Friday, November 18, 2011

Strategic Reflection



The word strategy is probably the most used term in my MBA career. However, starting from the more generic marketing/operation strategy to specific Strategic Management class the word imbibes one central idea: a roadmap to win among all kinds of favourable opportunities to unfavourable threats while leveraging the individual/organizational core competence.

The idea of formulating a strategy though seemed quite generic routine for any organization, the thing which has dreaded me is the “strategy execution and implementation “. How can the idea or the roadmap envisioned by some ten persons sitting in board meeting will be “bought in” by the lowest level of worker in the organization? As formulating a strategy can mean walking a tight rope and making some tough decisions for the overall organization, how to ensure that the intended message is delivered?  How to make a balance of both delivering QoQ profit and long-term stakeholder benefit?

The course has been designed in a fair enough way to provide us a theoretical overview about the whole gamut of Strategic management .But now as the course is coming to an end, I feel, I have been left with more questions than the answers about the “strategy” .If everyone knows the same Porter’s forces and everyone uses the same BCG matrix, then how come some corporations in Fortune 500 of one decade ceases to exist in another decade. What makes it a GE and an IBM to speak a successful corporate history of decades while another multiple corporations ceases to exist?

Perhaps the most paradoxical statement for me is the “Change is constant” .I can try to change, but how to make sure others will change and me being the leader how to identify the bottlenecks?
Though my reflections till now might portray a confused side of my state of affairs, but the silver lining is the my realisation that a successful strategy  formulation and implementation is an affair like riding a bicycle or may be swimming in a pool . Unless and until I fall, rise, learn and then again unlearn the art can never be mastered.  So perhaps the best medicine for me will be to wait till I get a chance in the near future to burn my hand in the “game of strategy “.