Free Essay for You to Check on the Strategist Profession

According to numerous schools of thoughts, a strategy is the means by which an organization plans to achieve its core objectives. It is commonly referred to as a long-term planning of a business mostly laid out to extend the duration of 3-5 years. About the conference held in Egypt, 2010 concerning the next generation Strategy Conference, Harvard professor Michael Porter emphases on the shared value as the next breakthrough in strategy. Additional he emphasized on the essence of having a No in any strategy. He pointed out that the sole importance of setting up a strategy is to decide on what will not be done. Any company that is setting up a strategy will come up with various offers that they are going to present to their clients. However, in the course of time due to external market factors, for instance, stiff completion, they introduce new additional features to their products and services. This trend is more common since it strives to increase to companys profit pools. This would be in line with the shareholders expectations of their wealth maximization as well as the customers expectation since the marginal cost of adding this new feature is minimal (Grunig, Kuhn and Kuhn, 2005).

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The strategy process usually involves a trade-off since it will lead to the provision of different products and services from the initial ones. Hence, the initial strategy is lost. This move may deem to dangerous, for the small and medium companies the dilution of the strategy is on the why side of the choices made. On the other hand for the large companies, the dilution mostly occurs on the how side of the choice, they may introduce the additional feature simply to match a competitor who is offering it to the clients. Due to constant changes in the initial strategy implemented, the companies tends to end up with no strategy due to dilution.

In his conclusion, at the end of any strategy implementation the strategist should come up with a comprehensive list of the core clients, the specific activities that will provide the unique value of the products and services. Additionally, the strategist should identify the activities that are not going to be undertaken as well as the client based that will not fit in the identified segment. The level of decision making, especially in the field, will be greatly improved by a precise No on the implemented strategy. The essence of having a well-defined No on the strategy is that it promotes the sales by satisfying the selected client segment since it is difficult for a company to please all the potential clients. Hence, a strategist will need to make the choice of who and how so that they are successful and also stick their Choices to Avoid strategy dilution (Adamides, 2015).

During an interview by Strategic Finance, Patrick Stroh a Minnesota-based management consultants addressed the approach in business management. He mentioned that the notion of having a functional strategy in an organization had slowly become unpopular. Despite the fact that most of the senior company executives agree on the importance of having a business strategy, they have neglected it due to the formalities used to come up with a business strategy for a given period, for instance, five years. Most of the time they initiate the process with a lot of enthusiasm and great ideas to present, however in the course of strategy formulation the face challenges that demotivate them, for instance missing on board meetings formulation the strategy to handle some urgent customer needs. He proposed the use of parables as well as storytelling as the means of conveying the business strategy despite the use of more modern methods, for instance, Google And Yahoo. However, the strategies should ensure that the method used sticks the idea to the intended parties, for instance, by the use of relevant examples.

The strategist should always appoint one of the staff to take up the responsibility of facilitating the strategy. However, the appointed staff should not be responsible for the entire since this would give other individual to neglect their roles in the implementation of the strategy while using the sole staff as their scapegoat (Meyer and Estrin, 2014). The president of the company should not as well be solely charged with the responsibility of implementing the strategy since it not possible for them to be everywhere in the company and should all the responsibilities. In such instances, the need for a chief strategy officer arises. This is the individual that the president can consult concerning any queries on the strategy.

A good chief strategy officer should portray several characteristics: they should be consultative whereby they convey their suggestions, but they do not restrict the solutions. They should create an environment whereby every individual can pick up another colleagues ideas they there discuss it as a group. They should be open minded where they borrow ideas from other industries and should be ready to step out of their own as well as the teams comforts zone. Last but not list, they should portray the art of letting the team members explore their lines but also know when to bring them back to the rail.

In the application of the chosen strategy, there are several tools that a strategist can choose. For instance, five-force SWOT analysis and also the balanced scorecards. Giving the scorecard a closer insight, it has five distinctive categories; customer, financial, people, operational excellence and growth

In conclusion, the business strategy is essential as it gives the roadmap of where the company will be over a given period. The role of facilitating the strategy should be delegated to a specific individual. The article has details on the different tools that can be used to execute a successful strategy.

Cynthia A. Montgomery who is a professor at Harvard school, and she came up with a different dimension of the capacity that strategic leaders have to bring new and unique values to an organization. She pointed out that most of the company executive have this high affinity to succeed hence they largely anchor their strategies on venturing into the new business or even acquiring the existing ones. However, they overlook some sensitive aspects of their strategies for instances, the stiff competition in the industry, the mode of strategy interrelations and their executions. She reaffirmed her knowledge on the limits that strategies have, the readiness of business reinventions as well as the continuity of the responsibility for leading a given strategy. The strategist has the role of being a meaning maker in the organization since there is a huge relation between the leader and a strategy. The strategist is the one who makes the crucial choice of which objective the company will emulate. Such vital choices will be the building blocks for creating a strong public image in the industry (Sparrow, 2015).

Additionally, the strategist should always be the voice of reason for the company. Normally any given company will look for a visionary leader who portrays confidence to set up the company new levels. Such traits are essential for strategic leaders. A successful strategy acts as the conduit between a market dynamics, the core objectives of the business and the intended actions to meet the objectives. This calls for the strategy leader to act as an operator in the organization.

In conclusion, her new school of though is more applicable since it is majorly on the current happenings in the market. The strategy leader will have to assume the different roles so that the products and services can easily reach the target market. Her conclusion is validated by the fact that she is dealing with executives who are in the position at the current market dynamics. This makes her perspective of strategy more applicable in real strategy implementation rather than the theoretical models.

Big data refers to the process used to collect as well as interpreted large volume of data. This is performed by the use huge computing power that follow up numerous digital streams, for instance, sensors, marketplace interaction as well as social data exchanges (Ohlhorst, 2013). The collected information is analyzed using logarithms. Initially, strategic leaders used the traditional small data to support their internal business decisions. For instance, the offer to be given to the customers, the pricing of the products and services and the customers who may lose their loyalty to the products and services soon. However big can has additional advantages over the traditional small data in that it presents the managers with the opportunity to create new high-value offers to the clients. Big data scientists are in a position to produce reports and presentation for the strategy managers to use fir internal decision making, as well as they, work specifically for the customer oriented products and services using the data collected. Big data is normally product, customer and service oriented.

Also, those internal uses that require the use of big data call for the implementation of new and different management approaches. This is because of big data continuity whereby the data keep on flowing (Ohlhorst, 2013). The big data analysis methods aids in customer satisfaction since less structured data sources can be used in internal decision making. For instance where the United Healthcare records their clients call to address the concerns on customers satisfaction as well as attrition concerns. The big data is also being used by most of the large financial institutions, for instance, Bank of America to try and understand the complex aspects of customer relationship that initially was impossible. Other institutions are applying the customer journeys to track how customers, as well as personal, navigate through the institutions websites and how such paths affect their purchase decisions.

Initially the competitive, as well as market information, was challenging to acquire, however, with the use of big data the approach has slowly changed. Organizations gather bulk data and use the complex systematic analysis to evaluate it, this will significantly improve their levels of strategic decision making. The pricing process, on the other hand, has for a long time used the analytical approaches. However with the introduction of the big data, most of the organization are applying it to their pricing decisions, for instance, most of the hotels and airlines are using the big data as a tool for pricing optimization to determine the price of seats and hotel rooms.

In conclusion, the big data has led to significant efficiency in conducting business activities. The big data is more accurate and efficient. The use of big data has brought about the competition that has resulted in reduced prices o0n products and services.

Strategic planning has gained a lot of popularity in the recent past. This has resulted in the majority of the companies to establish executes who will guide their strategy implementation. This has seen these companies introducing a new post of chief strategy officer that was initially very rare. Due to the market dynamics and ever changing business environment, there has been notable change on their previously chief strategy responsibilities that of being the leader of the annual strategic planning process. Despite the fact that no new developments have been put in place, the weakness of the traditions approaches has been eradicated by the number of reviews as well as deliverable meeting within the course of the organizations calendar.

Most of the strategists have adapted to the numerous changes by shifting their main focus not only to the strategic planning process but also to other broader aspects. They spend very little planning for the right strategy and more of the time engaging with other parties either wit...