Good Strategy Formulation Essay Example

Specific Objectives

1. Strategy formulation presupposes a set of goals and objectives. Why aren’t goals and objectives obvious? What characteristics of people and organizations can make setting goals and objectives difficult?
Strategy formulation is a plan developed by an organization to reach its goals and objectives. A well formulated strategy can enable an organization to reach its maximum effectiveness. Unfortunately, the goals and objectives aren’t too obvious; as often it’s found that either organization or its people lose the sight of focusing on its goals/objectives and aim only at generating maximum revenue.
The effectiveness of a strategy is often affected by the quality of people (top, middle and lower management) and organization involved in it. The three key factors that make setting goals and objectives more difficult are:
Personality – Personality is the primary determinant of Strategy formulation. It emphasizes the fact that strategy should match with manager’s leadership style.
Context on behaviour – It considers the effect of context on behaviour and emphasizes manager’s flexibility to master different strategic situations.

Hierarchical relationships – It analyses the impact of relationships between top and middle management on strategy implementation.

Lack of information transfer to employees – Lack of knowledge transfer to lower management and employees leads to miscommunication and often results in unsuccessful setting of goals and objectives.
2. Objectives function at various levels of scope and specificity. Objectives need to be prioritized, or ranked. What techniques assist managers in ranking objectives? What obstacles stand in the way of achieving agreement as to the ranking of objectives and prioritizing tasks?
Indeed, objectives function at various levels of scope and specificity. From a business perspective, the objective first needs to be prioritized and then it could be ranked on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the most important objective.

The objectives that stand in the way of achieving agreement as to the ranking of objectives and prioritizing tasks are:

Communication – Communication should be in such a way so that the entire organization is abreast of its objectives and the consequent agreement.

Inadequate planning – Inadequate planning happens if the objectives are not placed well at the time of internal planning.

Policy modifications – Policies of an organization should be modified based on its objectives.
Organization structure – Hierarchy model and organization structure can stand in the way of ranking objectives.
People – It is often the internal people (employees & management) as well as external people (vendors, dealers, clients, customers) that could hinder achieving agreements.

References

Yang, Sun & Eppler (2010) Handbook of Research on Strategy Process. Print.