MGT 498 Week 1 Individual Strategic Management Process Paper

2016-08-20

The strategic management process is vital to the success of an organization. The strategic management process gives companies a means for defining and creating a strategic plan to achieve its goals and objectives. The strategic management process is founded in the idea of improving performance. The process achieves this end by continuously improving the planning process through evaluation and changes to the planning.

The strategic planning process is comprised of four components that create the continuous improvement process. These components include situational analysis, strategy formulation, strategy implementation, and strategy evaluation.  These components work in the following ways:

1. Situation Analysis- The continuous, "scanning and evaluating the organizational context, the external environment, and the organizational environment" (Coulter, 2005, p. 6). In this area of management the environment is examined in a broad context including employee relations, customer relations, product quality, competition, etc… Within this strategy section managers will employ a variety of tools to discover the relationships within the environment. For example, surveys, direct questioning, and tools such as SWOTT analysis might be used to discover problems within the internal and external environment.
2. Strategy Formulation- This process of entails the deciding of the best course of action for accomplishing organizational objectives in accordance with what needs to be changed as revealed in the situational analysis. Once a course of action is viewed as needed the strategy will be created which accomplishes this end but at the same time keeps the organization in line with its mission and values. 
3. Strategy Implementation- As the most important portion of the strategic management process, implementation is the actual placing into operation the plan. This typically requires the resources of the entire company working in concert.
4. Strategy Evaluation- As the plan is implemented it is important that it is evaluated for problems or issues that might require intervention to correct. This process is also meant to determine when the organization has accomplished its mission and objectives, such that the strategic plan can be altered.

The means and methodology of the strategic planning process differs from company to company. Often some systems are more applicable than others based upon the size and structure of the company. For example, Google is a company which uses what is known as a sociological approach to strategic planning. This approach utilizes people as the resource of change and relies on the accomplishment of goals through the ability of employees to find solutions. Often when Google decides on a course of action it allows the employees and managers to find the means for accomplishing its objective. For example, when Google entered China it needed to decide how to handle the government’s censorship issues. Google employees and managers in China were able to devise strategies that would allow for information to be delivered in a way that was still better than what was currently available yet stayed in line with Google’s “Do no evil” mission (Levy, 2011). Google has been allowed to stay in China because of its self-censorship strategies which still allow Chinese users to access more information than was previously available.  

The strategic process will vary from organization to organization but is vital that it be utilized for success. Without the strategic planning process, companies lack the means for self-improvement. For this reason, all organizations should implement it and use it regularly.

References

Coulter, M. (2005). Strategic Management in Action. (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson   Prentice Hall.

Levy, S. (2011, April 15). Inside google's china misfortune. Retrieved from            http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/04/15/googles-ordeal-in-china/

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