Essential Challenges of Strategic Management
After working with well over 100 enterprises – large and small companies, government agencies, non-profits, and universities – it should not be surprising that I came to wonder about common challenges across all these types and sizes of enterprises. Pursuing this idea, I identified seven challenges.
Growth is the overarching challenge. How can your enterprise increase its impact, perhaps in saturated or declining markets? For an enterprise to prosper, growth must be your goal. Whether the metric is revenue, profit, market share or lives saved, any goal other than growth will eventually lead to decline.
Addressing the challenge of value provides your foundation for growth. This involves enhancing the relationships of your enterprise’s processes to benefits and costs. This requires a solid understanding of the nature of your processes, the stakeholders in these processes, and how these processes provide benefits and incur costs.
Success in pursuing the challenges of growth and value, requires addressing the challenge of focus, which provides your path from value to growth. Focus involves pursuing opportunities and avoiding diversions. It involves reducing or eliminating investments in your old value proposition to invest in the new.
The challenge of change requires that you design the new enterprise for the pursuing the path from value to growth. This design or redesign should balance competing creatively while maintaining continuity with those aspects of the enterprise you want to preserve. If you have to change everything, then liquidation may be better than transformation.
Change almost always involves investing in inherently unpredictable outcomes in the future, the fifth challenge. Articulating your view of possible outcomes and the uncertainties associated with them is key to both your commitment and that of your team. Keep in mind that many these uncertainties and associated risks cannot be eliminated. Your goal, therefore, is to be better at risk management than your competitors.
By addressing the challenge of knowledge, you can gain the means of transforming information to insights to programs of action. This involves understanding the nature and role of knowledge in your enterprise. Much of this knowledge will not be archival. Instead, it will be in the heads of the people in your enterprise.
The seventh challenge is time. This challenge involves carefully allocating the organization’s scarcest resource – the time of the top management team, including you. This resource is much more scarce than money. Yet, executives and senior managers often waste their time on the urgent but unimportant quadrant of Stephen Covey’s matrix.
These seven challenges are discussed at length in Essential Challenges of Strategic Management (2001) published by John Wiley. In many situations these challenges can be addressed by improving one or more elements of the “as is” enterprise. In some cases, however, there is a need to fundamentally transform from “as is” to the “to be” enterprise. This is your ultimate challenge.
Looking forward for your next post
hey you are great
Thanks for the write up! Also, just a heads up, your RSS feeds aren’t working. Could you take a look at that?
I have bookmarked your website to visit it frequently
There is obviously a bundle to know about this. I consider you made some good points in features also.
Its great as your other posts : D, thanks for putting up. “The rewards for those who persevere far exceed the pain that must precede the victory.” by Ted W. Engstrom.
Hello, you used to write magnificent, but the last several posts have been kinda boring… I miss your super writings. Past several posts are just a bit out of track! come on!
To follow up on the update of this matter on your web-site and would wish to let you know simply how much I loved the time you took to publish this valuable post. Inside the post, you actually spoke on how to really handle this challenge with all ease. It would be my pleasure to build up some more thoughts from your site and come up to offer other people what I have learned from you. Thank you for your usual good effort.
I have recently started a website, the information you offer on this web site has made it easier for me immensely. Thanks for all of your time & perform.
Just to let you know your web-site looks a little bit different on Firefox on my pc using Linux .
Have you ever thought about including a little bit more than just your articles? I mean, what you say is fundamental and everything. Nevertheless imagine if you added some great images or video clips to give your posts more, “pop”! Your content is excellent but with pics and clips, this blog could undeniably be one of the best in its niche. Amazing blog!
I just added your web site to my blogroll, I pray you’d look at doing the same.
Wonderful goods from you, man. I have understand your stuff previous to and you are just extremely wonderful. I really like what you’ve acquired here, really like what you are saying and the way in which you say it. You make it entertaining and you still care for to keep it sensible. I cant wait to read far more from you. This is really a tremendous website.
Hi there, just changed into aware of your blog thru Google, and found that it’s truly informative. I am going to be careful for brussels. I’ll be grateful in case you proceed this in future. Lots of folks can be benefited from your writing. Cheers!
I see your point, and I totally appreciate your post. For what its worth I will tell all my buddies about it, quite resourceful. Later.
Hi there, every time i used to check blog posts here early in the
dawn, as i love to find out more and more.
Review my blog :: sina.com.cn [Cody]
It’s awesome to visit this site and reading the views
of all friends concerning this article, while I am also eager of getting experience.
It has taken my time to get this, thanks because I can now do a task that I was asked to. God bless u.
thanks alot u really contributes to my own understanding
hey,, this blog is so great, good post
awwesoooooome ^^
thanks for your sharing. i think this article must be share to other people.
GALERIQQ.COM
Thank you for sharing with me, may be useful and more successful.
I wait for the next post. Good luck
Best regards, BANDARQDOMINO.COM
Great internet site! It looks very expert!
thanks for your sharing. i think this article must be share to other people.