What is Strategy?

Strategy is about making decisions to differentiate in providing services and products to the customers. Such decisions, difficult in nature, outline the organisation’s success and failure. It would take a while the outcome of the decisions proves if the choices made were right or wrong. Developing strategy, not necessarily a straight forward process, is a mixture of science, experience and art. It takes comprehensive studies to come up with action-plans, clear communications to buy in the stakeholders and thorough implementation to ensure its efficacy. The prudent approach may suggest testing the developed strategy before full implementation to evaluate its effectiveness, short coming and drawbacks. This would add more clearance and confidence to the large-scale implementation.

Strategy frameworks are a way to express why we do things to win the customers. Markides and Morris mention “companies should focus on the ‘who-what-how’ model when making strategic decisions: who the customer is, what you can and cannot offer them, and how to develop and distribute your products and services” (Markides & Morris, 2016). This model simplifies the strategy development dynamic. It also indicates a practical approach for the managers to develop the strategy and monitor its effectiveness. The company’s success is not necessarily embedded in making choices, but also entails the quality of choices differentiating itself among the competitors. Company leaders leverage their experiences to make some judgment calls in developing strategy, but visionary ones may take some bold moves to leap the competition. The latter group are like artists who see the world from unique perspective and rely on their inspiration, innovation, courage, and instincts (Markides & Morris, 2016).

References:

Markides, C., & Morris, R. (2016, October 24). Retrieved from London Business School Review: https://www.london.edu/faculty-and-research/lbsr/competitive-strategies#.WbP91LpFzg8