Strat Mgmt Final Flashcards
Principal managerial components of the strategy execution process
Building an organization with competencies, capabilities & resource strengths
Instituting policies and procedures that facilitate strategy execution
Adopt best practices and push continue value chain improvement
Use rewards and incentives
Most important consideration in putting together a strong top management team
Fill key managerial slots with smart people who are:
Clear thinkers
Good at figuring out what needs to be done
Skilled in making it happen
4 Practices that companies use to staff jobs with the best people they can find
Screening and evaluation job applicants
Rotating people through jobs
Encouraging employees to challenge existing ways of doing things
Make work environment stimulating
Capability building process
Develop ability to do something
Translate this ability into a tried-and true competence and capability, perform activity consistantly
Advantages of outsourcing value chain activities
Less internal bureaucracy
Speedier decision making
quicker responses to changing market conditions
Chief advantages of centralized organizational structure include
Accountability
Reucing the potential for conflicting decisions and actions among lower level managers
Useful guideline in designing policies and procedures to assist good strategy execution is to
Prescribe enough policies to give organizational members clear direction and to place desirable boundaries on their actions, then empower them to act within these boundaries
A chief purpose of benchmarking is to
look outward to find a best practice for performing an activity and then develop the date for measuring how well a company’s own performance of that activity stacks up against the best-practice standard.
4 step Best practices process
Identify best practices
Adapt practices to fit company
Continue to benchmark performance of activity
Move closer to excellence
Reengineering how a firm performs a business process
redesigning and streamlining the workflow and various work steps in performing a particular business activity with the goal of achieving quantum gains in performance of the activity.
What is TQM
Managing set of business practices that emphasizes continuous improvement in all phases of operation
100% accuracy in performing task
Involvement and empowerment of all employees
Team-based work design
Benchmarking
Total customer satisfaction
What can Six Sigma processes and techniques be used for
Improving existing business processes
Developing new processes or products at Six Sigma quality levels.
From a strategy-execution perspective, the role of a company’s system of incentives and rewards is to
enlist strong employees commitment to diligent, competent strategy execution and operating excellence.
The character of a company’s culture or work climate is shaped by
screening and selecting new employees to fit
indoctrination of new members of company culture
efforts of senior managers to reiterate core values
peer pressure
telling stories
highlighting employees
honoring members
Company culture can be perpetrated by
systematic indoctrination of new members in the culture’s fundamentals and strong peer pressure from co-workers to conform to expected norms.
Company’s culture is typically grounded in and shaped by
Its core values and the bar it sets for ethical standards
Subcultures
Multiple cultures that exist or vary at a department, geographic, division or unit level
Larger organizations tend to have subcultures
problem is that they can clash
key feature when looking into acquiring additional organizations
The hallmark of a strong-culture company is
The dominating presence of certain deeply rooted values and operating approached that regulate the conduct of a company’s business and the climate of its workplace
Weak-culture companies
Lack values and principles that are shared
No reinforcement of certain behaviors
No employee allegiance
High performance cultures
Can-do spirit
pride in doing things right
no excuses accountability
results-oriented work climate
Disadvantages of decntralized structure featuring employee empowerment is:
Top management lacks full control
Organization at risk if employees make bad decision
Can impair cross-unit collaboration
Advantages of decentralized decision making
Decision making in the hands of those closest to the situation
Draw on combined intellectual capital
Encourages Initiative
Three stage process to develop and strengthen core competencies and competitive capabilities
Develop ability to do something
Ability to be consistent at acceptable costs
become better than rivals at performing activity
5 decisions in promoting a successful strategy exectution
Which value chain activities to perform internally and which to outsource
Make internally performed strategy critical activities the main building blocks in the organization structure
How much authority to centralize at top
Provide for cross-unit coordination
Provide for necessary collaboration with suppliers and strategic allies
What types of organization structures are primary organizational building blocks?
Traditional departments
Process departments
Geographic organizational units
Divisional Units
Building organizational bridges with stratetic partners and external allies is aided by
Appointing relationship managers with responsibility for getting the right people together
Promoting good rapport and information sharing
The three components of building a capable organization are
Staffing and organization
Building core compettencies and competitive capabilities
Structuring the organization and work effor
What are Best Practices?
Is a technique in which at least one company has proved works well Lowering costs Improving quality or performance Shortening time requirements Enhancing safety
SIngle Most powerful tool management has to win strong employee commitment
Incentives
Most important motivational approaches to make their workplace more appealing and spur stronger employee commitment to the strategy execution process
Attractive Financial compensation Attractive perks and fringe benefits Making liberal use of non-monetary carrot and stick incentives Having knockout facilities Relying on promotion whenever possible
Purpose of using benchmarking, best practices, reengineering, tqm and six sigma programs is to:
to promote better strategy execution
TQM emphasizes
Continuous improvement in all phases of operations
100% accuracy
Employee empowerment
Total Customer Satisfaction
It is in managment’s best interest to establish a corporate culture that
encourages behaviors and work practices conducive to good strategy execution and that marshals organizational energy behind the drive for good strategy execution
4 Steps in changing a problem culture
Identify facets of present culture that are dysfunctional
pose obstacles to executing new strategic initiatives
show why and how new behaviors and operating approaches will improve company performance
Most important tasks of leading the drive for a good strategy execution
Staying on top of how well things are going
putting constructive pressure on organization
pushing corrective actions
Characteristics of Change-Resistant Cultures
Avoid risks
Not making bold proposals
a lax approach to product innovation
We’ve done it that way for years approach
In strong culture companies executives
walk the talk and insist that company values and business principles be reflected in the decisions and actions taken by all company personnel
Corporate culture definition
Cultural traits that are a byproduct of company’s internal climate and personalities
Varies greatly from business to business
Two roles of core values and ethical principals
Fosters work environment where personnel share common beliefs about business conduct
Provide personnel with guidance about manner in which they should do their job
Six Sigma programs are based on three priciples:
All work is process
All processes have variability
all processes create data that explains variability
From a strategy-implementing/strategy executing perspective, the resources allocated to each organizational unit should:
Be strategy driven and based on how much each organizational unit needs to carry out its piece of the strategic plan efficiently and effectively
Important purpose of managing by walking around is to
Gather information and opinions
