Mercer Training Course: Business Strategy in under Direct ...

Business strategy includes the areas of corporate strategy, marketing strategy, sales strategy, among other areas. Within growth strategy, we include both organic growth and inorganic growth, namely M&A. Marketing strategy includes branding strategy, go-to-market strategy, in addition to Internet strategy. Marketing strategy and sales strategy are many times discussed in unity, but are completely different in nature. Sales strategy includes distribution strategy, distribution strategy, and business development. Business strategies are many times defined with the context of a yearly strategic planning environment, typically conducted in a 2 day off site location with executives and key personnel, both within and external to the organization.

Business strategy development has evolved through 5 key phases since the early 1900s. Strategy development started with a focus on financial planning in the 1950s, moving to long-term corporate planning in the 1960s, to strategic planning in the 1970s and ultimately to a focus on strategic management in the present day. Shifts in strategic mindset represent a changing landscape, new thought leaders, and emergence of disruptive technologies and changes. Much of growth strategy is also hinged on ideas in the 1970s, where the core theme was around thinking strategically to out maneuver competition and the business frameworks of alternative strategies, portfolio analysis, and the BCG Growth Share Matrix were developed. In the current day, the strategic development theme is on integrating strategic planning and execution with a stress on the primary notions of core competencies, strategy planning and execution, and balance scorecard analysis.

Structured business communication is oftentimes formed under a business framework. Crawl Walk Run is a popular framework for representing the progression of change, from an early crawl stage eventually to walk-type activities and ultimately to the run phase of automated processes. Well known ones include Pintos Pyramid Principle, which is commonly used by management consultants and business executives in structuring PowerPoint presentations. The Pyramid Principle is ingrained into the presentation storyboarding process.

The way business leaders evaluate and analyze strategy within that of modern business organizations has been built upon a platform of military strategists since the beginning of organized warfare. Sun Tzu hinted at indirect strategies when he said winning without fighting is the highest of skill on the battlefield. Sun Tzus thoughts about the factor of terrain, if we were to take that into the context of companies competing today, translates to markets, industry structures, value propositions, and competitive forces. Sun Tzu wrote the Art of War, which has been adopted into a business strategy book. In Sun Tzus Art of War, he wrote about five core factors in military strategy and each of these factors relates to a popular concept of business strategy.

To develop a rigorous business strategy, businesses all must perform business strategy development beginning with a clear set of beliefs around its current situation and existing strategic barriers to growth. In order to understand your strategic challenges, you must begin with a comprehensive current state understanding of your situation. The next steps, on a high level, include defining what the desired vision of the company is and then going into the details of planning how to get to that state. It is also important to realize that there is more to strategy than just winning. Strategy is about value innovation, strategy is about focus, and strategy is about business agility.

Today, there are two primary schools of thought around strategic management. Henry Mintzberg proposes for an organization, bottom-ups strategy to drive the strategy development process that hinges upon organizational configuration. In organizational configuration, the organization takes on behaviors based on adaptation to business surroundings. Henry Mintberg also advocates a transformation of business processes, where management recognizes the need and has the ability to conduct top-down business operations transformation.

Different size organizations almost always experience different challenges and thus, undertake different approaches to managing their business strategy. Some companies may be in the nascent growth stages, whereas more established multi-nationals are in the sustain phase. A SME may be more entrepreneurial in its approach to business growth and its operations are often much more lean and agile. A global company may employ a more structured tactically sound management model, due to its greater size and scope of both business.
Business Strategies

Source: http://blatoday.com/05/mercer-training-course-business-strategy-in-under-direct-competition/

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