Short-term thinking, opportunistic moves and personal gain — the first and surest signs of impending decline.
Reaching strategic goals isn’t negotiable. It’s the reason for stakeholders and executives’ very being. It’s what business is all about. Yet according a recent study, just 53 percent of executives characterise their companies’ strategies as emphasising the creation of relative advantage over competitors; the rest say their strategies are better described as matching industry best practices and delivering operational imperatives1. In other words, just playing along.
Adding the ingredients of the strategy recipe together requires a very methodical and disciplined approach toward analysis and forecasting, as well as a fair share of courageous risk taking.
Strategic alignment is the process of bringing an entire organisation — including various business divisions, different levels of management, diverse employee groups, and numerous supporting systems and processes — in line with the organisation’s overarching strategic objectives. It’s the process of onboarding every individual person and process to ensure that you’re striving toward a shared purpose. The importance of this is so aptly summarised by International Institute of Management President Med Jones, who said “sustaining high business performance is a product of continuous strategic alignment”.
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