Plan and execute

Plan and Execute Strategy

“The major strategic challenges for firms encompass how to please customers, win orders, and simultaneously achieve financial objectives on an on going basis”

1. Planning and executing strategy
“Strategy is a process, not an event”
Every business unit likes to create a sound strategy and have it well executed.
Devising and implementing new and innovative strategies to exploit opportunities in a competitive market is challenging. Clearly no strategy fits all companies
As with most complex problems, the solution to planning and executing strategy lies in creating a practical, step by step methodology that breaks the problem into manageable components to be addressed in a logical sequence.

What exactly is a strategy?
The word strategy comes from a Greek word strategos, which means “a General” and is derived from roots meaning, “Army” and “Lead”. Hence, a general is the leader of an army. In both the military and business, competition typically drives organization to find ways to best rivals through the effective use of their resources.
Strategy is often contrasted with tactics, another term with military origins. While strategy represents the big picture about” doing the right thing”, tactics are more about details of “doing things right”. Strategy sets the direction in which the organization will proceed while tactics determine how it will proceed
The major strategic challenges for firms encompass how to please customers, win orders, and simultaneously achieve financial objectives on an ongoing basis.
For example; A company decides to have a strategy to build market share by selling the lowest priced insurance product. After implementation, the competitors will react, and our strategy will need to adapt to meet the new challenges. There is no stopping point and no final battle. The competitive cycle continues on
Strategy should evolve over time as a blend of the intended strategy and the firm’s responses to event, learning from experiences, and the emergence of new information and ideas.
It is an iterative crafting process of making and implementing decisions, observing, analyzing, and learning from the results, and then making decision anew.
To create, plan, and implement strategies, we should first learn to think in a way that combines the rational and the intuitive in analyzing both hard and soft data to arrive at a unique interpretation of opportunities.
Regardless of the content and brilliance, though, strategies will not be successful unless they are implemented effectively and upgraded regularly