Values, Mission, Vision, Organization-Wide Metrics, Strategic Plans with Metrics of Organization - Essay Example

? Strategic Analysis/Competing Globally STRATEGIC ANALYSIS/COMPETING GLOBALLY Describe the needed alignment between values, mission, vision, organization-wide metrics, strategic plans with metrics, action plans with metrics, and process performance metrics in order to develop a highly effective organization. The goals, mission, strategy, and vision of the organization is aligned to process performance metrics by improving processes in order to minimize costs and maximize efficiency, as well as management of the cross-functional processes among the support groups (Dyck, & Mitchell, 2010: p22). They can also be aligned to action plans with metrics by aligning the performance of the workforce to the organizational goals and linking the satisfaction of the employee to the loyalty of the customer. Alignment with strategic plans with metrics aims to align the employees, technology and processes to the performance goals that inform the organization’s mission and driving performance measures to drive making of decisions. Finally, alignment with organizational-performance metrics involves alignment financial performance, resource performance, workforce performance, and departmental performance. Organizational alignment requires for there to be compatibility between cultural and strategic paths and that there be consistency within them (Dyck, & Mitchell, 2010: p27). The organizations goals have to be compatible with its goals. For example, an organization that values flexibility should avoid goals that focus on the development of tight systems of control. The organization’s day-to-day behaviour needs to be consistent with the organization’s values. Like goals, values are necessities in business. Aligning an organization successfully requires clarity of goals, strategies, and values. For example, to get and maintain market share needs relevant goals, as well as testing actions and decisions for these goals. It also needs the communication of the relevant organization values while ensuring that the organization’s typical behaviour is reflective of the values. How did Bob Galvin change the culture and strategy at Motorola and why? Bob Galvin changed Motorola’s culture to one based on personal accountability, proactive empowerment, and participation (Fitz-Enz, 2012: p44). He insisted on uncompromising integrity and constant respect for people and hoped that this would result in trust and, consequently, creativity and long-term survival. He did this because he felt that the key to the company’s long-time prosperity effectively relied on better service to the community, shareholders, employees, and customers. Galvin was of the opinion that the key to his company’s prosperity in the long term lay in effectively serving the community, shareholders, employees, and customers (Fitz-Enz, 2012: p48). For the customers, the new culture aimed to serve them better than its competitors did with services and product of high quality and value in order to earn their continued support and trust. For the employees, the organization treats all with dignity to maintain an atmosphere of openness. Direct communication with them set out to allow the employees contribute to their full potential, as well as foster a unity of purpose with the company. For the shareholders, the objective of Motorola’s new strategy is to have the shareholders prosper, thus making the company’s equity securities attractive as an investment (Fitz-Enz, 2012: p48). Finally, the new culture’s objective for the community was to contribute to its social and economic well-being while encouraging employees to be involved in community affairs. Explain what Porter’s 5-force model brings to the understanding the external environment a business faces Five forces shape the external environment of a company. These are the threat of new entrants, bargaining power of the buyers, bargaining power of the suppliers, rivalry among competitors, and threat of substitute services and products (Henry, 2011: p21). These forces can help in understanding the external environment that a company faces. If forces are intense, for example, as they are in the hotel and airline industry, the company earns very little attractive R.O.I. If these forces are benign as they are in soft drinks and software industries, then the companies are profitable. While a myriad of factors can have a remarkable effect on the company’s profitability, for instance, business cycle and weather, the industry structure as manifested in these competitive forces sets the organization’s profitability in the long and medium-term. Understanding these forces and underlying causes allows the organization to visualize the roots of its current profitability and provides a framework for influencing and anticipating competition over time. Understanding the structure of the industry is also important to effective, strategic positioning (Henry, 2011: p24). How does the House of Quality assist an organization in understanding its market and the strengths of its competitors? The house of quality helps to illustrate the relationship between the customer wants and the ability of a product to fulfil this wants. Its components look at a breakdown of customer wants mechanisms a supplier possesses to meet the wants, and the ability of a competitor to step in and address these wants as compared to the supplier’s capabilities (Lawrie, 2009: p50). Both negative and positive aspects of the client’s wants and how they can be met in comparison to the competitor are considered. The building blocks ask questions of why and how the supplier can satisfy these wants, arranges the data in an organized manner, which essentially makes it easier to establish the strategies, which can be used to satisfy these demands. It also helps the supplier understand if he has a better chance of meeting the demands than his competition. The instrument can be used in assessing the present position of the organization in meeting the customer’s needs and wants. The tool can also allow the organization to seek out strategic partnerships with other industries to meet the wants of the customers (Lawrie, 2009: p52). For example, one conference bureau may decide to contract a reliable company to provide fax broadcast services rather than investing ion one if they discover that their customers would want fax broadcasting services. This strengthens the bureau as the client views this as an added incentive to deal with the conference call bureau. How can the PLC calculations help an organization understand what might be a more effective strategy to take? Determining the industry’s location on the PLC curve can be accomplished by calculating the industry’s growth rate and utilizing the PLC model to determine the position of the industry in the cycle (Dyck, & Mitchell, 2010: p62). This is done in order to establish the paramount strategy for the organization to take. The position of the company on the industry PLC can be in the introduction, decline, maturity or growth stage. If the company is in the introduction stage, there is no immense pressure on profits, and the promotion of the product is focused on creating awareness. They could also employ skimming price strategies if there are no competitors in sight. In this phase, limited products are available in few distribution channels, and promotion should be aimed at creating differentiation. If the company is in the growth stage, then competitors will be drawn into the market offering similar products. These should see the products become more profitable, and the organization could form alliances, mergers, or launch a takeover. The company also spends highly on advertising and focuses more on brand building. The company also begins searching for new market segments, new distribution channels, and shifts advertising to brand loyalty purchase, and product conviction from product awareness. If the company were in the mature phase, the strategies to be employed would include exploitation of industry growth segments, improvement of efficiency to cut cost, and laying emphasis on quality improvements and product innovation. If the company discovers that it is in the decline phase, its strategies would include cutting costs, product innovation so as to enter a new product life cycle, market niche concentration, and they could also decide to sell the out (Dyck, & Mitchell, 2010: p63). What does the BCG add to that understanding and how does it do that? The BCG application adds to the PLC calculations by informing the company about its relative location to its nearest rivals based on the position of the company on the product life cycle (Dyck, & Mitchell, 2010: p66). It is used to determine plausible strategies that can add to the organization’s relative market share. This calculation is not focused on traditional calculations of market share, as the company may be located in a large industry that has very few dominant organizations. By comparing the company with its immediate rival, the company, gets a better view of its relationship with the immediate competitors. Dominant firms will confront competitions and keep up the offensive companies in fragmented industries will use franchising to reach economies of scale and standardize diverse service, and product needs, while the underdog will aim at quality, specialist strategy and follower strategies. Firms that are in trouble, on the other hand, aim to cut costs, increase revenues, and rebuild and reposition. What are some of the generic types of strategies available to an organization? Explain any 5 of the 10 Generic strategy types include control, customer focus, defending, diversification, customer focus, improving of intelligence, growth, regrouping, retreating and quick response (Lawrie, 2009: p29). Retreating involves selling off the company or products, liquidation, abandonment, and divestiture. Regrouping as a strategy involves reducing of assets by leasing, improvement of asset use, and strategies aimed at repositioning. Improvement of intelligence involves spanning across the company’s boundaries while control as a strategy would involve horizontal concentration via acquisition, and vertical integration. Finally, customer focus would involve giving the clients support services, improving customer brand loyalty, and focusing on the quality and service of the product. Give a specific example of the use of leverage, constraints, vulnerability, and maintenance. The aim of strategic matching is to show how to improve how the organization fits, with the environment, to improve the company’s competitive ability (Vashisht, 2012: p25). Leverage exists when the organization’s strengths are in a position to exploit opportunities from outside. A food organization with ad volerem revenue as a strength should seek to exploit the opportunity of investors searching to develop gocery stores by joining the city’s food Co-op. Combining strengths with Threats helps the company come up with a maintenance strategy. Constraints, which are a weakness, exist when organizations see an opportunity, but are constrained by a lack of resources, which is a weakness (Vashisht, 2012: p27). For example, an organization may see an opportunity in buying cheap land but be constrained due to a lack of meaningful tax base and funding. When an organization faces a threat that threatens one of its strength, this is called vulnerability. For example, an organization serving a certain region may have a very large labor base, which is strength, but have limited opportunities of employment, which is a threat since there could be a major migration away from the town. References Dyck, Bruno. & Mitchell, Neubert. Management : current practices and new directions. Boston : Houghton Mifflin , 2010. Fitz-Enz, Jac. 8 practices of exceptional companies : how great organizations make the most of their human assets. New York: Amacom Books , 2012. Henry, Anthony. Understanding strategic management. New York : Oxford University Press , 2011. Lawrie, Judson. Strategic planning and management . Washington : Transportation Research Board , 2009. Vashisht, Kujnish. Practical Approach To Marketing Management. Ocala: Atlantic Publishers & Dist , 2012. Read More