Reflect and write a short 150-200 word reflection addressing the following questions:

• What did you think about while participating in the journal as it relates to your personalor work-related experience(s)?
• What skills and concepts have you gained from participating in the journal?
• What did you know before; what did you want to know; and what did you learn in the journal?
• What did you learn in the journal that you won't forget tomorrow?

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Essentials of Management - STRATEGY COURTESY OF VARIOUS WALL STREET JOURNALS Page 1 of 5 Figuring out where you are heading, and now you intend to get there. Its the managers job to make sure the group has a clear mission, a strategy for achieving that vision, and clear goals to be met along the way Youre ready to lead but where are you going? Managers must know where they are going and have a clear plan for getting there. This sounds simple, but in practice it takes extraordinary discipline. To understand why, take a single day in your own life and analyze your actions. How much of what you do in a day is in conscious pursuit of goals you set for yourself? The unique gift of being human is selfawareness the ability to think about and ultimately make decisions about what you do with your life. But it is a gift often forgotten or trampled in the hubbub of daily life as we respond to the demands of others, or reacts to external stimuli, or deals with unexpected crises or simply fulfills biological needs to eat, sleep, and make it through the day. For the manager, the problem is multiplied many times over. As a manager, you are responsible for a whole group of people who have their own needs and demands and expect you to help meet them. You have a number of tasks you are expected to perform each day, and a schedule of meetings you must attend. Odds are youll deal daily with several people who at least act as if they are your boss, telling you what you need to be doing. And then there are the other colleagues, customers, contractors, suppliers who have their own ideas about how you should spend your time. In such a work environment, its easy to focus on the problems. You may have an overbearing boss, an extremely limited budget, you many not have enough people to do the job youve been asked to do, you may be part of a culture that is hugely resistant to change. In thousands of ways, your actions may be constrained. Your job as a manager is to focus on what you can and should do, and how to get it done. In Stephen Coveys bestseller, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, habit number one is be proactive, our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. As a manager, your responsibility to be proactive expands to your whole team. Take charge. Dont be a prisoner of habit or tradition. Dont get trapped in some predecessors long obsolete agenda. Dont let the demands of others keep you and your group from doing what you know you should be doing. Dont focus on the constraints. Focus on the possibilities. Being a manager means you have been called on to exercise that most fundamental and valuable gift of human existence: to choose, to set a course, to determine your destiny. Coveys first rule be proactive is followed by an important second rule begin with the end in mind. You need to know where you want to go. You need a plan to get there. And then each decision along the way can be made with an eye toward fulfilling that plan and reaching the goal. While making decisions is a critical part of the managers job, those decisions are worth little if they dont fit into some broader plan, and if they dont keep the organization on a path to some larger goals. The essence of strategic thinking: understanding how each small decision a manager makes helps lead to a desired destination.1 1 The Strategy-Focused Organization, Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, Harvard Business Press, 2001 Essentials of Management - STRATEGY COURTESY OF VARIOUS WALL STREET JOURNALS Page 2 of 5 Figuring out where you are heading, and now you intend to get there. Its the managers job to make sure the group has a clear mission, a strategy for achieving that vision, and clear goals to be met along the way Divide the process into three steps: Mission, what is it you are setting out to do? Strategy, what is a realistic plan for accomplishing your mission given the environment in which you operate? Individual and Operational goals, the things that each team member must accomplish, and the timetable for accomplishing them consistent with strategy and mission. CHANGE: These things arent set in cement. Goals may be reset regularly to take into account changes in the environment and changes in resources, or to take advantage of new opportunities. Strategy should be changed less frequently strategies need time to be successful, and a constantly changing strategy can be disruptive to an organization. Mission should change least of all: as long as your employees have a clear sense of the end destination they can accept changing goals and readjusting strategies along the way. Strategy is only valuable if it is intricately connected to the process of execution. Mission, strategy, goals, they are the right placed to start. But they are only a start. THE MISSION STATEMENT Every organization needs a mission statement. The mission statement is the highest articulation that gives everyone in the organization a shared focus and a shared goal. It helps create unity of purpose. Mission statements vary from organization to organization they generally attempt to answer the following three base questions: What do we do? How do we do it? For whom do we do it? How long should a mission statement be? There is no simple rule here. Mission statements need to be memorable. They should be as short as they can be in order to do the job at hand, but not so short as to be useless. Proceed cautiously. Make sure whatever you do is consistent with the broader mission of the organization. Proliferating and conflicting missions within the same organization are a recipe for chaos. When drafting a new mission statement its a good idea to involve as many people as possible. A key to your success is having the entire organization feel committed to a common goal. Members of the organization will feel more committed if theyve had the opportunity to participate in defining that goal. They should never be written by a committee.2 STRATEGY Sun Tzus book, The Art of War refers to the degree to which the people shared the goals of their leaders. The disciplines of military strategy assessing the opposition; surveying the playing field; making careful measurements, calculations, and comparisons; and thinking ahead, 2 Murray, Alan. The Wall Street Journal essential guide to management: lasting lessons from the best leadership minds of our time. 1st ed., 2010; Harper Collins Publishers Essentials of Management - STRATEGY COURTESY OF VARIOUS WALL STREET JOURNALS Page 3 of 5 Figuring out where you are heading, and now you intend to get there. Its the managers job to make sure the group has a clear mission, a strategy for achieving that vision, and clear goals to be met along the way as if playing a game of multidimensional (chess) are the same disciplines that are keys to the success of any organizational strategy.3 In business, strategy tends to focus on differentiation. Strategy, a deliberate search for a plan of action that will develop a businesss competitive advantage and compound it. In the classical economists view of the world, numerous players in a market compete against one another, driving prices down and quality up, and keeping profits modest. Strategy is all about creating a strong position for your product or service that allows you to garner outside profits. Five key competitive forces that will determine the ability of your product or service to achieve a strong strategic position: Entry. How easy is it for others to enter your market? Do newcomers face significant barriers, or do they expect sharp retaliation from existing competitors? Threat of substitution. Are there other products and services that can easily be substituted for yours? Bargaining power of buyers. Are a small number of buyers responsible for a large portion of your sales? Can they easily switch suppliers, or go into your business themselves? Bargaining power of suppliers. Do you have multiple suppliers? Are there substitutes you can use? Is it easy to switch suppliers? Are you a relatively important customer? Rivalry among current competitors. How intense is the rivalry among the firms you compete with? This will affect your ability to sustain profits. The goal of these strategies is not to beat the competition, but to make the competition irrelevant. Businesses should focus less on their competitors, and more on noncustomers, or potential new customers. FORUMLATING A STRATEGY (SWOT ANALYSIS) Look outward: assess your organizations environment. Who are the other players on your playing field? Who else may join in? What are the conditions you all face? Where are the opportunities that have yet to be exploited, and the risks waiting to be uncovered? Look inward: assess your organizations strengths and weaknesses. What resources do you have or can you call on? What capabilities does your group possess and what capabilities can it acquire? What are your inherent competitive advantages? Identify multiple threats and opportunities. Its important that your strategic planning process look at all the possible alternatives for going forward, not just one. The process of careful analytic comparison will help you make the wisest choices. Evaluate the effects of the strategies on all parts of your organization. Before settling on a strategy, you need to make sure you understand how it affects every aspect of the organization. 3 The Art of War, by Sun Tzu, Shambala, 1988 Essentials of Management - STRATEGY COURTESY OF VARIOUS WALL STREET JOURNALS Page 4 of 5 Figuring out where you are heading, and now you intend to get there. Its the managers job to make sure the group has a clear mission, a strategy for achieving that vision, and clear goals to be met along the way Create alignment. This is critical. You need to make sure everyone in your organization understands the strategy, understands his or her part in that strategy, and is in alignment with it. The effective manager needs to be at once both resolute, and open to new ideas and information. Peter Drucker suggest this discipline: Every three years, an organization should challenge every product, service, policy, distribution channel with the question If we were not in it already, would we be going into it now?4 SETTING GOALS Setting goals is a critical part of every managers job. Your group needs clear goals that can be met in a clearly articulated time frame. And every member of your group needs a set of personal goals, with clear deadlines or target dates attached. As much as possible, you should involve members of your team in the goal setting process. That serves two purposes. First, it allows you to tap the expertise and knowledge of others in the group. Second, it helps ensure alignment with the goals, once they are set. If you are trying to change an entrenched culture, and have little time to make the changes, you may impose goals from the top down. But where possible, youre likely to get better long-term results by developing goals from the bottom up. Individual goals should be developed in consultation between the manager and the individual. A recommendation is to write down clear goals for the organization. While written goals are necessary to make an effective organization, they arent sufficient. The goals have to be supported by the culture and actions of the entire organization. TYING STRATEGY TO EXECUTION In todays economy, value comes from intangible assets: customer relationships, innovative products and services, information technology and databases, powerful brands, and employee capabilities and motivations. These things dont show up clearly in an income statement or a balance sheet. As a result, they dont get fully accounted for in the budgeting and planning processes. Once measurements are in place, its much easier to accomplish the critical task of communicating the strategy throughout the organization and aligning individual performance with the strategy. Everyone in the organization should have a clear set of goals that map back to strategy, and should understand what their particular role in the strategy is. Their evaluations and incentives should be built around those strategic goals. As a result, strategy becomes part of everyones everyday job. 4 Murray, Alan. The Wall Street Journal essential guide to management: lasting lessons from the best leadership minds of our time. 1st ed., 2010; Harper Collins Publishers Essentials of Management - STRATEGY COURTESY OF VARIOUS WALL STREET JOURNALS Page 5 of 5 Figuring out where you are heading, and now you intend to get there. Its the managers job to make sure the group has a clear mission, a strategy for achieving that vision, and clear goals to be met along the way Ultimately, a successful strategy cant be a once-every-three-years exercise, but rather has to become a continual process. The strategy has to be reflected in budgets, in performance reviews, and in analytical and information systems. And there have to be ways for strategic learning to take place, as the organization sees how the strategy operates in practice. In the end, strategy and execution must become one and the same.