Thursday, August 25, 2011

Characteristics of Strategy meetings with the key people of an organisation (Part 1)



By now I have facilitated more than 100 sessions on development of Business strategy and I see some common occurings / patterns in most of the sessions. The observations and experiences are given below.......







  • The development of suitable / appropriate strategic options often require novel perspective. Catching the novel perspective sometimes is the most difficult and time consuming part in strategy devlopment

  • Many in the organisation view strategy and execution are two different and sometimes even go to the extent that they cannot co-exist.

  • Real strategy making requires inputs and contributions from various members of the team. But the top management has the tendency to act as an apex body and take a stand point 'do as I/we say ". This disconnects many employees from the business.

  • Strategic information is often forgotten amidst new information pertaining to daily operations. This makes people to be fire fighting than doing the important.

  • Many times it requires the key people to make difficult decisions, which they postpone thinking better decision can come as time passes by.

  • Many important key points need to be taken into account from the business perspective. But many key people think only in specific functions such as finance, production, accounts, sales , HR etc. They think of doing the job well and not winning the business.

  • There is gross disagreement exists among key players on basic assumptions regarding the future of their business.

  • The strategy need to be communicated to the employees convincingly, but little time and effort is spent on making the strategy simple to communicate.

  • Difference of opinion among the key players regarding the strategy escalates into personal conflicts at a later stage.

  • The key players fail to help the employees feel that strategy is something worthwhile to pursue, to identify and to feel proud of.
contributed by : Sasikanth Prabhu





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