
for one year.
• Ensure employees understand priorities. This may
sound simple, but my experience is that most
employees are not brought into the loop about what is
important to the organization.
• Set milestones. Break down every organizational
project into specific milestones with action items and
dates. Communicate these milestones to employees
and review the status at each project meeting.
 Use your business plan. Is your business plan
collecting dust? Many organizations go through the
motions of spending two days every year developing
strategic and business plans, only to stick them in the
bottom of the drawer untouched
 Hold people at the top accountable. If line
managers are not executing, it's usually because their
leader does not have an accountability structure in
place. Leaders need to take ownership of their
initiatives and follow-up with managers to ensure
completion
 Promote candid dialog. This is one of the biggest
reasons why things don't get done in organizations.
Many managers don't want to rock the boat, so they
are very polite and don't challenge each other or their
leaders. This often leads to failed projects and
initiatives because managers weren't honest with each
other.
 What processes could have been better? Did we meet
our time commitments? If not, why? Use this
information to improve processes and hold people
accountable.
 Confront performance issues. Some managers put
off confronting performance issues because it's
unpleasant and takes time.
• Reward the doers. Structure your bonus and salary
increases to reward those employees who get things
done. There must be enough differentiation in
bonuses and salary increases to send the message that
execution is rewarded.
• Align systems. Too many organizations have business
units that work in silos. Everyone is working on their
part, and there is no alignment of the core projects or
strategies
 Holding employees accountable doesn't have to be
about micro-managing or dictating. Setting clear
expectations and due dates up front makes the process
easier for everyone and promotes the best use of the
organization's time and money.
• It is also true that strategic planning may be a tool for
effectively plotting the direction of a company;
however, strategic planning itself cannot foretell
exactly how the market will evolve and what issues will
surface in the coming days in order to plan your
organizational strategy. Therefore, strategic
innovation and tinkering with the 'strategic plan' have
to be a cornerstone strategy for an organization to
survive the turbulent business climate.
Vision
• Vision, mission and values
• Vision: Defines the desired or intended future state of
an organization or enterprise in terms of its
fundamental objective and/or strategic direction.
Vision is a long term view, sometimes describing a
view of how the organization would like the world in
which it operates to be. For example a charity working
with the poor might have a vision statement which
read "A world without poverty"
Mission
• Mission: Defines the fundamental purpose of an
organization or an enterprise, basically describing why
it exists and what it does to achieve its Vision. A
corporate Mission can last for many years, or for the
life of the organization. It is not an objective with a
timeline, but rather the overall goal that is
accomplished over the years as objectives are achieved
that are aligned with the corporate mission.
Values
 Values: Beliefs that are shared among the stakeholders
of an organization. Values drive an organization's
culture and priorities.
Methodologies
in Strategic Planning
• Methodologies
• There are many approaches to strategic planning but
typically a three-step process may be used:
• Situation - evaluate the current situation and how it came
about.
• Target - define goals and/or objectives (sometimes called
ideal state)
• Path - map a possible route to the goals/objectives
Draw-See-Think
• One alternative approach is called Draw-See-Think
• Draw - what is the ideal image or the desired end state?
• See - what is today's situation? What is the gap from ideal
and why?
• Think - what specific actions must be taken to close the
gap between today's situation and the ideal state?
• Plan - what resources are required to execute the
activities?
See-Think-Draw
 An alternative to the Draw-See-Think approach is
called See-Think-Draw
 See - what is today's situation?
 Think - define goals/objectives
 Draw - map a route to achieving the goals/objectives
• strategic planning can be as follows:
• Vision - Define the vision and set a mission statement with
•
•
•
•
hierarchy of goals and objectives
SWOT - Analysis conducted according to the desired goals
Formulate - Formulate actions and processes to be taken to
attain these goals
Implement - Implementation of the agreed upon processes
Control - Monitor and get feedback from implemented
processes to fully control the operation
Mission statements and vision statements
•
•
•
•
•
Mission statements and vision statements
Organizations sometimes summarize goals and objectives into a mission statement
and/or a vision statement Others begin with a vision and mission and use them to
formulate goals and objectives.
While the existence of a shared mission is extremely useful, many strategy specialists
question the requirement for a written mission statement. However, there are many
models of strategic planning that start with mission statements, so it is useful to examine
them here.
A Mission statement tells you the fundamental purpose of the organization. It defines
the customer and the critical processes. It informs you of the desired level of
performance.
A Vision statement outlines what the organization wants to be, or how it wants the
world in which it operates to be. It concentrates on the future. It is a source of
inspiration. It provides clear decision-making criteria.
Cont’d
 An advantage of having a statement is that it creates
value for those who get exposed to the statement, and
those prospects are managers, employees and
sometimes even customers. Statements create a sense
of direction and opportunity. They both are an
essential part of the strategy-making process.
• Many people mistake vision statement for mission
statement, and sometimes one is simply used as a longer
term version of the other. The Vision should describe why
it is important to achieve the Mission. A Vision statement
defines the purpose or broader goal for being in existence
or in the business and can remain the same for decades if
crafted well. A Mission statement is more specific to what
the enterprise can achieve itself. Vision should describe
what will be achieved in the wider sphere if the
organization and others are successful.
Effective vision statement
• Features of an effective vision statement include:
• Clarity and lack of ambiguity
• Vivid and clear picture
• Description of a bright future
• Memorable and engaging wording
• Realistic aspirations
• Alignment with organizational values and culture
• To become really effective, an organizational vision
statement must (the theory states) become assimilated
into the organization's culture. Leaders have the
responsibility of communicating the vision regularly,
creating narratives that illustrate the vision, acting as rolemodels by embodying the vision, creating short-term
objectives compatible with the vision, and encouraging
others to craft their own personal vision compatible with
the organization's overall vision.
References
 1. Liddell-Hart, B. H. (1967). Strategy (2nd Edition).
New York, NY: Frederick Praeger.
 2. Mintzberg, H. (1994). The rise and fall of strategic
planning. New York, NY: Free Press.