Thinking Strategically

Strategy is the great work of the organisation. In situations of life or death, it is the Tao of survival or extinction. Its study cannot be neglected.  —Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Strategic thinking and development is a deliberate search for a plan of action that will develop a business’s competitive advantage and compound it.

When implementing specific programs, this involves acquiring the requisite resources, developing the process, training, process testing, documentation, and integration with (and/or conversion from) legacy processes

Strategic thinking

With time, people in the firm routinely make their decisions within the framework of the firm's strategic vision and mission. Strategic planning becomes an organisational norm, deeply embedded within the firm's decision-making process, and participants learn to think strategically as part of their regular daily activities. Strategic thinking involves arraying options through a process of opening up institutional thinking to a range of alternatives and decisions that identify the best fit between the firm, its resources, and the environment. 

Strategic Management

The process of crafting and implementing an organisational “game plan” for:

• Creating customer value
• Sustaining competitive advantage
• Achieving performance targets

Strategy

A strategy serves as the foundation of a plan for achieving the vision, goals and objectives of an organisation. A plan outlines a list of specific actions required to successfully implement a specific strategy.

A good strategy needs to integrate an organisation's goals, policies, and action sequences (tactics) into a cohesive whole. The objective of a strategy is to provide a foundation from which an effective tactical plan is developed. This allows the organisation to carry out its mission effectively and efficiently.

Marketing strategies are partially derived from the broader corporate strategies, corporate missions, and corporate goals. They should flow from the firm's vision and mission statement.

Strategy is one element in a three-part structure.

First are the ends to be obtained.

Second.  Strategy is about means. It is about the attainment of ends.  It is concerned with how to achieve goals and objectives. It is the ways in which resources will be deployed.

Third are tactics, the ways in which resources that have been deployed are actually used or employed. 

From The MXpress short course "Thinking Strategically" 200 other courses www.marketing.org.au

On Marketing Strategy - Understanding the Environment - Terrain

The top strategists understood the need to know the terrain one operates in.

For firms fighting over the same market, the terrain that must be grasped and then exploited includes the market (profile), the environment (aks the landscape) eg politics, the economy and technology. That is the playing field on which enterprises succeed or fail but over which they have very little say. 


Machiavelli said on terrain. “He [the prince] should, therefore, never take his mind from this exercise of war, and in peacetime he must train himself more than in time of war.…He must also learn the nature of the terrain, and know how mountains slope, how valleys open, how plains lie, and understand the nature of rivers and swamps; and he should devote much attention to such activities. Such knowledge is useful in two ways: first, one learns to know one’s own country and can better understand how to defend it; second, with the knowledge and experience of the terrain, one can easily comprehend the characteristics of any other terrain that it is necessary to explore for the first time.…A prince who lacks this ability lacks the most important quality in a leader; because this skill teaches you to find the enemy, choose a campsite, lead troops, organize them for battle, and besiege towns to your advantage.” 


Sun Tzu devotes a chapter to terrain and the appropriate, associated tactics and strategies. “We may distinguish six kinds of terrain: accessible ground, entangling ground, temporizing ground, narrow passes, precipitous heights, positions at a great distance from the enemy.” Von Clausewitz offers: “There are certain constant factors in any engagement that will affect it to some extent…[one of] these factors [is] the locality or terrain…which can be resolved into a combination of the geographical surroundings and nature of the ground.” Notice the use of the expression “constant factors.” That is the notion of those things that cannot be controlled in a competitive environment; hence, they must be taken as a given by all competitors. Von Clausewitz also devotes a chapter to terrain, which he argues “bears a close and ever-present relation to warfare.” 

Dr Brian

CEO The Centre for Market Development - info@marketing.org.au

Twitter @smartamarketing https://twitter.com/#!/smartamarketing

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