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THE ACADEMY JOURNAL
A Joint Publication of
The Academy of Executives & Administrators and
The Academy of Multi-Skills
Volume 2 No. 1 May 2015
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THE JOURNAL OF THE ACADEMY OF EXECUTIVES &
ADMINISTRATORS AND THE ACADEMY OF MULTI-SKILLS
VOLUME 2
NO 1
MAY 2015
CONTENTS
Page
Editorial
2
From the President
Dr Mervyn H Pilley
3
Profile Article: Kingsley Ako Odoi
4
AEA Certified Awards and Programs of Study
5
Modelling Competition
by Dr Marc Sansó
6
AMS – BBA (Hons) Application Form
9
Implementing Bullion Fund Management Centre of Excellence Framework
by Prof Samuel Lartey
10
The Institute of Management Specialists: Specialised Manager Awards
12
Accelerated Reading Method©™ (ARM©™)
13
by Prof Dr Abe Abrahami
Bluewater Academic Institute – EMBA Press Release
16
Strategic Change & Leadership Implications
by Fernando Kevin Vince PhD & Mohammed Salleh DBA
17
IPFM Business School – MBA Application Form
22
1
Strategic Change & Leadership Implications
by
Fernando Kevin Vince PhD & Mohammed Salleh DBA
of efforts across functions and borders; sustained
performance towards the end goal that improves
its competitive position; reduced strategic risk to
the business; improved project completion rates
on time and within budget; improved revenue and
operating profit performance linking back to
improvements to operations and investment
returns that are in line with plans. With emerging
technologies and expanding global marketplaces,
it is imperative that organizations become highly
proficient in driving their change agenda.
Whether diversifying, downsizing, merging,
reorienting business, or developing new
management structures, organizations must be
able to effectively carry out change initiatives to
remain productive and competitive.
Introduction
In a competitive environment change is a
constant. The implementation of strategy requires
change resulting in the need for change enabled
people across the organization with the ability to
adapt to emergent issues in the internal and
external environments to both survive and grow.
Changes take place in the macro environment (for
example: economic, technological, political and
social changes), in the market (for example:
regulatory, taxes, customer needs and competitor
actions) and/or in the internal environment (for
example: assets, processes and people). Change
management literature is abundant and often the
phrases strategic change and change management
are used interchangeably. For the purpose of this
article it is useful to explain the difference
between change management and strategic
change. At a high level, organizations go through
two levels of holistic change, the first are changes
to support continuous improvements relating to
the existing business where the organization
benefits from expert knowledge – this is change
management. The second is change to support
organizational renewal as it moves from an
environment of little knowledge to increased
knowledge – this is strategic change.
Strategy and Strategic Change
The world is no longer dependable, consistent nor
predictable. Strategic flexibility is a requirement
and companies cannot stop analysing, assessing
and planning to keep up (Moore & Lenir 2011).
In this context strategy needs to be a dynamic and
continuous
process
involving
analysis,
formulation, implementation, review, learning
and adaptation thus enabling the organization to
compete and capitalize on emerging opportunities
for growth. Good strategy is about choice.
Choices relating to markets, products and
services, resource commitments and long-term
projects. Which leaders to put into what roles and
the organization’s position in relation to macroenvironmental issues. Formulation of strategy
requires developing unique insight into how the
vision and goals will be achieved. Strategy is
effective when it delivers a competitive
advantage
through
differentiation
and
differentiation is achieved by performing a
different set of activities and/or performing
similar activities in a different way providing
superior value to customers (Porter 1996). In an
increasingly transparent environment, arguably in
the long run, any externally visible source of
competitive advantage could be imitated and
sustainable advantage would go to the firm that is
able to continuously identify, develop and
This article defines strategic change through an
overview of strategy and change management
and where they connect to form strategic change.
The role and focus of strategic change throughout
the strategic management process is explained
alongside a strategic management framework.
The importance, process and results from
strategic change are discussed and finally the
leadership implications are outlined.
In today’s volatile environment, with the rate of
change,
accelerating
organizations
that
successfully manage strategic initiatives save
more money and are poised to gain an advantage
over their competitors. Organizations that have
built strong change management capabilities
benefit from significantly improved performance
in critical to success factors; effective alignment
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transition from one set of competitive advantages
to another. The need for change is implied
throughout the entire strategy process. Change
management is very much internally focused,
process oriented, dynamic and concerned with
organization effectiveness (Worley, Hitchin &
Ross 1996). Change may be evaluated in terms of
speed or timing, scope and depth. Strategic
change is change management in the context of
strategy. Linking change to strategy, strategic
change may be defined as change in the context
of a firm’s strategy and strategic management
process. This is presented in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Strategic Management & Strategic Change Implications
Strategic Change: Building Awareness &
Sensitivity to Emerging Issues & Trends
Analysis
Strategic Change: Creating a
learning culture that is open
to new ideas & technologies
Strategic Change:
Creating a culture that
is open, honest &
built on trust.
Learning
Strategic Change: Building
Change Readiness
Capability & Organizational
Agility
Adaptation
Review
Implementation
Formulation
Strategic Change: Developing a
change management plan to support
strategy deployment & alignment.
Strategic Change: Evaluating change
impact of proposed strategy.
Source: developed for this paper
Strategic
change
differs
from
change
management in terms of scope, resource
deployment, competitive advantage, and synergy
(Naghibi & Baban 2011). The focus of strategic
change is on how to redirect or move the business
away from out-dated practices to cope with new
challenges of technology, new markets and
international competition. Strategic change is
comprehensive, cyclic and adopts a structured
approach that is tightly linked to the strategic
management process transitioning individuals,
groups and the entire organization from its
current state to a desired future state with
intended business results.
the future. Further, because the organization is a
political entity, trade-offs between different
groups is inevitable. It is often not about the
optimal but a compromise that allows the
organization to move forward (Johnson 1992).
Once strategy has been formulated, a major
challenge is getting it implemented (Worley,
Hitchin & Ross 1996) and according to experts
nine out of ten strategies fail to deliver desired
results (Speculand 2005). It is virtually
impossible for organizations to implement their
chosen strategies without undertaking strategic
initiatives that inevitably require substantial
behavioural and cultural changes, requiring
people to change the way they work. People
generally respond in one of three ways to change:
indifference, resistance or support. Even where a
clear direction of strategy has been established,
the likelihood of achieving fundamental strategic
change is low unless the climate for change exists
(Johnson 1992). Organization culture and
A large part of strategy formulation has an
external orientation with its focus on industry and
market structure, positioning and competition
(Worley, Hitchin & Ross 1996) and when
developing strategy it is not possible to know all
the influences that will impact the organization in
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function like paradigm filters through which
opportunities, threats, strengths and weaknesses
are viewed and these paradigms can create
resistance.
Change management discussions often revolve
around the implementation stage of strategy.
However, even at the analysis and formulation
stages, change capabilities need to be understood.
This is presented in Figure 2. Leaders need to
create management processes that reduce rather
than add complexity and be thoughtful and
intentional about making changes to culture and
values (Davis, Frechette & Boswell 2010). For
example, at the analysis stage, leaders need to put
efforts into change sensitivity and preparedness.
During the formulation stage the impact of choice
made and their impact on key stakeholders needs
to be considered because a strategy that fails to be
implemented is a bad strategy. During the
implementation and review phases, integrated
programs, clear accountabilities and a culture of
openness need to be built into the organization.
Leaders are required to drive initiatives and to
accelerate execution on critical issues and the
magnitude of change the organization can handle.
Differences in change magnitude imply that
leaders need to introduce change in stages in
order to manage the impact on people.
Leading Strategic Change
The executive who is planning change needs to
ensure that the routines of the organization are
changed in ways which affect the everyday
behaviour (Johnson 1992). Use frameworks such
as 7S: Strategy, Structure, Systems, Skills,
Shared values, Staff (Social Structure &
relationships) and Style (Leadership) to identify
major components that need to be considered and
planned for. Alignment needs to be managed and
both vertical alignment linking people to strategy
and horizontal alignment linking processes to
design, delivery and capture value from the
customer. Creating alignment thus implies a need
to make changes to process, behaviour and focus.
Changes are strategic when they integrate to help
deploy strategy by developing new capabilities
and transforming behaviours at the individual and
group level.
Figure 2: Linking Strategic Management to Strategic Change
Strategic
Management
Phases
Description of Major Activities in
Strategic Management Process Phases
Strategic Change Capability
Development Requirements
Internal and external analysis to identify
value migration, industry, market and
customer trends and competitive
dynamics.
Strategic choices and positioning that
Formulation
will differentiate the organization for
sustainable high value growth.
Timely and effective deployment of
Implementation initiatives that will develop and align
and Review
tangible and intangible resources to
achieve goals. Discipline process to
monitor progress.
Review,
Build clarity on areas of ambiguity,
Learning and
lessons learnt, validity of assumptions
Adaptation
made and emergent issues and
opportunities/options.
Creating a process that drives change
sensitivity and preparedness.
Analysis
Source: developed for this paper
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Evaluating the impact of choices made
in terms of changes to people, process
and technology.
Develop integrated change management
programs and plans to create alignment
with strategy and reduce complexity.
Establishing effective monitoring
mechanisms to allow for timely
adaptation. Creating a culture of
openness.
Dealing effectively with change be it to capitalize
on opportunities or to mitigate potential threats
starts with anticipating what is likely to happen.
A simple process to best assess and respond to
market changes is to have a process that first
identifies risk, trends and potential changes,
second assesses the potential impact and third
takes the best possible action (Setili 2014).
Change management capabilities viewed as a
performance platform that supports strategy
requires monitoring, measurement, direction
setting and control (Nair 2011). According to
Mintzberg, leaders are managers and vice-versa
and they operate on three planes of work:
information, people and action. Further, the
practice of leadership may have its focus on a
specific unit, the entire organization or outside
the organization. A leader on the information
plane will be communicating, controlling,
framing and scheduling. On the people plane, the
leader helps create linkages and on the action
plane the leader is involved in working with the
team and helping deal with emergent issues. The
leadership implications for strategic change using
this framework are summarized in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Leadership implications for strategic change
Leadership Practice
Information:
Communication, Control,
Framing and Scheduling
People: Leading and
Linking
Action: Doing and Dealing
Leadership Implications for Strategic Change
Create a clear future vision and strategy for the team.
Establish a discipline for reviews and performance measures to
monitor and manage change initiatives.
When communicating, ensure the message is framed and timed for
maximum effectiveness.
Design and deploy strategy in a more exploratory, dynamic and
organically home grown approach.
Drive values that support change and continuous learning.
Invest in developing capabilities for a flexible workforce.
Leverage opportunities (e.g. Open Positions) to recruit talent that
supports the forward strategy of the organization.
Keep close to the real issues of the business to understand trends.
Build capability to be comfortable with ambiguity and make decisions
that help move forward.
Source: developed for this paper
sustainable long-term growth. Leading strategic
change requires paying attention to understand
the drivers and need for change and how these
efforts need to align to deliver competitive
advantage. The strategic intent needs to be clear
and the identification of what is required to
initiate, develop and transform existing processes,
attitudes and structures to achieve this intent. The
focus should always be on the strategic goals to
be achieved. The challenge of implementation,
the design of change program and the process to
implement and the formal and informal factors
which influence need to be addressed.
Conclusion
Strategy has a hard side and a soft side. The hard
side deals with the strategy description, measures,
and procedures. But companies must master the
soft side of strategy which is the leadership,
culture, and teamwork to make real changes that
a new strategy demands. Strategic change helps
create a new organisation that is capable to
implement the new strategy. As a capability it
creates an organization that is agile, responsive
and better positioned for growth in a volatile,
uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment
and most importantly it is a critical capability for
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References
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Davis, J. R. Frechette, H. M. Jr. and Boswell, E.
H. 2010, Strategic speed, Mobilize people,
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Pettigrew, A. 1988, The Management of Strategic
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(2011) © (2011)IACSIT Press, Singapore.
Speculand, R. A. 2005, Bricks to Bridges, Make
your strategy come alive, Bridges Business
Consultancy International, Singapore.
Nair, M. 2011, Strategic business transformation,
the 7 deadly sins to overcome, John Wiley &
Sons, Inc.
Worley, C. G. Hitchin, D. E. and Ross, W. L.
1996 Integrated strategic change, How OD builds
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About the Authors:
Dr Kevin Vince Fernando holds a Doctorate in Business Administration and Master Degrees in Business
Administration, Management and Professional Accounting. He is the President (Asia Pacific) of Stanley Black &
Decker.
Dr Mohammed Salleh holds a Doctorate in Business Administration, an MBA in International Business, as well
as a Master of Education Degree in Educational Management. He is the Academic Registrar and Director of SBP
Academia Limited.
Faculty of Professional Business and Technical Management
The Faculty of Professional Business and Technical Management (FPBTM), founded in 1983, is a United Kingdom
based professional qualification awarding body listed in the publication British Qualifications.
The Faculty’s aim is to assist members in reaching the highest possible satisfaction through career development.
Perhaps the most important reward of career development is the achievement of professionalism through
professional registration and professional development education.
FPBTM is a reciprocal body of The Academy of Executives & Administrators and The Academy of Multi Skills and welcomes new
members under this arrangement.
www.pbtm.org.uk info@pbtm.org.uk
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