Attaining Sustainable Organizational Growth and Profitability

Introduction
​The term decision is used when a grocery store customer encounters an entire aisle of breakfast cereals, we say he has a decision to make. When a high school senior considers which college to attend, we say s/he is facing a decision. When a poker player weighs whether to raise or fold, that's a decision, too. And when a company faces an opportunity - to enter a new market, acquire another company, or launch a new product - what is required of its management? A decision.  The same term is applied to routine as well as complex deliberations, to both small-stakes bets and high-stakes commitments, and to exploratory steps as well as irreversible moves.

​All these decisions have one property in common, the fact that people have to make up their minds in a great variety of circumstances. ​The use of the same word "decision" for deliberations in all these very dissimilar situations is a source of confusion, and makes it very difficult for people to apply any lessons learned or research knowledge in one situation to another situation.

Model-Based Approaches to Decision-Making
These different types of decisions require different approaches, based on a model, that provide a consistent process to help decision makers improve their decision-making. One approach is a model of decision-making based on two (2) factors that influence decision-making, namely:

1. level of control on outcomes, and
2. whether performance is absolute of relative.

​These factors define two (2) dimensions that can be organized into four categories. These categories define a structure/model useful in categorizing decisions that lead to finding useful approaches to improve decision-making. They include the following:

1. Routine Choices and Judgments - In these decisions we have no control over outcomes and our performance is absolute; we are not competing with anyone. Decision-makers can benefit from knowledge of well-known lessons about avoiding common biases that make good sense, and result in good decisions. Examples of these decisions include consumer choices - picking from product selection in a supermarket - and personal investment decisions, or administrative decisions (e.g., where to hold a company's picnic, etc.). 
2. Influencing Outcomes - These are decisions that relate to much of what we do in life - using our energy and talents to make things happen. These involve situations where we can control judgment or outcomes to perform well. Examples include determining how long we will need to complete a project or operational decisions; (e.g., which jobs to schedule into production, etc.). That's a judgment we can control, and performance is absolute.
3. Placing Competitive Bets - In this dimension, we cannot influence outcomes, but performance is no longer a matter of absolute performance. Decisions are tactical and success depends on how well we do relative to others. The best decisions must anticipate the moves of rivals. This is the essence of strategic thinking.
4. Strategic Management Decisions - Strategic management decisions involve managing for strategic success. They involve strategic thinking - the ability of the organization to plan - and strategic choice. For these decisions, decision makers can actively influence outcomes, and success means doing better than rivals. And success depends on the ability of managers to influence the desired outcomes through its people, and the need/expectation to outperform rivals. By definition, these decisions require executives (decision makers) possess the ability to influence outcomes by the way they lead and communicate, and through their ability to inspire and encourage people to perform better than the competition. 

​Decision-makers can improve the quality of their decisions substantially, if before making any decisions they make an assessment of the type of decision(s) required for the situation at hand.

Improving Managerial Decisions
​​In any business enterprise decisions can be made at varying levels in the organization. Managers at all levels in the organization must make decisions on behalf of a company. Those decisions range from simple selection of which conference rooms to use for a meeting, approval decisions, to very difficult decisions - strategic decisions.

Managers face in the course of their daily responsibilities, a range of decisions that are consistent with their positions and roles in the organization. The difference between decisions at the various levels, typically, lies in the type and scope of the decision or choices made. From the point of view of management, managerial decisions can be broadly classified into these categories, namely, strategic, tactical, operational and administrative, which can be aligned with the dimensions of the model defined above.
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1. Strategic Decisions - Strategic decisions are major choices of actions that affect and influence the business organization as a whole. In general, they are complex, unstructured and novel. A manager/decision maker has to apply his/her business judgment, evaluation and intuition into the definition of the problem statement and decision choices. Strategic decisions are influenced by the decision makers knowledge, available information, and mind-set - values and beliefs. They are long-term in scope and affect the competitiveness of the company as a whole.
2. Tactical Decisions - Tactical decisions relate to developing functional/divisional plans, structuring workflows, establishing distribution channels, acquisition of resources such as human resources, materials, and money needed for implementing strategic decisions. These decisions affect development of resources and capabilities in functional areas to support implementation of strategic decisions.
3. Operational Decisions - Operational decisions affect specific day-to-day activities of the enterprise. They are taken repetitively and have a short-term horizon. These decisions are based on facts/data regarding business events and d not require much of business judgment. Operational decisions are taken at the lower levels of management and rely on operations information systems to make rational and informed decisions. Operations management concerns itself with all input-transformation-output processes and enables search for efficiency and optimization by rearranging or changing the processes. 
4. Administrative Decisions - Administration s simply an activity that concerns itself with day-to-day enforcement of policies, rules, and conduct of affairs in the organization.

These decisions concern making choices from alternatives courses of action based on facts, information, and value premises with the intention of moving towards a desired state of affairs. 
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Levels of Management and Decision-Making
All management decisions can be related directly or indirectly to broader management functions: planning, organizing and staffing, leading, and controlling; with different management levels spending more time on certain functions than on others.

​The management decisions based on positions, roles and responsibilities may be defined as follows:

• Board or Owners - A company's board or owners create the mission and write the mission statement for the internal and external audiences. All business and management activity follows from the company's mission. Success in accomplishing the mission could take many forms. The form chosen gives a company its vision, an ideal the business seeks to actualize. A caterer, for instance, might envision becoming the first choice for jet-set soirees. Besides defining a lofty ambition and the existential question of mission, a company's board or owners also articulate the company's core values, those standards the business will never compromise.
• Upper Management - Upper management translates the vast scope of mission and vision into concrete achievements over time. In order words, upper management needs a strategic plan to help it decide the overall direction of the company. Decisions related to strategy involve company-wide matters enacted over the long term. The goals are what the company hopes to accomplish at least a year - - more often five years - into the future. Management then choses a grand strategy such as growth, diversification, etc., to reach the strategic goals. 
• Middle Management - Middle management choses smaller tactical objectives that put together, accomplish strategic goals. Middle management create tactical plans, which have more detail than the strategic plans. The tactics are geared towards some function or department such as production, marketing, etc., where a possible objective could involve some measurable efficiency or quality improvement.
• Operational or Line Management - Operational management is the level; directly responsible for employees. By choosing their own goals on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, operational managers accomplish the objectives of middle management. The scope of operational management covers departments, sections or teams. Inventory, scheduling, and budgeting are examples of plans and decisions that operational managers adopt. Goals might include a certain number of sales for the day. 

The management decision levels defined in terms of positions, roles and responsibilities may have designated decision rights including decision authority associated to each position. An organization’s ability to execute well rests on its ability to make and implement the decisions that matter most.

Decision Rights and Authority
Many organizations struggle with timeliness and clarity of decision making, hampered by a broad range of factors: unclear priorities, consensus decision making, ambiguous decision roles, poor decision and meeting disciplines, siloed behaviors, or organizational structures that thwart collaboration and accountability. 

• Decision rights are a component of organization design, that help identify and establish "what" business decisions need to be made, both to drive the business and to drive alignment to strategy. And "who" is involved in making them and "how" the decisions will be made through operating processes.
• Decision authority is the, power or obligation to make a decision and the duty to answer for its success or failure. There are six (6) common types of Decision Authority, including:

1. Accountability -Accountability is the duty to answer for the success or failure of a decision. 
2. Responsibility - Responsibility is the duty to make a decision or take action as a result of a decision.
3. Delegation - Delegation is the process of granting your decision making authority to another person. You can delegate responsibility, but accountability can't be delegated.
4. Approval - Approval is the process by which decisions that require validation from multiple individuals and/or groups according to a predefined approval list may be done to validate the decision from multiple points of view or to gain broad support for a decision.
5. Consensus - Decisions that require the consensus of a group.
6. Automated Decisions - Decision authority always lies with a person and can't be delegated to a machine. Decisions made by a machine on the authority of the managers who operate the systems making the decision. As such, managers remain accountable and responsible for the decisions made by systems under their control.

Identifying and defining decision rights helps companies to organize their decision making and execution processes by setting clear roles and accountability, and by giving those involved a sense of ownership of decisions.

Strategic Management and Decisions
Strategic management is a decision-making ongoing process through which management intentions and ideas are formulated and realized through implementation of the strategic decisions. Strategic management is concerned with managing the strategy-producing value chain of an organization. This starts by formulating a strategy, translating the strategic choice(s) into objectives organized around strategic themes, goals and initiatives that will enable management to develop action plans for implementation and execution. ​​Strategic management decisions link rhetoric (what people say), choices (what people decide and are willing to pay for), and actions (what people do) in shaping the nature and direction of an organization. Strategic management entails managing for strategic success. 

​Strategic management decisions involve strategic thinking - the ability of the organization to plan - and strategic choice. For these decisions, decision makers can actively influence outcomes (using their abilities to make things happen); and success means doing better than rivals. Success depends on the ability of managers to influence the desired outcomes through its people, and the need/expectation to outperform rivals. By definition, these decisions require executives (decision makers) possess the ability to influence outcomes by the way they lead and communicate, and through their ability to inspire and encourage people to perform better than the competition. 

​Strategic thinking is more about making decisions directed towards achieving defined outcomes. Strategic thinking is the ability of the organization to plan, leadership - the ability to influence the desired outcomes through its people, and the ability to motive the people in the organization to outperform rivals. Strategic thinking is active and ongoing, and is a way of understanding the fundamental drivers of a business organization. Strategic thinking requires envisioning what you want to accomplish and formulating solutions to problems.  Strategic thinking represents the "why" and the "what" of the work you want to accomplish in a particular context and the whole configuration of interconnected and continuous interacting components and systems. Strategic thinking connects the organization's current state and the "to be" future state in order to bridge the differences and close the gap to gain/maintain competitive advantage. 

Strategic Decisions
Strategic decisions are those decisions taken by top management that have an influence over years, decades and even beyond the lifetime of the project. Strategic decisions are novel (new) - there are no well understood or agreed upon procedures for making them, important (i.e., consequential) and non-routine. Strategic decisions are concerned with the whole environment in which the firm operates, the entire resources and the people who form the company, and the interface between the two. The effects of strategic decisions are difficult or expensive to reverse, because they substantially alter, and irrevocably so in the short run, the relationships between the decision-makers' organization and its environment - customers, competitors, suppliers, etc. 

Some examples of strategic decisions include:

• In business, managers made decisions to

1. Enter a new market;
2. Release a new product;
3. Acquire another company;
4. Create new strategic asset or enhance an existing asset - e.g., design of supply chain network, selection of location of production facility, technology.

• In sports, a coach shapes the performance of athletes, melding them into effective team that can outperform the opponent.
• In politics, a candidate inspires donors, builds an organization, attracts and motivates campaign workers, and ultimately persuades voters (shape outcomes).  A winning political campaign depends on smart assessment of rivals, as well as the ability to mobilize supporters, often in the face of long odds. 

Strategic decisions require the decision maker to provide judgment based on insights into the problem situation and choices from alternatives. 

Characteristics of Strategic Decisions
​​Strategic decisions are different from administrative decisions and operational decisions. Administrative decisions are routine decisions which help or rather facilitate strategic decisions or operational decisions. Operational decisions are technical decisions which help execution of strategic decisions. Strategic decisions are characterized by a number of features including:

• Strategic decisions are concerned with possessing new resources, organizing others, or reallocating others, or enhancing existing resources.
• Strategic decisions deal with harmonizing organization's resource capabilities with the threats and opportunities.
• Strategic decisions affect and change the direction of the whole organization, and are long-term in their impact. It is all about what management wants the organization to be like and to be about. 
•  Strategic decisions involve change in behavior of people, organizations and institutions. 
• ​Strategic decisions are surrounded by uncertainty; they always represent risk because they deal with the future and changes in behavior of organizations and institutions which cannot be predicted with any degree of certainty. 

[TBD]

​Strategic Decision-Making  
​Strategic decision-making in concerned with how strategic decisions are made - formulated and implemented (Elbanna 2006). Strategic decision-making is the means by which management intentions are realized (formulated and implemented).​ Strategic decision-making is typically more complex, novel (new) and open-ended (Mintzberg, Raisinghani and Theoret, 1976), and is characterized by independent elements that by definition cannot be formulated, let alone solved independently of one another.' (Mitroff and Emshoff, 1979:1). 

​Strategic decision-making is concerned with strategic choices where business executives (decision makers) can influence outcomes and success means doing better than rivals. Strategic decision makers such as business executives, coaches in sports, or political candidates are not like shoppers or administrators making routine choices that lead to one outcome, or another. They can influence the outcomes by the way they lead and communicate, and through their ability to inspire and encourage others. Moreover, executives are in charge of organizations that compete vigorously with others; doing better than rivals is vital for success.

Components of Strategic Decision-Making
The strategic decision-making process involves issue comprehension, concepts structuring, and concepts formulation into cause-effect relations model. While the cause-effect relations are based on logical and deductive reasoning, the issues comprehension that triggers it, involves choice of assumptions which is to some extent arbitrary and inductive in nature. It is important that managers understand that their choice of assumptions is arbitrary and influenced by their beliefs and mind-set (mental model), and might not accord with reality. So strategic decisions logically flowing from these assumptions if they turn out to be bad/erroneous assumptions, can lead to failure. 

Strategic decision-making activities take place at different times, and may be organized into phases, such as::

1. Intelligence - This phase encompasses gathering relevant information to inform identifying the problems occurring in the organization. The information indicates why, where, and with what effects a situation occurs.
2. Design - This phase deals with developing appropriate and possible solution alternatives to the problems identified in the intelligence phase.
3. Strategic Choice - Strategic choice is the mental process of selecting the "best" or optimal - most appropriate solution (i.e., strategy) from the stock of alternatives that serves the enterprise's objectives. Behavioral models of decision making imply decision makers tend to settle for a "good enough" solution (March & Simon., 1981). This choice takes place in the organizational context and influenced by the decision makers beliefs, assumptions and judgments. The nature of strategic decisions make it possible for decision makers e.g., managers within an organization, to have widely varying and incorrect beliefs about environmental factors which can influence decision quality. Changing beliefs is a marketing effort, and requires time, and coordinated process of communication, conversation, education, and presentation of new evidence. ​The viability of strategic choice depends in large part on managers' knowledge about the current situation, and probable reactions of their company, competitors, customers, and broader public. 
4. Implementation - This phase involves actions needed to make changes in the organizational capacity to enable it to resolve the problem.

A major problem in strategic decision making is predicting the future of the organization in achieving its mission, and its environment and matching the characteristics of the organization to the environment. The decision-maker has to perceive and understand problems; once perceived, solution ideas must be formulated then choices have to be made about a particular solution which is then implemented. 

​For example, customers’ utility for a product (goods or service), and managers’ opinions of the customers’ perceptions of quality for that product (goods or service), can be inversely related. These beliefs influence the choice of assumptions underlying the manager’s strategic decisions and determine how good/bad the decision is. Erroneous assumptions can lead to bad/poor strategic choice which in turn, can lead ultimately to strategic decision failing at implementation.

Factors Influencing Strategic Decisions and Choices
A number of factors can exert decisive influence on the success of strategy decisions and choices. These may include the following:

1. Decision-Making Complexity -This derives from the recursive logic of thought and actions embedded in the strategic decision-making process, and is common at the different management levels in the organization. Each of which deals with different problems and relies on different sources of knowledge. Decision makers need to engage in a cognitive process, in the form of heuristics - rules of thumb, common sense, intuition or educated guesses - to create new solutions based on old experiences. To choose a good option, past data, current data, forecast data and various other factors must be examined carefully. make a good selection  
2. Uncertainty - Uncertainty is the state of having limited availability to critical information. Managers choose a strategic option on the basis of relevant data and information such as current conditions or future outcomes - possible outcomes that are unknown. The effects of uncertainty create obstacles and challenges to strategic decision-making due to limited knowledge of current conditions and gaps in knowledge of future outcomes. In these situations, managers face the extremely difficult problem in making decisions that demand a long-term perspective, committing the firm in the long run within a competitive landscape that is unlikely to stand still.
3. Decision Complexity - Decision complexity derives from: the inter-relationship among choices. For example, the strategic decision to enter a new market will require a major allocation of resources across different parts of the organization such as marketing, finance, operations, etc. This in turn will lead to the consideration of other strategic choices associated with the primary strategic decision, resulting in cascading decisions which is a source of complexity. 
4. Social Complexity - Social complexity derives from Managers and decision makers having differing individual mental models (or mindsets) of the world which then influences how people approach resolving the issues and problem; how these issues relate and impact perceived implications in relation to the strategic choices open to them. Differences in mind-sets (mental models) may also lead to cognitive conflict among decision makers due to possible differences in the individual manager's comprehension and interpretation of issues can lead to disagreements among decision makers and/or individual managers' about the strategic choices to pursue. This manifests itself in managers doubts about how organizational values should guide the decision or choice of action.
5. Beliefs, Assumptions and Judgments - Strategic choice takes place in the organizational context and influenced by the decision makers beliefs, assumptions and judgments. The nature of strategic decisions make it possible for decision makers e.g., managers within an organization, to have widely varying and incorrect beliefs about environmental factors which can influence decision quality. A belief is a conclusion about how the world works, held by an individual. Once formed, our beliefs drive our actions. While beliefs are applied by individuals, they are also formed and applied by groups. And it is in this regard that beliefs play an important role in organizational life and shaping culture. Shared organizational beliefs can impact performance in a number of ways. Most managers don’t understand that their choice of assumptions is arbitrary influenced by their beliefs and that those assumptions might not accord with reality so strategic decisions logically flowing from bad/erroneous assumptions can lead to bad/poor decisions which can, in turn, ultimately to strategy failing at implementation and execution.

​Strategic thinking is essentially the process of determining the direction an entity (business, team, or individual) will take to achieve its long-term goals and vision. Strategic thinking involves the intentional and rational thought process that focuses on the analysis of critical factors and variables that will influence the long-term success of a business, team, or individual plan to achieve some specified objectives and goals. 

Strategy Execution and Management Decision-Making
Strategy execution is a disciplined and systematic approach to managing - directing, controlling and facilitating - the day-to-day decisions and activities undertaken at all levels in the organization involving top management through middle management, and front-line managers and workers that carryout the ongoing pursuit of a strategy and complete it. Strategy execution makes the implemented strategy work as intended, and turn implemented strategy into organizational success. 

Managing strategy implementation and execution is a function of strategic management. Strategic management is one of the most vital activities since it encompasses the business organization's entire scope of strategic decision-making. Strategy execution management is a process of managing people, strategy and operations; Execution involves doing things (such as making decisions and directing activities) to create "fits" between the way things are done and what it takes to make the strategy work as intended. (how things should be done) within the context of the strategy implementation. 

Successful strategy execution involves decisions about managing changes to appropriate elements of the Operating Model which is concerned with how resources are organized and operated to get critical work done. Changes to elements of the organization's Operating Model may include: governance, accountability, or culture, and in some cases overhauling the whole structure, when a company's strategy changes. These decisions about change take place within an organizational context of power, culture, leadership, and ability to manage change. This makes it more difficult for managers to control execution. 

Challenges to Successful Execution
Strategy execution can fail - not accomplishing the desired outcomes - for myriad reasons including the inability of the organization to manage its strategy very well when faced with the following challenging situations:

• Economy - Economic upheavals that simply do not provide any room for new businesses to survive, grow and thrive.
• Competitors - Actions of competitors.
• Market - Business challenges inherent in the market.
• Resource Availability - Lack of availability of adequate resources.

These challenges are not the reasons at fault, since other businesses are able to survive, grow and thrive. The real (causal) reason can be attributed to mismanagement - inability of the business organization to manage its strategy very well.


Factors Influencing Effective Strategy Execution
In addition to poor management decision-making, other factors that can influence successful strategy execution; may include:

1. Bad Strategy - A bad strategy is a strategy that does not define an approach/means to respond to a challenge (opportunity/threat), or solve a known problem. Bad strategy is reflected in an organization's failure to face the problems that pose threat to its survival and profitable growth. A good strategy, for example, aligns with well diagnosed strategic issue and basic problem; and is an approach to overcoming an obstacle; or a response to a challenge.  A good strategy is a mixture of policy and action designed to surmount a challenge/problem. 
2. Bad Strategic Decisions - Strategic decisions are among the main means through which management choices are actually realized. Bad strategic decisions are strategic decisions whose outcomes are the wrong expected outcomes, and result in business failure/decline. 
3. Poor Implementation - This is failure of strategic initiatives that define major efforts/actions required to close identified strategic gaps to achieve intended objectives, so the organization can make progress towards its strategic goals. The gaps may be (1) between strategy and organization capabilities, (2) between strategy and the reward structure, (3) between strategy and internal support systems, and (4) between strategy and the organization's culture. Poor implementation may result in weak strategic assets that do not close the strategic gap, and make successful execution is unlikely. 
4. Inadequate Structure - The organization structure defines appropriate boundaries for lines of business, shared services and functions, centers of expertise and other integrative and coordinating methods and mechanisms that allow the company to leverage scale and expertise. The structure in addition specifies the size and shape of the organization with indicative resource levels and locations. Inadequate structure is a structure that is not aligned with the strategy and supportive of it. 
5. Culture - Organizational culture is the overall atmosphere within the company, particularly with respect to its members and their involvement in how work gets done.  The company should foster a culture of being responsible and accountable for one's actions with corresponding incentives and sanctions for good and bad behavior.
6. ​Accountability - This specifies and clarifies the Roles, Responsibilities of the main organizational entities, including ownership of P&Ls and a clear value-adding role for the corporate center. There should be clear guidelines for the roles each organizational unit will play in critical decisions. A rewards system linked to these accountability reinforces strong execution.  
7. Poor Coordination - Implementation and Execution Takes time, Execution Involves Many People, Execution involves managers across all levels in the organization this requires leadership in coordinating management and staff in properly performing their tasks to accomplish work.
8. Not Managing Change - This relates to the difficulty of managing employee resistance to change. People become comfortable with the way the business is run; they know the expectations and their role within the company. When a major change disrupts their familiarity, some employees become upset; they don't want to relearn their jobs or change the way they have done things. The leadership in the organization need to support the employees and provide training for any new responsibilities to ease the transition.
9. Poor Leadership - Effective strategy execution requires leadership and management effectively communicate the vision and mission of the organization to employees and ensure they are aligned with the vision and mission goals and objectives.  Leadership must also understand the the current climate (influenced by culture) and ensure the organization climate is appropriate to support successful strategy execution or make the appropriate and necessary changes to culture.  Clarifying Decision Rights and Norms.
10. Poor Communication - Failing to communicate effectively creates uncertainty and makes employees feel as if they are not part of the team and decisions. This invites fear and rumors into the work environment, disrupting work and progress towards change implementation. Keeping employees updated regularly about the progress of strategy performance improves employee involvement.
11. Poor Planning - This results in inefficient utilization of resources such as time and labor as well as lack of capacity to managing change. Without adequate planning, change in the organization is likely to fall apart or cause more problems than benefits Poor planning may lead to strategy execution failure resulting from: bad or unrealistic schedules for project team members resulting in waste of time and poor time management; lack of clear definition of strategy and project objectives; lack of budgetary controls leading to misuse of funds, etc. 

All these factors are interdependent and their influences are non-deterministic; this typically, makes it very difficult for managers to comprehend the contribution of each of the factors to successful outcomes of strategy execution. Each of the factors influences execution success/failure in a different way; if an organization fails to pay proper attention to one of these factors, it can result in execution failure, therefore an organization needs a system and approach to support management of these factors and their influence on successful execution. ​

Effective Strategy Execution Management
Effective strategy execution management involves closing the "execution" gap - the gap between actual/current strategy performance and intended desired performance. The actual strategy realized from execution is the combination of the executed part of the intended (deliberate) strategy - what managers have set out in advance and intend to do - as part of some important strategic plan, and emergent strategy - the executed as-needed reactions to unanticipated developments and fresh competitive pressures. 

Strategy execution involves change in people that typically takes over a long period of time, this makes it more likely that the conditions under which the strategy formulation took place will change and unforeseen circumstances may arise to derail the execution. Managing organizational change requires a system of controls - a tool designed by managers to help them monitor and evaluate the progress of activities directed towards executing the organization's implemented strategy.

Strategic Control
​Management needs to also understand the interactions among key execution decisions and actions, and contextual forces that create significant and persistent execution gap as measured by the Operating Model. An important task of managers is to design strategic control systems for successfully implementing and executing a strategy.

Strategic control systems provide managers with the tools to regulate and govern their activities. In strategic control, managers first select strategy and organization structure, and then create control systems to evaluate and monitor the progress of activities directed towards implementing and executing strategies. Finally, they adopt corrective actions through adjustments in the strategy if variations are detected. Strategic control systems provide managers the tools to regulate and govern their activities through both proactive (feed forward) and reactive (feedback) mechanisms. Proactive control systems help in keeping an organization on track, anticipating future events and responding to opportunities and threats. Reactive control systems help detect deviations after events have occurred and then take corrective actions. 

​Strategic managers create control systems to monitor the quality of products. Strategic control systems further help managers achieve superior efficiency, quality, innovation and responsiveness to customers. Strategic managers can measure efficiency by comparing the total inputs with the total outputs (how many units of inputs are used to produce a unit of output). Strategic control systems can also help in encouraging employees to think about innovation. Strategic control systems make employees more responsive to customers through monitoring and evaluating employees' behavior and contact with customers.

Introduction
Strategy implementation is an action-oriented activity, it revolves around the management of people resources, and business processes. Strategy implementation is the process of making the chosen strategy operational by translating it into action plans so it can be executed successfully. Implementation provides the connecting loop between the strategic choice - selected strategic option from formulation - and execution and control. ​

Successful implementation depends on the following:

• Resolving several strategic issues,
• Creating sound organization structure,
• Managing organizational change,
• Developing core competencies,
• Creating valuable capabilities,
• Leading people effectively,
• Building people-management skills,
• Integrating the work efforts of many teams of employees,
• Working out measures to overcome ingrained inertia and thee traditional attitude toward staying with the present practices,
• Overcoming pockets of disagreement,
• Securing cooperation of all those who matter in the strategy implementation,
• Motivating people,
• Achieving continuous improvement in business processes,
• Allocating adequate resources to various work teams,
• Establishing strategy-supportive policies and corporate culture,
• Installing support systems.

A strategy has to be successfully implemented and executed to be effective and of any use to an organization.

If the corporation has the capabilities, enterprise advantage, and business portfolio it wants its corporate strategy is implemented. If the business unit has the customers, value proposition, and skills it has chosen to have, its business strategy is also fully implemented. Technically, a strategy can never actually be fully implemented because everything that was necessarily assumed when formulating the strategy - about customers, technology, regulation, labor market, competitors, and so on - is in a constant state of flux. There will always be a gap between where the company is and what its strategy call for. Closing this gap is implementation. 

Factors Influencing Successful Strategy Implementation  
Strategy Implementation is fraught with challenges as evidenced by the low percentage of strategies that are effectively implemented. Strategy implementation require a number of key components to be successful, including: 

1. Poor Leadership - This is the capability the organization must possess at decent levels to enable the organization's leaders and managers to effectively organize, coordinate and communicate the organization's direction and vision to the workforce and keep them motivated and committed to achieve the mission and strategic objectives and goals. Poor leadership is manifested as follows: (1) Lack of emphasis on the interfaces within the organization,  (2) Failing to get employees buy-in in the new strategy, (3) Failing to direct employee capabilities toward the new strategy, (4) Failing to keep employees motivated and committed to the strategy implementation, (5) Lack of controls in terms of progress reviews and appropriate corrective actions.
2. Information Availability and Accuracy - This represents an organization capacity to provide information system of processes and information flows that link the organization together and make accurate information available in a timely manner to support effective decision-making, communication and learning. Inadequate information systems capacity leading to poor Information Flows and availability of accurate information to support fast and accurate progress tracking, timely intervention, and corrective action at the right time and place.may result in the degradation in certain management functions such as: (1) Poor Coordination - Poor coordination across functional areas, (2) Poor Strategic Decision-making  resulting in bad decisions such as late and/or untimely decisions, (3) Bad Strategic Decisions - Bad decisions.
3. Uncertainty - Uncertainty is a state of having limited knowledge of current conditions or future outcomes. Uncertainty creates obstacles and challenges to decision-making due to limited knowledge of current conditions and gaps in our understanding of future outcomes, and effects management behavior in performing their duties have on those outcomes. 
4. Organization Structure -  Organization structure provides an explanation of the decision-making process and clarifies the roles and responsibilities, allocation of human resources - the way people and tasks/work are organized and roles and responsibilities are assigned to people. The structure enables strategic alignment - effective cascading of objectives, goals, and decision rights to the appropriate people (actors) in the functional areas of the organization with the capability and capacity to perform the actions at the right time and place to accomplish the requisite goals and objectives.
5. Organization Culture - Organization culture defines the particular way the organization solves problems of survival through adaptation to external environment and internal integration which is supportive of the strategy. Organizational culture is the collective behavior of humans who are part of an organization, and the meanings they attach to their actions. Culture includes the organizational values, vision, norms, working language, systems, symbols, beliefs and habits. Culture manifests itself in the particular way things are done in an organization including how decisions are made. It affects who gets hired, how they get trained (formally or informally), what behaviors get rewarded, who gets promoted, and virtually all organizational procedures and administrative protocols. 
6. Human Resources - Human resources are the people that comprise the workforce including managers of an organization, and the adequacy of their competencies, knowledge and skills. Human resources represent one the category of assets employed by an organization to create and deliver products and services to customers. "Do you have enough people to implement the strategies?" and "Do you have the right people in the organization to implement the strategies?" This core issues area relates to the knowledge, experience, and skills of the people (workforce) in the organization, and .is a determining factor in implementation success. Organizations invest in recruiting and training to build this capability critical to successful implementation.
7. Technology Trends - Technological trends include not only the glamorous invention that revolutionizes the lives of the actors in the organization and its environments, but also the gradual painstaking improvements in methods, in materials, in design, in application, unemployment, and the transportation and commercial base nd their diffusion into new industries and efficiency. 

​All these factors that influence the successful implementation of a strategy are interdependent and their influences are non-deterministic it is typically very difficult for managers to comprehend the contribution of these factors to the successful outcomes of strategy implementation making strategy implementation very hard.

Each of the factors influences implementation outcomes (closing the gap) in a different way; if an organization fails to pay proper attention to one of these factors, it can result in implementation failure, therefore an organization needs a system and approach to support management in successful execution. ​​

Effective Strategy Implementation Management
Successful strategy implementation provides the context for successful execution, and involves managing change in the organization's internal environment which then allows the organization to successfully adapt to the changing external environment in which it operates but cannot control.

In a rapidly changing world any competitive advantage a firm creates is temporary and not sustainable; without systematic changes to the firm's strategy and plans so it can respond and take advantage of opportunities that emerge as a result of changes in the environment while managing emerging threats that successful execution. Strategy implementation is the responsibility of top, middle and lower/line managers focused on building capacity through projects and programs to strengthen the organization, and enable it to better deliver value to customers while meeting stakeholders expectations. 

​[TBD]
Typically, the implementation gap - the  gap between the strategic plan and its implementation - is caused by missing integrative links such as:

1. Focus on Strategic Initiatives - Strategic change in organizations is largely delivered through multiple projects and programs. The absence of an implementation process that is focused on a portfolio of strategy-fulfilling projects can result in an implementation gap.
2. Shared Top-Down Understanding - The firm's vision and strategic plan are generally created by top executives of the organization. The plan's implementation is carried out by middle and line management, and professionals and lower level employees through changes in operations and delivery of projects. Disconnects in both directions (top-down and bottom-up views) are often found to exist in the organization.
3. Organizational Focal Point - Lack of organizational focal point that is responsible for overseeing the implementation of all the strategic projects. A vertical implementation rather than a cross-organizational implementation, invariably occurs. Delegating responsibilities to the functional level VPs is a common problem.
4. Alignment Across Functions - This missing link relates to not having a cross-functional group that is responsible for strategic level decisions during implementation. The key here is making priority, resource, and other trade-off decisions among all the critically important projects.
5. Executive Transition Mitigation - Frequent turnover of executives at VP level or above often result in dramatic implementation slowdowns and organizational conflicts.
6. Feedback Loop - A missing link is a set of performance metrics and control reports that enable feedback, organizational learning, and continuous improvement over time. Sustaining competitive advantage over time makes continuous improvement mandatory.

 ​​
​[BD]



Execution
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Typically, the value delivered by enhanced and strengthened existing assets or new assets is causally and temporally separated from the successful completion of the strategic initiatives that produced those assets. Any cause-effect relationships may involve two (2) or more stages; making it difficult for managers to fully comprehend the contribution of these assets to the success/failure of the implementation and execution of the strategy. 

In the absence of certain cause-effect relationships or experience in how these dialectical (verbal) processes between organizations will unfold, the firm can only hypothesize about the effects of different possible initiatives, and learn more about them through interaction with other actors such as competitors, regulators, customers, suppliers, and partners in its competitive landscape. 

Implementation Gap and Gap Analysis
Strategic gap analysis attempts to determine what a company should do differently to achieve a particular goal by looking at the time frame, management, budget and other factors to determine where shortcomings lies. 

Strategy implementation involves change - closing the gap between organization's current capacity and the capacity the strategy calls for.  The implementation gap can be manifested as:

• management induced gap - Gaps caused by the way management acts to implement strategic initiatives. Management can cause gaps to exist between strategy and execution through both action and inaction. Some of the ways management causes these gaps includes: failure to secure support for the plan, failure to communicate the strategy, failure to adhere to the plan, and failure to adapt to significant changes.
• Process Induced Gap - Gaps caused by the failure of traditional processes (e.g., budgeting, forecasting, reporting) used to implement and monitor strategy.
• .Technology Induced Gaps - Caps caused by technology systems used to support those processes such as planning, budgeting, forecasting, and reporting processes.
• Culture - [TBD]

​Strategy implementation decisions and actions are the means through which management intentions and choices are actually realized. 

​

Introduction
A strategic issue is essentially an issue - an unresolved question (i.e., a fundamental policy question) or critical challenge needing a decision or waiting for some clarifying future event. It is strategic in that it affects or has a major impact on successfully achieving the organization's mission. It is an issue that must be resolved if the organization is to achieve its mission. An organization may believe that the strategic issue will be relatively easy to resolve or extremely difficult or even impossible to resolve (or somewhere in between). The degree of difficulty should not be the focus, but rather, the focus should be on the degree to which the issue is an obstacle to the organization achieving its mission.

Strategic issues are triggered by any one of a myriad of organizational issues or events of strategic relevance, such as:

1. Mandates - Issues related to carrying out mandates successfully.
2. Mission and values - Issues related to successfully accomplishing the mission.
3. Stakeholders - Issues related to meeting stakeholders' expectations.
4. Internal strengths and weaknesses - Issues related to successfully leveraging organizational strengths such as resources, structure, processes, management, product offering, financing, or organizational design; or avoiding weaknesses.
5. Opportunities and threats - Issues related to capitalizing on opportunities - clients, users or payers, or mitigating threats to minimize risk of loss. 

In order for an issue to be raised and resolved effectively, the organization must be prepared to deal with the conflicts associated with the issue. Strategic issues by definition embody conflicts. These conflicts may be over ends ("what"); means ("how"); philosophy ("why"); location ("where"); timing ("when"); and who might be helped or hurt by the different ways of resolving the issue ("who").

Strategic Issues Diagnosis
Strategic issues diagnosis is a problem formulation process involving strategic decisions and decision-making processes to identify problems underlying strategic issues that are of strategic relevance, and deciding on potential courses of action (strategies) to pursue to resolve those problem(s). Strategic issues diagnosis defines the methods/process for identifying strategic issues and problems facing the organization. Deciding how to solve the problem, i.e., strategy development, creates the need for more information and analysis. 

Strategic Issues Identification
Strategic issues identification focuses organizational attention on what is truly important for the survival, prosperity and effectiveness of the organization - and provides useful advice on how to achieve these aims. The strategic issues identification step focuses organizational attention on what is truly important for the survival, prosperity and effectiveness of the organization - and provides useful advice on how to achieve these aims. It is vital that strategic issues be identified and dealt with expeditiously and effectively if the organization is to survive and prosper. An organization that does not address its strategic issues may be unable to head off threats, and unable to capitalize on important opportunities, or both.

Problem Formulation 
​Strategic issues must clearly relate to specific strategic problems facing the organization; additionally, they must be specific to the particular organization or industry. Analysis is the process of organizing and presenting information in an analytical way/manner that assists in better defining the problem scope or narrowing  down its causes so that solutions may be more effectively created. This includes such things as determining what caused the problem, why does it continue to exist, will it go away on its own, how long has it existed, how serious is it, how soon does it have to be solved, and what internal and external factors contribute to the problem. 

Problem Analysis
​Problem analysis requires you to build a model of the problem, collect some data and information to test your hypotheses and assumptions underlying the problem to even discover what the real problems are to solve. The process is akin to an "empirical discovery loop" that enables systematic discovery and formulation of problems in complex real world situations such as strategy and policy making. Deciding how to solve a problem once its been stated creates the need for more information and data gathering, and analysis and synthesis.

Problem Statements
Defining problems of strategic relevance is hard because identifying these problems are difficult, partly because of complexity induced by the complicated structures of these problems, uncertainty due to incomplete information, and turbulence in the environment. Strategic issue problems are cross-functional in nature and have major long-term consequences for the organization's success because they impact the organization's competitive position - performing better than rivals/competitors. A strategic issue problem is composed of many interrelated sub-problems, possibly from different domains, e.g., such as expressed through business architecture domains, etc.
 
A problem statement for a strategic issue is based on a model comprising three (3) elements:

1. Description - The issue should be described succinctly, preferably in a single paragraph. The issue itself should be framed as a question the organization can do something about.
2. Factors - Factors that make the issue a fundamental policy question should be listed. In particular, what is it about mandates, mission, values or internal strengths and weaknesses, and external opportunities and threats that make this a strategic issue?
3. Consequences - The organization should state the consequences of failure to address the issue. A review of the consequences will inform judgments of just how strategic, or important various issues are. 

The problem statement describes the problem scope, variables and factors, and narrows the assumptions of cause-effect relationships so that potential solutions may be more effectively explored.

Strategic Issues Diagnosis Outputs/Results
The substantive outputs of strategic issues diagnosis are assumptions, cause-effects understanding (beliefs), predictive judgments, and symbolic language labels. These elements facilitate decision-making during the strategy (solution) development stages of strategic planning.

• Assumptions - Assumptions are premises, conditions, events or attributes that are or must be taken as 'given' or true by any individual or group in exploring a strategic issue or problem. They are those data points, facts, or beliefs which in the view of individuals represent elements of the world around them. 
• Cause-effect understandings - In the course of resolving an issue or problem individuals generate understandings of how various events/conditions and concepts relate together in a causal manner. These beliefs are like the causal links which comprise cognitive maps except that they are specific to a particular strategic problem/issue.
• Predictive judgments - Predictive judgments are judgments that involve assessments of future events surrounding a strategic issue or problem. Assumptions and cause-effect understandings, tacitly accepted or consciously explicated, are crystalized in the form of predictive judgments. Some examples include: Estimates of the likely effects of changes in such variables as marketing expenditures; definition of market boundaries; cash flow projections based on current or desired portfolio; R&D expenses and investment intensity on performance in ROI, cash flow, and/or market share.
• Symbolic Elements - Language and label for defining domain concepts. 

These elements can constrain or facilitate strategic decision-making during the issues diagnosis and subsequent strategy formulation stages of strategic management. Strategic decision making requires the decision makers to provide judgement, evaluation, and insights into the problem definition. 

Solutions (Strategy) Formulation
Defining solutions to strategic issues' problems is a problem solving process that results in the formulation of a set of strategic alternatives/options. A solution - option/alternative - is a set of hypothetical solution approaches to solving the problems identified from strategic issues diagnosis. Solutions lead to the generation of possible strategic objectives. 

Linking Strategic Issues to Strategy Formulation and Mission
A solution may link strategic issue(s) directly to strategy formulation. The strategy derives most of its content directly from the strategic issues. This content is restated and augmented with additional information in the form of decisions - captured in a formal model - which clearly enunciates the organization's vision as to future course and direction. Formulation involves crafting appropriate strategies to respond to the strategic issues/problems, and is an intellectual and entrepreneurial endeavor. It often requires you to build a model of the problem, collect some data and information to test your hypotheses and assumptions underlying the problem, to even discover what the real problems are to solve. A model of the strategy allows us to explore and evaluate the upside potential, the downside risk, the resource consumption and the probabilities of success for the alternatives, and select the best direction.

Strategic issues may also link to the mission - defines the future role of the organization and organization goals - general and continually intended results necessary and sufficient to satisfy the organization's concept of success. This is a two (2) relationship: (1) these may arise because of the recognition that the organization is not fulfilling the commitments made in the mission statement; (2) the content of the mission statement and goals reveals some misalignments. These lead to identification of those strategic initiatives required in the next year or so to close the gap