Mastering Strategy: Art and Science

Business (or Strategic) management is the art, science, and craft of formulating, implementing and
evaluating cross-functional decisions that will enable an organization to achieve its long-term
objectives. It is the process of specifying the organization's mission, vision and objectives,
developing policies and plans, often in terms of projects and programs, which are designed to
achieve these objectives, and then allocating resources to implement the policies and plans,
projects and programs. Strategic management seeks to coordinate and integrate the activities of
the various functional areas of a business in order to achieve long-term organizational objectives.
A balanced scorecard is often used to evaluate the overall performance of the business and its
progress towards objectives.

Strategic management is the highest level of managerial activity. Strategies are typically planned,
crafted or guided by the Chief Executive Officer, approved or authorized by the Board of directors,
and then implemented under the supervision of the organization's top management team or senior
executives. Strategic management provides overall direction to the enterprise and is closely related
to the field of Organization Studies. In the field of business administration it is useful to talk about
"strategic alignment" between the organization and its environment or "strategic consistency".
According to Arieu "there is strategic consistency when the actions of an organization are
consistent with the expectations of management, and these in turn are with the market and the
context".

Ideas are the lifeblood of strategic thinking. Everything we see, touch, taste, hear and smell stems
from ideas. Ideation is the process of brainstorming ideas, perusing those that have the greatest
potential impact on the business. We talk about potential impact because we won’t know for certain
whether they deliver their intended benefit until you apply them in the real world.
 Leading Strategically

Leadership can be considered as a way of approaching the work of being a leader by leading one’s
life with presence and personal mastery. In other words, it requires learning to be present, to be
aware and attentive to our experience with people in our daily life, and it regards leadership from
the standpoint of human experience.
Leadership is the pursuit of valued goals with and through others. Thus, setting goals is all about
motivating a team to put extra effort into a few agreed priorities. For goals to work, the people that
are expected to implement the goals must agree that the goals are worth pursuing or they are not
likely to put in the effort. This is most effectively done by sharing the data that show past patterns,
and genuinely checking in to see if the interpretation of data and the formulation of the goals are
right in the eyes of most staff. To achieve improvement, the ‘buy-in’ of others is required, and this
is usually best gained by working on the data, goals and strategies together. The strategic leader’s
role is to guide the team through this process.

Goals are not reached by writing them down, though that is an important first step. People must
focus and put in extra effort to realize a goal. The strategic leader’s role is to take other distractions
off the table so staff have the space to concentrate on the goal. That is the whole point of having
goals. It is not that you stop doing other things but that you priorities your available energy and
concentrate on one or two areas of improvement with a passion. This is helped by narrowing the
goal to a clearly defined and measurable subset of the goal (in other words, a target or SMART
goal) in order to make progress towards the goal visible.
 Evaluating the External Environment

A successful organization can be describe as thinking and seeing organization. Such organization
are characterized by high levels of information flow and awareness among all its members. The
availability of information improves the awareness and understanding of organizational
weaknesses, strengths, threats and opportunities. The organization members are also able to
understand the history and strategic future plan for their organization as well as full awareness of
the resources within the organization and the changing competitor environment. On the other hand,
a thinking organization is an understanding organization that has a well stipulated vision, mission,
objectives and the business environment that are well understood by all the stakeholders.
Many organizational businesses collapse because they lack both foresight and hind sight necessary
for understanding the current position of the organization. In ensuring an organization adopts the
thinking and seeing style, reflection must become a part of the organizational practices and culture.
Reflection must be integrated in all the organization activities because generation of organizational
knowledge can be done by any member of the organization irrespective of the level or the location
in which he or she’s operate.

Therefor in obtain your goal, there’s a process that involves spending critical time away from the
normal work routine in which individuals or groups think and interpret both personal or
organization issues with the aim of getting previous experiences and lessons that may benefit a
present situation.
 Managing Firm Resources

The active participation and loyalty of the labor force is one of the major components that enable
an organization to attain high class status and implement operations in yourself and the
organization you attain to. The ability to relay information, for example goals and objectives of
our institution is viewed as the first step in achieving this commitment. When these goals and
objective are effectively communicated to all students and employees within the institution,
operational management strategies must be initiated to permit workers to play active role in
attaining these goals. Effective communication thus motivates both employees and the students to
own goals of the institution and relate each other.
In every organization meeting and group activities. I experience team work and exercised
communication skills. In the meeting opinions and discussed the ideas with others before making
the final decision in order to obtain a good work. Preparation and planning involve setting up goals
and objective for the presentation, studying and assessing the presentation we make.

I learned that I had difficulty in communicating my ideas to the group due to afraid of
disappointments on me. I was shy and terrified of speaking in front of the group. I was also afraid
of forgetting what I was going to say or that my mind would go blank. Regardless to that situation
I learned from my experience back then.
 Executing Strategy through Organizational Design

Strategic management is the process of formulating, implementing and evaluating business

strategies to achieve future objectives. This includes all activities leading to the organization
achievement of objectives. For this purpose the basic requirement is the development of plans,
actions and strategies to accomplish this purpose.

One of the most interesting topics in strategic planning. Strategic planning makes as walk tall and
speak proudly without fear of failure. It can also say that organizations that are having operational
challenges mainly suffer from poor management. These organization lack strategic thinks and are
not good at strategic planning. These organization usually lack strategic stamina that is vital to
corporate success.

Strategy is a broad based formula how an organization carry on these goals. The essence of
formulating competitive strategy is relating to its environment.

For me, strategy is a big part of a human life, not just how to survive in this world but to become
a good person. One of our goal in life is to become successful someday, in order to obtain it. We
need strategies to achieve it.