PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT AS A STRATEGIC MANAGER

Personal development as a strategic Manager

Personal Development as a Strategic Manager

Introduction

Strategic Management is a tool used by managers to make plans and deal with problems. Strategic management is also about the reading of signs and portraits of the future and interpreting them in order to choose an appropriate direction for the future development of the organisation. However, this world has been changing everyday. How to manage change and get more benefits from change are more important to each organisation. Some organisations are successful when they face change and some of them are not.

Strategy

Strategy is a broad based formula for how business is going to compete, what its goals should be, and what policies will be needed to carry out these goals. The essence of formulating competitive strategy is relating a company to its environment.

Porter (1980, pp.56-70), Competitive Strategy: The definitions of strategy change from scholar to scholar. There is no agreed way to define strategy as the interpretations of each writer are based on methodological preference (Robson, 1997). The above definition is an example of Porters stance on what a strategy is.

Strategic planning: Strategic management is concerned with deciding on strategy and planning on how that strategy is to be put in to effect via:

Strategic Analysis

Strategic Choice

Strategic execution

The above definition of strategic management is by Johnson and Scholes(1993) and essentially outlines that strategies are formulated and concern all organisations, large or small.

Strategic planning is a continual process within an organisation, the people responsible for the success of strategic planning outline the desired future, then devise a strategy for making it happen. Strategic planning by its very nature is adaptive and the devisor is always developing it to be relevant for the future. Key environmental factors are predicted and their influence on the organisation looked at and then optimum measures are taken so the organisation can benefit from these environmental factors.

Business planning and strategic planning are two different things. Business plans are usually for an outside audience where the strategic plans are developed for internal purposes. Also strategic plans look at the 'bigger picture' where business planning looks at certain elements of an organisation.

The Composition of a Strategic Plan

Strategic plans are generally made up of one or more interconnected elements; Vision, mission, Values, assessment, goals/objectives, strategy and outcomes. They also incorporate strategic management principles and models. A possible example of a strategic plan follows:

The Vision shows the dreams of the organisation and broadly capture future services, markets and structures but do not go in to great detail. The Mission outlines customers, competitors and markets. It shows "a desired position in a predicted future world" and a "bulls eye or target of the strategy"(Yavitz & Newman, 1982). "A mission should not commit a firm to what it must do in order to survive but what it chooses to do in order to thrive" (Ackoff, 1986, pp.23-30). Values are what the company believes to be true; values offer guides for staff on how to act within the company and ...