The Most Common Strategy Mistakes - Assignment Example

Strategy According to Michael Porter the biggest and the most common mistake that is made bya company is that they follow the strategy of trying to be the best in the business (Magretta, 2012). He believes that those organizations that try to compete with each other in order to prove that they are the best are making a mistake as they are all doing the same thing and not focusing on differentiation strategy. He asserts that that company that implement differentiation have a better strategy than those who trying to compete to be the best.

Another mistake that companies make is that they believe that strategy and marketing is one and the same thing. He asserts that strategy is formulated while keeping customers in mind and so the value proposition is created, but this only serves the demand side of the strategy. He believes that organizations need to take into consideration the supply side of the strategy in order to be more effective and they should take both sides of the strategies to cover all grounds. Another mistake that organizations make is the overvaluation of their strengths.

He believes that organizations are biased towards identification of strengths and they develop their strategies accordingly. He asserts that an organization’s strength may be best customer service, but this strength can be attained by any organization. He believes that strengths of one organization should be different from the strengths of another organization and other organizations should not be able to obtain the same strengths as one organization already has. 2. There are several barriers due to which managers fail to devise an effective strategy.

Porter asserts that various obstacles are created due to covert biases that are invested in a particular business, the way the organizations are structured and the way decisions are made. For example: managers fail to obtain the accurate data required for making any form of decisions because of internal issues and conflict within the organization and there may be cases where those who are performing well are undervalued and those who are not putting in too much effort are simply sitting and absorbing all the rewards.

Another issue is that managers have failed to accept and count upon differentiation strategies and they rather believe in having a huge customer base. Due to this they fail to enhance their value proposition and only focus on serving to serve. Barriers to creation of effective strategy even exist in the external environment of an organization; Porter claims that there are several strategy killers who exist in an organization’s external environment. He further asserts that these strategy killers may include those who are regarded as experts of the industry and they guide managers into achieving the challenge of trying to be the best in the industry and try to cater to all customers within a particular market and this leads to failure of differentiation and such strategies fail as being the best in the industry is a hard ball game and very hard to be won.

Works CitedMagretta, Joan . "The Most Common Strategy Mistakes — HBS Working Knowledge." HBS Working Knowledge - Faculty Research at Harvard Business School. N.p., 21 Dec. 2012. Web. 18 Feb. 2013. .