Strategic Alignment: McDonalds, Tyco International and the Unilever Company - Essay Example

strategic alignment al Affiliation) Strategic planning involves drawing stipulated benchmarks that an organization should achieve within a specific period of its operations. These plans involve innovative thinking, diversification of products, and improvement in technology as well as widening the market share. However, it is important to incorporate the organizational strategy in the process of making a strategic plan for an organization’s performance. The operations strategy, therefore, is a plan that highlights the management of operations in the long-term period for the main purpose of attaining the set business goals. Despite this, it is difficult to align the strategic map of the business with the corporate strategy that defines the operations of the organization. Corporate strategy, on the other hand, is the improvisation of the organizational working efficiency towards the attainment of the strategic plan through the elimination of waste and production at lowest possible costs (Demeester, De Meyer & Grahovac, 2014). The operational resources are critical in the attainment of the operational strategy. These resources include the tangible and intangible resources, the operational processes and capabilities. The tangible resources consist of the equipment, materials, facilities and human resource that perform the practical work. The intangible resources, on the other hand are the skills, market relationships and knowledge that determine the quality of production. The operational processes combine the intangible and tangible resources to formulate a coordinated framework of the production procedure (Hill & Cuthbertson, 2011). The first challenge that the organization encounters in the alignment of operation strategy to the corporate strategy is the agreement on the model of operation. A company can be integrated like McDonalds’s, Holding Company like Tyco International or an Allied Company like the Unilever Company. This choice of operating model defines the relationship of the business and the amount of investments allocated to the company. It is important to understand the operating model because it involves the allocation of funds to various business entities. In the process that the senior management decides to implement the corporate strategy, competitors will launch a model that capitalizes on the company’s large investment in efficiency improvement (Boyer And Lewis, 2002). This may amount to sever losses in the company. More often, it is a challenge to map the business strategy to the functional alignment because of the competitive nature of the market. In strategic planning, the organization decides the manner in which it will compete in the market and the techniques it will employ in ensuring that customers in this market prefer buying from their organization. The competitive nature of the market dictates the number of options that are at the disposal of the organization. The leadership of the business often does not strategically define the corporate strategy in relation to the primary focus of the business (Walter et al., 2013). In a bid to lower costs, the corporate strategy overlooks the operational strategy of the quality of the services or product, the nature of the customer tastes in the market, the technology required to attain the desired quality and the capacity of production available at the company. Besides, the corporate strategy may aim at maximizing the profits without factoring in the value for customer propositions in such factors as the innovation, price, quality, and the experience in customer service. Therefore, failure to align these strategies often leads to the organization focusing on competing against the priorities of other rival companies, frustration within the work force and dissatisfaction amongst the customers (Bagga & Srivastava, 2014). In aligning the operation strategy with the corporate strategy, the organization encounters difficulties in rallying around the strategy of the organization’s growth. Many leaders do not communicate about the growth plan of the business, instead focusing on the long-term achievements that the company should attain. Many leaders around the global management scene receive awards for the containment or reduction of costs. The challenge of globalization poses the requirement of critical efficiency improvements. An example of such companies is Toyota that implements the Six Sigma program to fuel the productivity improvements (Grogaard, 2012). This challenge of reducing the operational costs to meet the growth stipulation obligates many companies to focus on the returns on investments, heavy investments on getting lean programs underway and outsourcing the non-strategic duties while managing to improve the quality of their products. These programs do not focus on the operation resources. The performance of the company depends on the effectiveness of the human resource, the culture of teamwork coordination within the company, the retention of talent or innovative minds as well as the practice of corporate social responsibility. The above distinctions define the challenge of mapping the operation strategy to the corporate strategy. While the corporate strategy focuses on what is to be done or achieved within the stipulated time, the operation strategy focuses on how it should be done. Therefore, the conflict arises when the leadership allocates massive funding to the corporate strategy while alienating the role of the operational resources in the attainment of the strategic plan. Apart from the growth strategy, the other challenge that exists in the alignment of the corporate and operations strategies is the adaptation to challenges. Many organizations are structured in a way that they handle technical challenges (Gandellini, Pezzi & Venanzi, 2013). Therefore, the management often is comfortable in tackling problems that are defined clearly through a rigid set of methods. However, the nature of the competitive markets presents certain problems and challenges that do not exist within the boundaries of the management’s set of solutions. Such problems are frequently messy and naturally systematic. The adaptive challenges require the mobilization of funds and resources to contain the spread or prevent more damage caused by the problem. Many companies have the ambition to incorporate lean programs in production, therefore adaptive challenges meets the unpreparedness of the management to outsource funds and activities to protect the risk of uncertainty (de Carvalho Rezende, 2011). Essentially, the corporate strategy is slow to invest in digital solutions that define the course of competition in the industry. However, the operation strategy involves the use of the most innovative and advanced technology in the production process. Even in the process that the corporate strategy has provisions for funding new production methods, the human resources have to acquire training to adapt to controlling these technologies. Therefore, the challenge of adapting to market trends shapes the difficulty in matching the operation strategy to the corporate strategy. Talent management is s trend that defines the nature of doing business globally. However, the mobilization of talent poses a problem in linking the corporate strategy to the operation strategy of the organization. Changes in business models obligate the strategies in the business to realign towards the core goals of the new strategy. New talents in an organization probable add new perspectives to the change of the organization mindset. The existent talents in the organization want to be incorporated in the plan in order to attain more education and expand their knowledge. In Google, for instance, the company recognizes the generational disparities that classify the vast nature of talents within people from the different generations (Ishikawa & Saisho, 2013). The challenge that talent management faces in the corporate strategy is the lack of change in the top management of the company. The pioneer management of the company is rigid and loyal to the original talent that the company acquired. This notion amongst the top management, does not give room for recruitment of new talent into the company. Furthermore, in a company that does not expand, the management has a problem with releasing the old talent and replacing it with the new generation talent. On the side of the operation strategy, it is important to stay updated in the market with new trends and talents that guide the destination of the industry (Leibner, Mader &Weiss, 2009). This poses a challenge for the human resource management to balance between the unproductive and productive talent in the company, to create room for the new talent. Therefore, failure to incorporate talent management in the corporative plan for the business can lead to several missed opportunities to take advantage of the market trends. The solutions to these challenges are within the communication and constant education of the organization management. The human resource is a critical component of any company, whether private or public. It is important to have a professional human resource expert on the executive board of the company. In this way, the expert will inform the board on the need to incorporate employees in critical decision-making processes that define the working environment of the employees. Besides, the human resource team needs to evaluate the current levels of staffing in the market, and convey this message to the top management (Matsubayashi et al., 2009). By doing this, the company remains consistent in the market, maintaining the vision of the strategic corporate and organization plans. The organization should focus on settling on the most efficient modes of production processes. A company needs to have an operation life cycle that has defined rules on the operating model, the expectations of the company and the accountability of each department in the company. To eliminate the inefficiencies of funding new production processes, the operation life cycle should have an articulate stipulation on the progression of transactions and the elements that require attention. This plan is important in defining the corporate strategy towards expansion, growth of production capacity, and the techniques required to venture into new markets (Milevski, 2014). The adaptive challenges that face companies require careful but rapid evaluation of the situation. With the necessary coordination between various departments of the organization, it is easier to adopt a temporary solution before settling on a desirable long-term solution. Technology is important in revolutionizing the operations of any company. However, the challenge of technology inhibits the coordination between the operation strategy and the corporate strategy. The automation of the production system is a solution that will link the operation strategy to the corporate strategy. The transaction life cycle speeds up with the automation of the processes. With automation, the production process of the operational strategy is achieved while the need to improve efficiency by the corporate strategy is met. The top management should have adequate conversance with information technology to understand the extra demands of the current systems (Radomska, 2014). The need to acquire acquaintance on IT influences the employees to acquire knowledge on the new talents in the market, hence reducing the pressure and funding of recruiting new talents in the systems to facilitate innovation. Communication plays a fundamental role in catalyzing the differences between the operation and corporate strategies. It is important to talk about the growth strategy of the organization. Similarly, the organization should inform all the stakeholders on the depth and nature of the goals set by the organization, the resources available to the organization and the necessary steps that the each stakeholder should take in achieving the goals of the organization. Communication enables the organization to highlight the operating model and define the impact of this choice to the business operations (Sachdeva & Malhotra, 2014). The company should also make trade-offs precise in the communication structure of the organization. This way, accountability will be a responsibility of all the stakeholders in the business. The top management should spend adequate time outside the organization to study the existent challenges of the market. Through this, the company will reframe its challenges and be more flexible in dealing with unexpected crisis. Besides, this practice encourages the discovery of new opportunities to expand the business operations. Moreover, it is important to forget the command and control structures but to deal with issues beyond the hierarchical formations of the organizations. This will eliminate bureaucracy in decision-making and will guide the company towards acquiring the best relevant talent to align the organization and corporate strategies of the company towards the common strategic plan (Acur, Kandemir & Boer, 2012). In conclusion, many companies encounter the challenge in linking these two strategies because of inadequate knowledge, communication breakdowns, and lapses in coordination. Most organizations are restructuring their strategies to incorporate employees, mobilize resources and corporate social responsibility in achieving their corporate goals. Therefore, each organization must be flexible in motivating the employees’ fraternity, updating the production resources and processes, and performing social responsibilities in order to attain customer loyalty and improve their market share. 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