The uncovering of these design and management errors can lead to new insights about how to avoid many implementation problems. Christian and Missionary Alliance Opens Second Investigation of Ravi Zacharias, Racial Reconciliation Is Still a Dream for Atlanta Christians, Subscribe to CT magazine for full access to the CT Pastors archives, Home delivery of CT magazine and CT Pastors special issues, Over 120 years of magazine archives plus full access to all of CT’s online archives. In a multibusiness setup, centralization can lead to passive or reactive unit leadership. And often, the most significant tactics are those moments of truth whose effects are far-reaching. The information system drove the strategy instead of the other way around. I've seen strategic planning processes, devolve into analysis paralysis. 5. Since performance requirements come from an analysis of capital markets while performance promises arise from strategies for dealing with each business unit’s particular environment, this conflict is not surprising. Picture a week-long conference in posh surroundings: visiting management gurus doing star turns; reprints of landmark cases describing classic acquisition assimilation problems; workshops where messages from the participants to the corporate hierarchy could be hammered out; and, at the end of the week, a flying visit from the CEO to talk about his vision of the future. If your strategy is to be a low-cost provider, moments of truth might be times when opportunities for efficiencies arise, or incidents where you can encourage a “continuous improvement” mindset in your team. Looking first at the environment, however, is by itself no guarantee of success. In the end, the squad’s plan was accepted, three men were promoted, and divisional operating costs dropped 17% in the ensuing six months. If you didn’t consider many alternatives, or you didn’t choose your alternative considering your competition, your vision, and your current market conditions, then you probably have a tactic, not a strategy. The result is often the creation of too many business units too narrow to compete effectively. Finally, effective strategic planning that reflects the importance of integrated controls also takes organizational structure into account. As the unifying role of strategy in running a business becomes clear, we see that getting control over the productivity of a business is not strategically neutral either. When senior executives are invited to try their hands at action detailing, they often find it an uncomfortable exercise. Envisioning the future. First, set a clear direction and stay in your lane, versus meandering and pursuing strategies that change, It's very easy to get caught up in the "Wow that looks like a cool initiative, "let's pursue that!". If you can execute your strategy with your current people, reward systems, and organization structure, then it’s not a strategy, it’s a tactic. Thus organization should come after strategic planning. In other words, strategic planning happens around the strategic thinking or strategy making activity. Is there a biblical basis for strategic planning? Is yet another management fad about to fade away? From this line of reasoning it is a short step to the conclusion that strategic planning, at its leading edge, is really just an aspect of strategic management. Together, they give timeless, overarching principles chosen by the company that express the company’s reason for being. Copyright © 2020 Harvard Business School Publishing. The new retail service unit was a poorly designed strategy center. These companies may avoid the front-end costs of participation, discussion, and explicit detailing, but they pay the cost of not seeing their options, not reaching their goals, and spending days bogged down in implementation. Unlike strategy, tactics generally work within the current organization structure, rather than changing the organization. For example, one general manager responsible for an aging product described scaling down his profit projections after a rival company had captured a 4% market share in five months with a generic commodity substitute. Some organizations may call this a mission statement, rather than a vision. Strategic planning seems more like a burden imposed from above than a better way of running their units. A strategic plan needs to be adaptive to survive changing or unanticipated conditions. 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