Strategic Management

Assignment

Submitted to: Mrs. Jyotsana

Chawla

Submitted by: Nakul Pawar

19001701034
MBA-2A
Q1. ‘Strategic implementation is a more challenging task than
strategy formulation’ do you agree? Justify your answer with
appropriate examples.
Ans: Strategies are actions a company's management takes to
build revenues, improve productivity and increase profits.
Strategy formulation involves making critical choices -- what
products or services to sell, and where and how to sell them.
Many companies have an annual strategic planning process
involving members of the management team in which
strategies for the upcoming year are formulated. From there,
specific tactics -- also called tasks or projects -- are outlined to
implement the strategies. A strategy, for example, might be to
begin marketing the company's products in Mexico. During the
implementation phase, the management team must decide on
the specific steps that must be taken to enter this new market,
and determine the company resources required to complete
each step.
Improperly executing a strategy leads to a lack of
objectives for employees, improper resource allocation, lack of
structure and leadership, and weak lines of communication.
That is why it is so important to get it right.

Some of the challenges encountered in successful

implantation of strategy are mentioned below:

 Lack of Human or Financial Resources:

 Small companies in particular often find that during the
implementations phase they do not have sufficient
personnel to accomplish all the tactics that have been
drawn up to implement the ambitious strategies they have
developed. Financial resources can be a constraint on
implementation as well. Company management often
finds it necessary to prioritize its strategies -- make a
judgment about which ones are most critical to implement
given the finite or even scarce financial resources
available.

 Difficulty of Planning the Sequence of Tactics:

Implementation is a complex process because some
strategies require a lengthy series of steps. Strategies may
also require a degree of timing to be successful, such as
deciding the best time of year to launch a new ad
campaign. Managers must be skilled at envisioning each of
the steps and the amount of time that will be required to
complete each one. In the example about entering the
Mexican market, a company that's new to international
sales can find it difficult to determine all the necessary
tactical steps, and their sequence, in order to accomplish
implementation smoothly and without wasting financial
resources.

 Resistance to Change:
A change in strategic direction causes ripple effects of
change throughout the organization. Entire departments
or divisions may have to be reorganized to implement the
 revised strategies. Reporting relationships may be
redrawn. All employees may not agree with the new
strategic direction. They may resent the new
responsibilities they have been given, and, as a result, not
put forth the maximum effort that is required for the new
strategies to succeed. Part of top management's job is to
convince all members in the organization that the changes,
in the long run, will benefit everyone. If management
communicate the reasons behind the change in strategy,
resistance can be minimized, and employees are more
likely to support the decisions that were made.

 Necessity of Teamwork:
Strategic implementation is not as simple as the small-
business owner handing out a list of tasks and due dates to
each employee. Personnel within departments and across
functional areas must build a spirit of teamwork, pulling
together to efficiently implement each strategy. If there is
friction within departments or functional areas, even the
most brilliant strategies may not be successfully
implemented because vital communication will be lacking
among team members. Successful implementation
requires everyone involved to contribute their knowledge,
special skills and time. For example, a retailer opening a
new location will ask its marketing team to select the best
location, but this decision should be made in conjunction
with the finance team. The financial staff will be asked to
develop cost projections for the new location, and to
determine whether the company can afford the rent and
 other costs of the location recommended by the
marketing team.

Q2: What are the various points which should be taken care
for behavioral implementation of strategy in a firm? Explain.
Ans: Following points should be kept in mind for behavioral
implementation of strategy in a firm:

 Influence Tactics:
The organizational leaders have to successfully implement
the strategies and achieve the objectives. Therefore, the
leader has to change the behavior of superiors, peers or
subordinates. For this they must develop and
communicate the vision of the future and motivate
organizational members to move into that direction.

 Power:
It is the potential ability to influence the behavior of
others. Leaders often use their power to influence
others and implement strategy. Formal authority that
comes through leaders position in the organization (He
cannot use the power to influence customers and
government officials) the leaders have to exercise
something more than that of the formal authority
 (Expertise, charisma, reward power, information power,
legitimate power, coercive power).

 Empowerment as a way of Influencing Behavior:

The top executives have to empower lower level
employees. Training, self-managed work groups
eliminating whole levels of management in organization
and aggressive use of automation are some of the ways to
empower people at various places.

 Political Implications of Power:

Organization politics is defined as those set of activities
engaged in by people in order to acquire, enhance and
employ power and other resources to achieve preferred
outcomes in organizational setting characterized by
uncertainties. An organization must try to manage political
behavior while implementing strategies. They should;
o Define job duties clearly.
o Design job properly.
o Demonstrate proper behaviors.
o Promote understanding.
o Allocate resources judiciously.

 Leadership Style and Culture Change:

Culture is the set of values, beliefs, behaviors that help its
members understand what the organization stands for,
how it does things and what it considers important. Firm
culture must be appropriate and support their firm. The
 culture should have some value in it. To change the
corporate culture involves persuading people to abandon
many of their existing beliefs and values, and the
behaviors that stem from them, and to adopt new ones.
The first difficulty that arises in practice is to identify the
principal characteristics of the existing culture. The
process of understanding and gaining insight into the
existing culture can be aided by using one of the standard
and properly validated inventories or questionnaires that
a number of consultants have developed to measure
characteristic of corporate culture. These offer the
advantage of being able to benchmark the culture against
those of other, comparable firms that have used the same
instruments. The weakness of this approach is that the
information thus obtained tends to be more superficial
and less rich than material from other sources such as
interviews and group discussions and from study of the
company’s history. In carrying out this diagnostic exercise,
such instruments can be supplemented by surveys of
employee opinions and attitudes and complementary
information from surveys of customers and suppliers or
the public at large.

 Values and Culture:

Value is something that has worth and importance to an
individual. People should have shared values. This value
keeps everyone from the top management down to
factory persons on the factory floor pulling in the same
direction.
 Ethics and Strategy:
Ethics are contemporary standards and a principle or
conducts that govern the action and behavior of
individuals within the organization. In order that the
business system function successfully, the organization
has to avoid certain unethical practices and the
organization has to bounds by legal laws and government
rules and regulations.

 Managing Resistance to Change:

To change is almost always unavoidable, but its strength
can be minimized by careful advance. Top management
tends to see change in its strategic context. Rank-and-file
employees are most likely to be aware of its impact on
important aspects of their working lives. Some resistance
planning, which involves thinking about such issues as:
Who will be affected by the proposed changes, both
directly and indirectly? From their point of view, what
aspects of their working lives will be affected? Who
should communicate information about change, when
and by what means? What management style is to be
used?

 Managing Conflict:
Conflict is a process in which an effort is purposefully
made by one person or unit to block another that results
in frustrating the attainment of the others goals or the
furthering of his interests. The organization has to resolve
the conflicts.