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Strategic Management for Competitive Advantage. For the better part of a decade, strategy has been a business buzzword. Top executives ponder strategic objectives and missions. Managers down the line rough out productmarket strategies. Install Squid Cache Manager Ubuntu Wallpaper. Functional chiefs lay out strategies for everything from R D to raw materials sourcing and distributor relations. Fences Full Play Pdf Ashes Movie Fences Full Play Pdf Build Shed With Basement Shed Plan Software Free. Create Closing Binder In Pdf' title='Create Closing Binder In Pdf' />Mere planning has lost its glamor the planners have all turned into strategists. All this may have blurred the concept of strategy, but it has also helped to shift the attention of managers from the technicalities of the planning process to substantive issues affecting the long term well being of their enterprises. Signs that a real change has been taking place in businesss planning focus have been visible for some time in the performance of some large, complex multinational corporationsGeneral Electric, Northern Telecom, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and Siemens A. G., to name four. Instead of behaving like large unwieldy bureaucracies, they have been nimbly leap frogging smaller competitors with technical or market innovations, in true entrepreneurial style. They have been executing what appear to be well thought out business strategies coherently, consistently, and often with surprising speed. Repeatedly, they have been winning market shares away from more traditionally managed competitors. What is the source of these giant companies remarkable entrepreneurial vigorIs it the result of their substantial investments in strategic planning, which appear to have produced something like a quantum jump in the sophistication of their strategic planning processes If so, what lessons can be drawn from the steps they have taken and the experience they have gained To explore these questions, we embarked on a systematic examination of the relation between formal planning and strategic performance across a broad spectrum of companies see the sidebar. We looked for common patterns in the development of planning systems over time. In particular, we examined their evolution in those giant companies where formal planning and strategic decision making appeared to be most closely and effectively interwoven. Our findings indicate that formal strategic planning does indeed evolve along similar lines in different companies, albeit at varying rates of progress. This progression can be segmented into four sequential phases, each marked by clear advances over its predecessor in terms of explicit formulation of issues and alternatives, quality of preparatory staff work, readiness of top management to participate in and guide the strategic decision process, and effectiveness of implementation see the Exhibit. Exhibit Four Phases in the Evolution of Formal Strategic Planning The four phase model evolution we shall be describing has already proved useful in evaluating corporate planning systems and processes and for indicating ways of improving their effectiveness. In this article, we describe each of the four phases, with special emphasis on Phase IV, the stage we have chosen to call strategic management. In order to highlight the differences between the four stages, each will be sketched in somewhat bold strokes. Obviously, not all the companies in our sample fit the pattern precisely, but the generalizations are broadly applicable to all. Phase I Basic Financial Planning Most companies trace the origins of a formal planning system to the annual budgeting process where everything is reduced to a financial problem. Procedures develop to forecast revenue, costs, and capital needs and to identify limits for expense budgets on an annual basis. Create Closing Binder In Pdf' title='Create Closing Binder In Pdf' />Information systems report on functional performance as compared with budgetary targets. Companies in Phase I often display powerful business strategies, but they are rarely formalized. Instead, they exist. Create Closing Binder In Pdf' title='Create Closing Binder In Pdf' />I love monograms. I think its safe to say Im pretty much obsessed with them. Maybe its because my last name starts with L, and cursive Ls are. For the better part of a decade, strategy has been a business buzzword. Top executives ponder strategic objectives and missions. Managers down the line rough out. Loading Livebinder GSE 3rd grade Math All 3rd grade resources. The only concrete indication that a business strategy exists may be a projected earnings growth rate, occasionally qualified by certain debtequity targets or other explicit financial objectives. The quality of Phase I strategy depends largely on the CEO and the top team. Do they really know their companys products and markets and have a good sense of what major competitors will do next Based on their knowledge of their own cost structure, can they estimate what the impact of a product or marketing change will be on their plants, their distribution system, or their sales force If so, and if they do not plan for the business to grow beyond traditional limits, they may not need to set up an expensive planning apparatus. Phase II Forecast based Planning The complexities of most large enterprises, however, demand more explicit documentation of the implicitly understood strategies of Phase I. The number of products and markets served, the degree of technological sophistication required, and the complex economic systems involved far exceed the intellectual grasp of any one manager. The shoe usually pinches first in financial planning. As treasurers struggle to estimate capital needs and trade off alternative financing plans, they and their staffs extrapolate past trends and try to foresee the future impact of political, economic, and social forces. Thus begins a second phase, forecast based planning. Most long range or strategic planning today is a Phase II system. At first, this planning differs from annual budgeting only in the length of its time frame. Very soon, however, the real world frustrates planners by perversely varying from their forecasts. In response, planners typically reach for more advanced forecasting tools, including trend analysis and regression models and, eventually, computer simulation models. They achieve some improvement, but not enough. Sooner or later plans based on predictive models fail to signal major environmental shifts that not only appear obvious after the fact, but also have a great and usually negative impact on corporate fortunes. Nevertheless, Phase II improves the effectiveness of strategic decision making. It forces management to confront the long term implications of decisions and to give thought to the potential business impact of discernible current trends, well before the effects are visible in current income statements. The issues that forecast based plans addresse. One of the most fruitful by products of Phase II is effective resource allocation. Under the pressure of long term resource constraints, planners learn how to set up a circulatory flow of capital and other resources among business units. A principal tool is portfolio analysis, a device for graphically arranging a diversified companys businesses along two dimensions competitive strength and market attractiveness. As practiced by Phase II companies, however, portfolio analysis tends to be static and focused on current capabilities, rather than on the search for options. Moreover, it is deterministici. And Phase II companies typically regard portfolio positioning as the end product of strategic planning, rather than as a starting point. Phase II systems also do a good job of analyzing long term trends and setting objectives for example, productivity improvement or better capital utilization. But instead of bringing key business issues to the surface, they often bury them under masses of data.