The Art of Strategy Essay Example for Free

The Art of dodge EssayIntroductionThe ongoing debate on the supposition and translation of outline is as interest as the process of making the outline itself. This discussion happens probably beca white plague different constitutions (business entity, non-profit, governments, non-government, military, etc.) interpret schema differently, wizard musical arrangements might see it as a CEOs personal mission while otherwise perceives it as a tool to achieve the organisations collectively decided cultivations. One organisation sees it as a game excogitate while other defines it as a mass of pattern in a stream of non planned actions. Hofer and Schendel tried to give a comparison of some of the notable dodging definitions formulation as shown in Table 1. It nookie be acquirely see that although slightly different from ace another, at that place is some consistency as rise in it. In add-on, one think to note is the expression an organisation defines the concept of a dodge provide affects the focal point they formulate their strategies and the strategies resulted (Evered, 1983, p.60). Coming from this situation, this essay exit try to identify the concept of strategy using the war analogy to offer another status on what strategy is and the implications of the said perception.Figure 1. Hofer and Schendel comparison of various authors concepts of strategy and the strategy formulation process in the business management field (Everend, 1983, p. 60)The Art of WarIn this essay, I go forth use the resembling approach as James Brian Quinn (1996, pp.5-6), by using the history of the earth of Macedon to illustrate the essence of strategy from my point of view.Figure 2. The Kingdom of Macedon, from Wikipedia, Map Macedonia 336 BC-en, (2009)Philip II and Alexander trine of Macedon had real clear goals. They wanted to established their supremacy by conquer the other city- deposits in antediluvian Greek ara and put them under the Kingdom of Mac edon. Moreover, they also need capital of Greece troops to be in their in alliance to defeat Persian Empire. When the city of Amphissa did a sacred land violation, the Macedonians employ it as an opportunity to interfere. On their authority to punish Amphissa, they made a detour in Elatea and built a defence base. Follo fly this, Philip sent a peace offer to Thebes and Athens which got rejected by some(prenominal) brokeries and led to resort to battle. The Macedonians then made a scheme to prep ar themselves in winning the battle using their specific strengths in the new spear technology, their strong phalanxs formation, as well as the powerful cavalry. However, they knew that they were outnumbered and forget face the best ground soldiers in the world.Therefore, they decided to attack Thebes and Athens from Chaeronea which is lightly armed using their strongest units. They also split their force, Philip engaged the full force phalanxes to the right wing and Alexander comman ded the cavalry to the left wing. subsequently fought hard Philip deliberately withdrew his troops. The Athenians on the left followed which made them gaolbreak their army lines. After the enemys unity broke, Alexander attacked from the left side (the Theban lines). At the same time, Philips army then pressed forward and quickly scatter and defeat the enemy. After the victory at Chaeronea, Philip and Alexander then occupied the other city-states unchallenged and declared it as a Hellenic Alliance. Later on the Hellenic Alliance will try to expand its authority to the Persian Empire.From the illustration above, several apparent points could be pointed out. The kings and his successors bossy strategy was to establish its dominance throughout the Greek land. In order to achieve it, they arranged a strategy which was to conquer all city-states and put them under the Kingdom of Macedons wing, either using peace offers or battles. Should the battles arise, they need to made tactics on the spot to win the battles, like the one they made in Chaeronea.So in this military context, the word strategy can be described as the veridical bursting charge of military force to achieve the policys (kings) objectives (Evered, 1983, p.63). This aligns with the literal meaning of the word itself, stratos (army) and past (leading)(Evered, 1983, p.58). Normally, strategy is made before the actual contacts with the enemy and when it is already in the battlefield situations, tactics will be made, as distinguished above.Grand strategy, system, and TacticsSimilar approach can also be applied to examine the concept of strategy in the management field. In my opinion, whatever organisation will need to stand a meretricious strategy, strategy, and tactics which will be describe below.Grand outlineAs an organisation tries to define the intention of their existence, they will have to consider several questions, such as Why are they here? What the key objectives are? Where is it goin g? What the organisation want to be in the upcoming? What are their values? The answers to these questions will set the tone to their organisations quest. It will lead them to determine their grand strategy, or in this case I would bear on it as the organisations mission, vision, and core values. gibe to Raynor (1998, p. 371), mission is a dictation of the organisations core competencies and values that will give the organisation characteristics that will allow it to perform successfully in a particular area. While vision is the state in the future that the organisation wants to achieve within the area defined already in the mission. This includes background signal up their objectives and goals. These components also famous to be categorized as strategic intent (Campbell Yeung, 1991, p.146 Phillips, 2011, p.928).Although some organisation might not have a specific explicit statement of their mission and vision (Ireland Hitt, 1992, p.36), the comparison of values and interest of the people within an organisation could accidently set an implicit mission and vision, which still could be considered as a grand strategy, like what happen in Lonely Planet company (Hubbard, et.al, 1996, pp.215-235).StrategyAfter an organisation be germs clear with who they are and the intention of their existence(mission), they know what their state of function in the future (vision), they have set their objectives and goals, now it is timefor them to determine their strategy to achieve it. Using the war analogy, the way I see a strategy is to treat it as a long term conception of an organisation that breaks down the big picture of grand strategy into smaller tangible milestones by sagaciousness the organisations position at the time the strategy was made.A clear comprehension of the organisations internal strengths and weakness as well as the external opportunities and threats will help the organisation decide the ideal respond to chance on and the best way of recognising it is by using Porters SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunity, and Threats) analysis (Phillips, 2011, p.928). Once the active responses are determine, it will hopefully achieve competitive expediency. According to Arnoldo Hax, the linkage between external and internal conditions and competitive advantage is very close in the strategy concept, he even put those together in one dimension in his redefinition of strategy concept (Hax, 1990, pp.35-36) whereas before he put those in two crystalise dimensions (Hax Majluf, 1988, pp.100-101).The benefit of having a strategy is to give the organisation a sense of unity, direction, and purpose, especially when it comes to the resources allocation as it will be to a greater extent direct and clear. The other benefit is to give the organisation the ability to have a logical system for differentiating managerial tasks in an organisation, especially the one that has many layered of organisational social organization (Hax, 1990, p.36). From this perspective, it is clear that in the grand strategy and strategy parts, the information processing and knowledge ordering use a top-down approach.TacticsOnce the strategy is being declared, the organisation then have to set the tactics to match the strategy or in this case I would also like to refer it as a set of programmes or courses of actions. Tactics defines the details of strategy especially the resources allocations part and it is more of a short-term plan compares to strategy which makes it more adjustable than strategy to facilitate the necessary changes that come in the future. Since the creation of tactics occurs in a more fooling basis with more high-powered activities, the information processing and knowledge ordering in this segment ideally use a florilegium of top-down and bottom-up approach. The reason why I think the mix approach is ideal was be elbow grease same as what happens innormal battlefields, the frontline soldiers sometime know the situation on the field better than the general.That way the input from them is valuable to decide the next tactics. Same as in an organisation, when it comes to daily running, the operational provide would have a better and detail insight then the Chief Executive Officer. Once the programmes are implemented, the organisation will have to see the result and compare it to the strategy and then again to the grand strategy. The similar cycle (mission, objectives, goals, strategies, plans, operations, results) also suggested by LD Phillips (2011, p.928).Combining these three elements together, I think the suitable agreeable of strategy to this point of view is the Process Strategy which can be define as the lead controls the process aspects of strategy, leaving the actual content of strategy to others strategies are again part deliberate (concerning process) and partly emergent (concerning content), and deliberately emergent (Mintzberg Quinn, 1996, p.13). By using this type of strategy, I think I p osition myself in between the two strategy mainstreams Porter and Mintzberg. Porter with his deliberate strategy concept is in line with my point of view of formulating a strategy. It has to be carefully crafted because it will control all unfavorable variables and activities in an organisation in a long run.However, as it is widely known, Porters concept on strategy has a flaw as well. It is accused to be too rigid, taking a long flowing of time to define, and not pliant for todays environment where the boundaries between industries are more fluid and the environment becomes less(prenominal) stable. Therefore, to accommodate this issue, I add the tactics element to it to give an option to the organisation to be more flexible. As already tell above, tactics are made to tackle the issue in the daily basis implementation and are more easily modified. Furthermore, I think it is appropriate to say that strategy, with the addition of tactics, is a living system rather than a static f ormula to be applied (Evered, 1983, p.61).Strategy as Plan (and Ploy)Coming from the illustration above, it is clear that my point of view about strategy aligns with Mintzbergs definition of strategy as plan. It has the two essential characteristics of plan which are made in advance of theactions to which they apply, and they are developed consciously and purposefully (Mintzberg, 1987, p.11 Mintzberg Quinn, 1996, p.10). Unlike the pattern definition that sees strategy as sporadic actions that are not intended but somehow consistent in behaviour, the way I set the strategy framework is to treat it as a clear and intended plan that is made to deal with a situation from the beginning (Mintzberg, 1987, pp.11-13 Mintzberg Quinn, 1996, pp.10-12). The interlock between strategy and tactics was noted by Mintzberg who stated that as a plan, a strategy can be a ploy too (Mintzberg Quinn, 1996, p.11).Similar social occasion also expressed by Rumelt in 1979 who stated that one persons or on e departments strategy can be a tactic to another division depending on where and when you sit (Mintzberg Quinn, 1996, p.13). The other thing that I would like to point out is Mintzbergs definition of strategy as perspective which he describes as an inseparable way of perceiving the world (Mintzberg, 1987, p. 16). This means strategy as a perspective could also be seen as an ideology or a collective mind in an organisation that can be an umbrella for the other definitions of strategy (plan, pattern, and position). Although this interrelating connection is acceptable, I personally would consider perspective as a part of a mission rather than a strategy.The ArgumentOne might argue that having a strategy is unnecessary and outdated for an organisation as it will restrain the organisation from being adaptive and flexible in a turbulent environment. To answer this question, I would like to use the Japanese competition style and practice in the 1970s and 1980s as illustrated by Michael Porter in one of his discussions (Porter, 1996, p.63). During this percentage point of time, most of the Japanese companies did not develop a rigid mission, vision, or a distinctive strategy. They did not have a certain plan and did not position themselves in a certain market. nearly of them copied and follow each others new development and being responsive to the markets demand by becoming all things to all customers. At first this style successfully made the operational process became effective as they did not need to spend time to formulate the strategy. However, over time it was destructive for the organisation itself. As the organisation did not have a clear direction of their quest, it had toconstantly change its orientations.As a result, not only the resources allocation needed to be repeatedly revised, it was also confusing the stakeholders. From the illustration above, it is clear that any kind of organisation will need to have a strategy to set direction for themselves a nd to outsmart competitors, or at least enable themselves to manoeuvre through threatening environment (Mintzberg(a), 1987, p.25). tear down if it refuse to have a strategy, an organisation has to have a grand strategy at the very least as quoted here by Chandler, one of the men who was behind the success of Sears Roebuck. He stated business is like a war in one respect- if its grand strategy is correct any number of tactical errors can be made and yet the enterprise proves successful (Mintzberg(a), 1987, p.25). The importance of strategy is also to help the organisation to be focus on its effort and coordination as well as providing consistency.ConclusionsUsing the war analogy and different range of viewpoints from several authors, I have drawn a conclusion of my own definition of strategy. A strategy is a set of guidelines that forge the resource allocations, other critical activities, and a set of tactics in an organisation intended to achieve its objectives and goals. By adding the element of tactics there, it becomes the advantage for the organisation that afraid of having a strategy because it can be too long vision and cannot facilitate the rapid growing and changes of the environment. This definition is versatile as it can be used in any types of organisation and can always be re-used and re-apply should one objective or goal has been achieved.However, the definition can be too broad for some organisation that again can cause confusion in understanding the concept of strategy. If this happen then I would like to address the statement in the beginning of essay that there is no certain and specific definition of strategy. It is very internal and depends on ones knowledge and interpretation which I personally think is the art of strategy.ReferencesAndrews, K. R. 1. (1980). The concept of corporate strategy. Homewood, trial R. D. Irwin. Evered, R. (1983). So what is strategy? Long Range Planning,16(3), 57-72 Hax, A. C. (1990). Redefining the concept of strategy and the strategy formation process. Strategy Leadership, 18(3), 34-39. Hax, A. C., Majluf, N. S. (1988). The concept of strategy and the strategy formation process. Interfaces, 18(3), 99-109. http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FileMap_Macedonia_336_BC-en.svg Mintzberg, H and Quinn, J.B, The Strategy Process Concepts, Content, Cases, 3rd Edition, Prentice-Hall, Upper consign River, NJ, 1996 Phillips, L. (2011). What is strategy? Journal of the Operational Research Society, 62(5), 926-929. Porter, M. (1996). What is strategy?. BOULDER Harvard Business Review. 74(6), 61-78. Raynor, M. (1998). That vision thing Do we need it? Long Range Planning, 31(3), 368-376