| What is a strategy? | ‘The long-term direction of an organization, formed by choices and actions about its resources and scope, in order to create advantageous positions relative to competitors and peers and changing environmental and stakeholder contexts.’ |
| What are examples of things that is not a strategy, but people think is a strategy? | A good strategy is simple.
Ambition, leadership, vision, planning, or the economic logic of competition has nothing to do with strategy.
A good strategy honestly acknowledges the challenges being faced and provides an approach to overcoming them.
Strategy is all the elements and components of how to win. |
| What is the difference between deliberate strategy and emergent strategy? | A deliberate strategy is a strategy that has been carefully thought out within the organization.
An emergent strategy is a strategy that appears out during regular business activities and not planned. An emergent strategy does not mean incapable management (maybe sometimes), but it can also show management’s ability to learn and adapt to a fast-changing world. Openness to such emergent strategy enables management to act before everything is fully understood; to respond to an evolving reality rather than having to focus on a stable fantasy. |
| What types of strategy exist? | 1. Planed (Made by central management with precise intent backed by formal controls to ensure no surprises and is very deliberate)
2. Entrepreneurial (Made by a single leader in a personal, unarticulated vision. Easily adaptable to new ideas or opportunities. Strategy is relative deliberate but can emerge)
3. Ideological (Strategies originate in shared beliefs: intentions exist as collective vision of all actors, in inspirational form and relatively immutable, controlled normatively through indoctrination and/or socialization; organization often proactive vis-á-vis environment; strategies rather deliberate
4. Umbrella (Strategies originate in constraints: leadership, in partial control of organizational actions, defines strategic boundaries or targets within which other actors respond to own forces or to complex, perhaps also unpredictable environment; strategies partly deliberate, partly emergent and deliberately emergent)
5. Process (Strategies originate in process: leadership controls process aspects of strategy hiring. structure, etc.), leaving content aspects to other actors; strategies partly deliberate, partly emergent (and, again, deliberately emergent)
6. Unconnected (Strategies originate in enclaves: actor(s) loosely coupled to rest of organization produce(s) patterns in own actions in absence of, or in direct contradiction to, central or common intentions; strategies organizationally emergent whether or not deliberate for actor)
7. Consensus (Strategies originate in enclaves: actor(s) loosely coupled to rest of organization produce(s) patterns in own actions in absence of, or in direct contradiction to, central or common intentions; strategies organizationally emergent whether or not deliberate for actor)
8. Imposed (Strategies originate in enclaves: actor(s) loosely coupled to rest of organization produce(s) patterns in own actions in absence of, or in direct contradiction to, central or common intentions; strategies organizationally emergent whether or not deliberate for actor. |
| Is mission, vision, goals, etc. strategy? | 1. Values: core principles the organisation stands for, or manifests
2. Mission: what organisation is there to do. Why it exists
3. Vision: future the organisation sees for itself
4. Ambition, motivation, determination: desire to succeed
5. Goals, Objectives: specific interim outcomes to be achieved |
| How can mission, vision, objectives etc. be used as actual strategy statements? | 1. Mission - What we are constituted to do; Why we exist?
2. Vision - What do we want to achieve? What future do we want to create?
3. Objectives - What do we have to achieve in the coming period?
4. Scope - Clients and markets, industries, geographies, internal vs external activities
5. Advantage - How will we achieve our objectives; how achieve competitive advantage? |
| What is the strategy framework? | 1. Stategic position
Fundamental questions for strategic position:
What are the macro-environmental opportunities and threats? What is the purpose of the organisation? How can the organisation manage industry forces? What resources and capabilities support the strategy? How are stakeholders aligned to the organisational purpose? How does history and culture fit the strategy?
2. Strategic choices
Strategic choices involve the options for strategy in terms of both directions in which strategy might go, and methods by which strategy might be pursued. Some fundamental questions regarding this are:
How should individual business units compete? Which businesses to include in the portfolio? Where should the organisation compete internationally?
3. Strategy in action
Strategy in action is about how strategies are implemented. The emphasis is on the practicalities of managing. Some fundamental questions in relation to this:
How centralised or structured should an organization be? What are the required organizational systems? How should the organization manage necessary changes? What sort of leadership is necessary? |
| What are the 3 levels of strategy? | 1. Corporate level strategy
2. Business-level strategy
3. Functional strategies |
