Overview of organisational Strategy, a practical approach.

Organisations exist within a context that helps understand how best to pivot it. This internal and external context requires careful understanding for the organisation to operate effectively and efficiently. The internal context of an organisation generally involves, primarily, its capabilities (resources), its internal culture, the type of leadership within the organisation, its corporate and governance structure, and the technological infrastructure in place. The external factors include the political context or environment, the external stakeholder, the cultural practices of the region of operability of the organisation, the impacts of globalisation, and the industry in which the organisation operates. Added to the context within which the organisation operates, a primary critical concern is the Goals set by the organisation’s management. These goals are prescient since a strategy is not only formulated as an elaborate set of action(s) that have to be performed, measured and reoriented with diligence to meet the expected goals with available resources and capabilities. In other words, a strategy arises to fulfil a specific goal. This presentation would provide a brief, precise and methodic set of steps to drive the report's development. To achieve that, this presentation would, in turn, discuss briefly key organisational considerations(factors) necessary for strategy formulation, the complex cobweb cast by these considerations to the organisations, d

omain-specific models/theory, its applicability to your organisation and finally, a conclusive summary of the content discussed would conclude this presentation.

(Duncan, 2023) states, “The performance and competitiveness of a business will vary depending on the optimisation of internal factors. Internal factors that can affect a business include financial management, organisational structure, its workplace culture, the technology used, strategic level planning, employee skill sets, the approach its leadership takes, process optimisation and how efficient its supply chain is” " In a similar perspective, (Shahzadi et al., 2018) states that “A company exists and operates in the conditions of an external and internal environment. The internal environment of a company enables its development and operation. It can be a source of either business expansion or problems that disrupt its existence. The environment provides a company with resources required to support its internal capacities”. External and internal considerations, while keeping sight of organisation target goals, regarding the organisational strategic context make it clear that a strategy is only valuable within its original context of definition. Suppose the same organisation with the same offerings were to move or exist within a context different from the original context in which and for which the strategy was formulated, probably as a result of an effort to bring its operations to the global scale or as a result of an expected and dramatic ( or political shift and much more) in market trends depending on the amount of time available for the organisation to readapt to its new context. In that case, the organisation might have to develop a rapid and spontaneous strategic response if it has minimal time, or it might take a longer, considerably more elaborate pool of time and resources to formulate a strategy for the new context effectively. These considerations impact and affect every single aspect of the organisation; hence, adequate techniques and models related to change management are vital during these phases; otherwise, there might be adverse repercussions on the organisation. It should be noted that these considerations, of a strategic nature, can not be handled in isolation because every issue or consideration within an organisation occurs about others, and they appear to share a tripartite relationship. The internal and external analysis allows for a more thorough discussion regarding defining and understanding strategic problems or issues. An organisation and every social system is floored with a long list of topics, and not all are to be considered strategic. A situation can only be regarded as strategic if it affects the organisation's overall goal, impeding now or in future the execution of its implicit and explicit ongoing strategic decision. For the sake of simplicity, this paper will not discuss the implicit and explicit nature of strategy and related strategic activities.

Nonetheless, within the practical context (experienced by the writer of this academic resume as CEO and head of the chair in running his organisation, Mercury Tech) of running operations in an organisation, some aspects of the strategy, although not fully formulated as the strategy in a strategic document or not communicated officially, are addressed by cultural and other factors within the organisation's arena; factors burned into the genome of the organisation. In contrast, explicit strategy has the strategic points and considerations drafted out clearly and communicated to the broad organisation (to the key stakeholder who needs to understand the organisation's strategy). It isn't enough to understand the urgency of formulating a strategy. Still, it is also adequate to understand at what level of the organisation the strategy would be applicable: corporate, departmental or project level, including the personnel in charge of implementing the strategy(s). In addition to what has already been mentioned, it could be tempting to consider only internal factors that affect the organisation and forget the external ones. Still, the truth is that external factors significantly impact internal factors. (Shahzadi et al., 2018), Could you clarify that the internal can affect and be affected by the external factors? External and internal considerations affect each other considerably, and a fair understanding of their relative impact is vital to accurately formulating a strategy.

As mentioned earlier, strategic issues, described as considerations in this essay, are internal and external forces that affect the organisation's overall strategy, compelling change. These factors are related to each other and can not be isolated because if isolated and not used as input for the development of the strategy, there is a high probability that the strategy targets a wrong or incomplete context. (Negulescu, 2019) state that “difficulties associated with change management are related to the hard-to-decipher cobweb in the organisation context (Andelman et al., 2004; Cannon & St. John, 2007; Kirschke & Newig, 2017; Tsitaire). According to (Liu, Ma and Huang, 2015). The sociological implications, organisational and structural, give rise to an intermingled cobweb, making it hard to formulate a good strategy. For example, it would not make sense only to consider the financial capacity while developing a strategy and forget the relationship between finance and quality staff. It is not an assurance, too, that if there is sufficient financial capacity, there will be adequate human resources as needed.? Aside from this complexity, it is to be noted that given the unpredictability of certain factors in a market or within an organisation, the success of almost every strategy is subject to time and chance to a certain extent. This can be seen in the impact of COVID-12 on the global scope. Some organisations survived, and others were closed completely. (Blacke and Wadhwa, 2020)states, "Those restrictions – enacted to control the spread of the virus, and thus alleviate pressure on strained and vulnerable health systems – have had an enormous impact on economic growth.”

??????????? Knowing that the formulation of a strategy can be complex, understanding the complexity of the context in which an organisation operates is vital. Several management and strategic tools (techniques) are required to formulate a good strategy. Quite a handful of tools are related; these tools essentially range from analytical, where the organisation's organisation's context, problem and current situation are established, then moving on to design tools, whereby the strategy is formulated in response to the organisation’s current situation concerning its target goals. Tools such as SWOT and PESTEL analysis for having a broad view of the organisation, Porter competitive five force analysis to understand the competitive landscape,? VRINE model for understanding the organisation’s resources operational capability, Value chain used to evaluate the value produced by the organisation’s supply chain, Systems Analysis of the supply chain, stakeholder analysis and marketing persona development and much more, help define the current situation of the organisation, whilst models or techniques such as or related to Quality Management, Inventory planning, merger and acquisition, strategic alliances, Lewin’s model, corporate governance and much more help to design meaningful strategies with reasonable key performance indicators (KPIs) that help to align and measure the degree to which the firm aligns through the medium of its strategy to its target goals. Additionally, specific industries have different models and techniques formally defined in standards such as the ISO standards and others that help analyse and formulate adequate business solutions or informal (non-standardised) models or techniques organisations use to obtain strategic clearance. The analytical and conceptual tools, techniques, and direction enumerated above are central to understanding the critical strategic issues faced by your organisation and the relevant impact on stakeholders.

Conclusively, significant considerations must be made when formulating a reasonable strategy. These considerations could be internal or external and short—or long-term. Understanding the context within which an organisation exists and having a clear set of objectives it wants to attain is the primary key or foundational to formulating and understanding related strategic issues. As this essay made clear, an issue is considered strategic if it has the potential to affect an organisation's strategic goals adversely. To respond to strategic problems, various tools, techniques, and considerations are available to help analyse the organisation's ecosystem and design appropriate strategic responses. Finally, given that unforeseen circumstances do occur during strategy execution, it should be noted that a strategy is a living artefact that needs to be constantly observed and readjusted in alignment with KPIs.

References

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Negulescu, O. (2019). COMPLEXITY AND FLEXIBILITY IN STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT. Review of General Management, [online] 30(2). Available at: https://www.managementgeneral.ro/pdf/2-2019-4.pdf.

Shahzadi, S., Khan, R., Toor, M. and Haq, A. ul (2018). Impact of external and internal factors on management accounting practices: a study of Pakistan. Asian Journal of Accounting Research, 3(2), pp.211–223. doi:https://doi.org/10.1108/ajar-08-2018-0023.