Vital Role of Strategies and Strategists in Company

Strategies are the means by which long-term objectives will be achieved.

Business strategies may include geographic expansion, diversification, acquisition, product development, market penetration, retrenchment, divestiture, liquidation, and joint ventures.

Strategies are potential actions that require top management decisions and large amounts of the firm’s resources. In addition, strategies affect an organization’s long-term prosperity, typically for at least five years, and thus are future-oriented. Strategies have multifunctional or multi-divisional consequences and require consideration of both the external and internal factors facing the firm.

Strategists are the individuals who are most responsible for the success or failure of an organization.

Strategists have various job titles, such as chief executive officer, president, owner, chair of the board, executive director, chancellor, dean, or entrepreneur.

Leaders, says, “All strategists have to be chief learning officers. We are in an extended period of change. If our leaders aren’t highly adaptive and great models during this period, then our companies won’t adapt either, because ultimately leadership is about being a role model.”

Strategists help an organization gather, analyze, and organize information. They track industry and competitive trends, develop forecasting models and scenario analyses, evaluate corporate and divisional performance, spot emerging market opportunities, identify business threats, and develop creative action plans.

Strategic planners usually serve in a support or staff role. Usually found in higher levels of management, they typically have considerable authority for decision-making in the firm.

Strategic Management

The CEO is the most visible and critical strategic manager.

Any manager who has responsibility for a unit or division, responsible for profit and loss outcomes, or direct authority over a major piece of the business is a strategic manager (strategist).

In the last five years, the position of chief strategy officer (CSO) has emerged as a new addition to the top management ranks of many organizations, including Sun Microsystems, Network Associates, Clarus, Commerce One, BBDO, Cadbury Schweppes, General Motors, Tyco, Campbell Soup, Morgan Stanley, and Reed-Elsevier.

This new corporate officer title represents recognition of the growing importance of strategic planning in the business world.

Strategists differ as much as organizations themselves, and these differences must be considered in the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of strategies. Some strategists will not consider some types of strategies because of their personal philosophies.

Strategists differ in their attitudes, values, ethics, willingness to take risks, concern for social responsibility, concern for profitability, concern for short-run versus long-run aims, and management style.

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