STRATEGIC OPERATION

MANAGEMENT

Name Of Student: Baro, leslee N.

Course: BSBA
Proffessor: mr. Pike
Year level: 2nd year
WHAT IS STRATEGIC?
Strategic management is the management of an organization’s resources to achieve its goals and
objectives. Strategic management involves setting objectives, analyzing the competitive
environment, analyzing the internal organization, evaluating strategies and ensuring that
management rolls out the strategies across the organization. At its heart, strategic management
involves identifying how the organization stacks up compared to its competitors and recognizing
opportunities and threats facing an organization, whether they come from within the organization
or from competitors.
CHIEF STRATEGIC MAKER
chief strategy officer (CSO), or chief strategist, is an executive responsible for assisting the chief
executive officer (CEO) with developing, communicating, executing, and sustaining corporate
strategic initiatives. Some companies give the title Chief Business Officer to its senior executives
who are holding the top strategy role.
Today, many CEOs have less time to devote to executing strategy, while at the same time
uncertain environments increase the need for professional strategy development. As a result,
Chairmen, Presidents, and CEOs in academic, nonprofit and corporate organizations are
appointing CSOs. In recent years, the CSO position increased in popularity, which is reflected by
the high number of US companies (nearly 50% of S&P 500 firms) who created CSO positions in
their top management teams
The CSO is a consultative role; part leader and part doer, with the responsibility of ensuring that
execution of the strategy supports the strategy elements. This unique background takes a
multitude of different operating experiences, and must include being both a creative thinker and
influential collaborator. CSOs are often executives who have worn many hats at a variety of
companies or agencies before taking on the responsibilities and tasks that come with the job title.

Typical CSO responsibilities include:

 Communicating and implementing a company's strategy internally and externally so that
all employees, partners, suppliers, and contractors understand the company-wide strategic
plan and how it carries out the company's overall goals.
 Driving decision-making that creates medium- and long-term improvement.
 Establishing and reviewing key strategic priorities and translating them into a
comprehensive strategic plan.
 Monitoring the execution of the strategic plan.
 Facilitating and driving key strategic initiatives through inception phase.
 Ensuring departmental/unit strategic planning projects reflect organizational strategic
priorities.
 Partnering with institutional leadership, special committees, and consultants to support
execution of key initiatives.
  Developing inclusive planning processes.
 Translating strategies into actionable and quantitative plans.
 Mobilizing and managing teams of individuals charged with executing strategies.
 Acting as a resource across an organization to increase broad cohesion for strategic plans.
A "Chief Strategy Officer" (CSO) can create and enhance all the elements of a relevant strategy
resulting in additional strategic alternatives, scenario planning, insuring that there is indeed a
direct connection of the strategy elements to the daily execution of the business, and finally the
financial forecasting mechanism.
Strategy implementation is a term used to describe the activities within an workplace or
organisation to manage the activities associated with the delivery of a strategic planDefinition
There are several definitions, most of which relate to the process of managing activities
associated with the delivery of a strategic plan such as the following:
 The sum total of the activities and choices required for the execution of a strategic plan
 Operationalisation of a clearly articulated strategic plan
 All the processes and outcomes which accrue to a strategic decision once authorisation
has been to go ahead and put the decision into practice
 A series of interventions concerning organisational structures, key personnel actions, and
control systems designed to control performance with respect to desired ends.
Other definitions concern the processes by which an organisation identifies and allocates the
actions associated with the delivery of a strategic plan such as the following:
 A process by which large, complex, and potentially unmanageable strategic problems are
factored into progressively smaller, less complex, and hence more manageable
proportions.
 The managerial interventions that align organisational action with strategic intention
(Floyd and Wooldridge, 1992).
The term first became well known following the publication in 1984 of "Strategy
Implementation," a highly-regarded book on the topic by Lawrence G. Hrebiniak and William F.
Joyce, and it is no surprise that definitions from that work appear in both of the lists given above.
Strategy implementation thinking has strongly influenced writing and work on the related topic
of Strategy execution - a term that has been used to associate strategy implementation with
the Balanced Scorecard approach to strategic performance management.
Process
Most authors propose specific activities and systems that they think are necessary to effectively
implement a strategy (e.g. Hrebiniak and Joyce, 1984; Reed and Buckley, 1988; Wheelen and
Hunger, 1992).
Strategy implementation requires the following activities to be undertaken:
 Strategy articulation - Building consensus within the team responsible for delivery of
the strategy about the outcomes to be achieved
 Strategy validation - Engaging with stakeholders and others to confirm strategic
outcomes being pursued are acceptable
 Strategy communication - Convert strategic objectives into clear short-term operating
objectives that can be assigned to groups for delivery
 Strategy monitoring - Monitor the progress of the organisation in delivering the
strategic objectives
 Strategy engagement - Managerial interventions designed to ensure organisation
successfully achieves chosen strategic outcomes
Strategy articulation
The purpose of articulating the strategy is to translate the strategy into a form where managers
and stakeholders agree consensually on what needs to be achieved
The strategy articulation will describe the strategic outcomes to be achieved, preferably
expressed in the form of quantitative or qualitative goals.This strategy articulation can, for
example, be expressed in the form of a Destination Statement.
Strategy validation
Validating the strategy is an essential part of the implementation (see also Heide et al., 2002;
Kotter, 1995; Hambrick, 1981). This validation can be both internal to the organisation or
external. In addition, when implementing a strategy, the human aspect also needs to be
considered. And an implementation can be done only if the organisational members are engaged.
Internal validation
Validation of the strategy is needed from within the organisation - in particular from members of
the organisation with implementation responsibilities. Organisational members must be aware of
and support the strategic goals of the firm (Kotter and Schlesinger,1979). Without this
knowledge of the strategy, organisational members will not be able to place the strategy being
implemented within a broader context and assess its importance.
One way the communication can be done, is by cascading down the strategy into the
organisation, where the strategic activities and outcomes are broken down into smaller set of
change programmes and operational goals specific for each management teams, with the focus to
achieve them in the near term - combining critical operational outcomes with the most urgently
required change initiatives. This kind of validation overlaps with strategy communication
activities (see below).
External validation
Sometimes, especially in non-commercial organisations, it is also necessary to confirm strategic
goals with external stakeholders (Hambrick and Cannella,1989; and Nielsen, 1983): in
commercial organisations it is common for the achievement of financial outcomes to be used to
guide strategic choices, but this does not diminish the need for validation with other key
stakeholders (e.g. regulators, key customers etc.).
Strategy communication
To be usable, a strategic needs to be translated into a set of actionable operational steps. The
concrete and clear strategic objectives should be translated into operational implementation sub-
objectives (Reid, 1989), be linked to departmental and individual goals (Kaplan, 1995), and be
measurable (Reid, 1989). An essential part is to make sure that people understand what is they
need to do and why.
In other words, the business strategy must be translated into a set of clear short-term operating
objectives (activities and outcomes) in order to execute the strategy. Key issues, elements, and
needs of strategy must be translated into objectives, action plans, and “scorecards” and this
translation is an integral and vital part of the execution process. Developing this set of clear
objectives, that relates logically to the strategy and how the organisation plans to compete, is an
important aspect of an effective implementation process (Owen, 1982). Having a concrete,
detailed and comprehensive implementation plan can have a positive influence on the level of
success of an implementation effort. In addition it helps identify what will be required in terms
of resources, capabilities and time.
Part of this strategy translation is to assign responsibilities (Owen, 1982) across the organisations
members, not only as to engage them but also to monitor and control that each of the operating
objectives is being taken care of.
Therefore to achieve strategic objectives, the short-term operating objectives need to be
measurable. Performance appraisal and measurement of strategic progress simply cannot
function without the existence of these critical metrics or measurable performance criteria.
Progress measurement points or ‘milestones’ should be established (Owen, 1982). In addition,
goal setting provides a sense of direction and pace setting for the implementation effort (Reid,
1989)
The pace of the strategy implementation can affect its success:
 Dooley et al. (2000) found that strongly committed decision teams lead to more effective
implementation but slows down strategy implementation.
 Implementation should occur incrementally so that organisations are not overwhelmed by
trying to implement too many changes simultaneously (e.g. Leighton, 1996)
 A radical implementation pace in which large changes are quickly made may not allow
organisations the time to carefully plan and execute successful reorganisations or to
engage organisational member participation and commitment. moreover operations can
be dramatically disrupted and other unintended consequences may occur
  The pace of the implementation: a slow implementation with small steps usually has a
positive influence on implementation performance.
Strategy monitoring
Monitoring or evaluation should begin early on in order to cut an errant strategy before losses or
negative impacts become too costly or damaging.
As mentioned in the Strategy translation, each short-term operating objectives needs to be
associated with a measure whether it be an action plan with milestones or a metric (Owen, 1982).
These small number of high-level measures with associated targets will track the implementation
activities being undertaken and their consequences .
Monitoring these measures will help the organisation members in controlling that the strategy is
being implemented successfully and if not in making them take decisions that will allow them to
achieve the strategy. Strategy control, in turn, provides timely and valid feedback about
organisational performance so that change and adaptation become a routine part of the
implementation effort. Controls allow for the revision of execution-related factors if desired
goals are not being met.
Strategy engagement
To achieve that there needs to be an agreed mechanism of intervention to enable the management
to efficiently and effectively engage with their organisation to ensure the required actions are
being carried out, and where these actions are not working as expected, to be able to change the
actions as required (Amason 1996). For example a best practice for strategy implementation
monitoring and control is to meet regularly in structured and time-limited sessions (Allio, 2005).
As mentioned previously, a slow implementation with small steps usually has a positive
influence on engaging the management resulting in a better implementation performance.
Implementation evaluation can have a positive influence on future implementation performance,
increasing engagement using past successes or based on lessons learned.
Links to other tools
Strategic implementation is often associated with performance management. Tools such
as balanced scorecard and its derivatives such as the performance measurement, or the ACME
(Articulate, Communicate, Monitor and Engage) framework.[11] can be practical and useful to
successfully implement a strategy.
References

What Is Strategic Implementation? Strategic implementation is a process that puts plans and
strategies into action to reach desired goals. The strategic plan itself is a written document that
details the steps and processes needed to reach plan goals, and includes feedback and progress
reports to ensure that the plan is on track.