Strategic Thinking and Strategic Management Processes Contributing to Organisational Performance

This paper will discuss some of the primary components of a strategic management process, while also explain why the process is crucial for a company success. This paper in addition will evaluate one organization that uses the strategic management process to accomplish their short-term, long-term goals, and objectives of the firm’s (University of Phoenix. (2015).

By setting up a clear and effective strategic plan an organisation can increase productivity to move forwards with their new approach. As Dymowski suggests, incorporating a structured method can be a very effective in helping form the organisation’s strategic plan (Dymowski, 1992). One

Pearce, J. A. II, & Robinson, R. B. (2009). Strategic management: Formulation, implementation, and control (11th ed.). [University of Phoenix Custom Edition e-text]. New York: McGraw-Hill. Retrieved August 20, 2011, fr

Strategic Thinking can be defined as a mental or thinking process that will be applied by an individual in the context of achieving success in an endeavour. This is a cognitive process, meaning it is a process of

Strategic thinking involves using ethical and moral reasoning to think about the future of an organization. This type of thinking usually starts about changes that you have noticed in the organizational climate, which are usually called mental models. Mental models are simplified understandings or representations of the phenomena that the organization encounters. These type of models can tell a strategic leader what is and is not important to the organization, what they do and do not like, what they should and should not notice. By knowing this, they include understandings of how things work and what are expected

Strategic planning involves making decisions about the organization’s long-term goals and strategies and how the organization decides to implement their goals (Bateman, Snell, Konopaske, pg. 113). Strategies help organizations to have a clear perspective on how to go about accomplishing the goals they have in place. All organizations have a clear vision of what their mission and purpose as a company is, they know how to fulfill the mission, vision, and purpose and they know how to ensure that they accomplish all their goals. However, the route the organization takes to define these things determines how effective they will be.

Communication is key in sharing information, promoting strategic thinking, and foster relationships by working in teams within the organization. Executives could have managers start by participating in strategic thinking with community groups and local businesses (Goldman, 2007). Organization strategic thinking should urge employees to look ahead for opportunities as to avoid being in constant reactive mode. It is essential to communicate that strategic thinking is goal oriented, planned over a length of time, and tied to the mission and goals of the organization. It is significant to match employees with mentors when you can to aid in developing and fostering strategic thinking skills in addition to rewarding employees when possible (Goldman, 2007).

What Is Strategic Management a process for defining and addressing the management implications of an organization's strategic and operational plans? A long-term context for short-term activities. Strategic management is the analysis of the work done by the management of an organization on behalf of the owners. It gyrates around expressing the purposes of the organization and coming up with an appropriate mission and vision statement. Mission and vision statement together are used to help develop policies and plans to be used in long term and short term goals often categorized as projects or programs. It also involves the right resources of management to ensure that the business profit are maximized to grow the company. Strategic Competitiveness

Strategic thinking is defined as “the generation of business insights on a continual basis to achieve competitive advantage.” Generally, strategic planning has often times been found to exclude strategic thinking, thus results in minimal growth. Strategic thinking differs from strategic planning in that it happens consistently, on a regular day-to-day basis as opposed to on a schedule.

The strategic management process is sometimes improperly perceived as a unidirectional flow of objectives, strategies and decision parameters from management to the employees. In fact, the process should be highly interactive since it is designed to stimulate input from creative, skilled and knowledgeable people working at every level of the business.

According to Faiza, Suleman, & Safdar (2015) strategic planning is a well-known organizational management activity that is used by firms to “Set priorities, focus energy and resources, strengthen operations, ensure that employees and other stakeholders are working toward common goals, establish agreement around intended outcomes/results and assess and adjust the organization 's direction in response to a changing environment” (p. 795). Strategic planning is a set of essential decisions and actions that form and direct what a firm is, what it does, why it does it, who it does it for and what its future plans are. Thus, effective strategic planning can tell an organization how to measure its profits and achievements so that it will know if it is truly successful.

‘Strategic Management’ is a very complex term as many eminent researchers and scholars have had different views and conclusions on strategy. According to White (2004), “Strategic Management involves both systematically developing an idea together with its implications and testing the empirical validity & usefulness of that idea against the real world.” Thus strategy is not only about planning for future but also about confirming the validity of the hypothesis considered and implementing it successfully. Strategy formation may take various forms such as implicit, explicit or emergent. Implicit strategy is a strategy formed by intuitions of an individual. As per implicit strategists, strategic management is about reading the environment

Strategic planning clearly defines organisations’ objectives and assesses both the internal and external situation to formulate strategy, implement the strategy, evaluate the progress, and make adjustments as necessary to stay on track (Bradford et al, 2008). According to Robbins and Coulter (2005), the strategic management process model is given below:

Strategic planning is a process that can allows us to both study and conduct simulations of the future. The process can show hidden opportunities or threats and providing the way to apply on them early. Strategic planning gives a clear framework with criteria for us to make day-to-day decisions, It also help to identify fragmentary and unaligned choices and personal value judgments. This strategic planning encourages the commitment of the entire HO in order to achieve the planned results and this is why it is an important element in institutional cohesion. An organization that has better strategic planning and applies it consistently can help to raise up corporate reputation.

Strategic thinking is defined as the management’s vision of the company; what it should look like in the future. It is the vision that drives the direction, nature and focus of the business. Strategic planning focuses on the ‘how’ aspects; How the organization is going to achieve that vision.