Strategy and Alignment.

This module is designed to help you explore strategic literacy. You will explore and analyze the criticality of alignment around the plan, the people or employees, demand from the marketplace, and economic indicators.

Key concepts in this Module

· Strategic Alignment—Involves ensuring the company has the right resources, market, and goals to achieve its vision through operational performance. It is not limited to but should include marketing, branding, alliances, mergers or acquisitions, integration, product development, diversification or divestiture, and globalization.

· Organization Structure—This is often dictated by the size, roles, etc. Most often the structure is a hierarchy that arranges authority outlining or determining responsibilities, duties, and rights based on position. Structure also influences how information is shared, processes are managed, and decisions are made. Structure heavily influences how an organization operates and delivers its services and goods.

· RAEW analysis—A responsibility, authority, expertise, and work analysis is the process that helps identify structural misalignments that may impede strategy execution. These include not moving fast enough with decisions, bad processes or having responsibility for something but not the right skill set to execute, lack of expertise. The most common issues include the following:

· Authority with no responsibility

· Responsibility with no authority

· Responsibility with no expertise

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· Synthesize a wide variety of economic, financial, and qualitative data to draw actionable managerial conclusions that convince others of your position and analytical conclusions.

· Identify actions that effectively integrate the primary business disciplines cross functionally to move the organization toward its mission and strategic goals, while being consistent with professional standards, social norms, and corporate ethics.

· Analyze a business situation as a team member or leader, assess the optimal leadership style, and communicate its organizational impact.

· Analyze the complexity of ethical situations and corporate social responsibility and their impact on decision-making in business.

· Analyze and apply practical strategic business principles, models, and theories to diverse and complex organizational situations.

Strategic Literacy and Performance

Strategic literacy refers to the ability of the people or employees within an organization to be able to understand and execute to the company’s business goals (Tailwind, 2011). It is critical that everyone, no matter at what level in the organization, is literate about the company goals and how their job relates back to impacting the goals and the overall performance of the organization.

As you have learned throughout this course, an understanding of internal and external factors and alignment around a right-fit strategy is critical. All too often companies are aligned around the mission and values, but not necessarily the long-term strategy. Problems arise when companies are not aligned with the critical strategic imperatives needed to achieve the vision. Often executives and managers might agree on the “What” but not on the “How.”

The vision for any business needs to be translated into a workable framework that everyone can understand and ultimately execute.  Senior leaders often struggle with getting everyone on the same page so that they are engaged and fully aligned. Enabling your team to collaborate around a single strategy involves a lot of moving parts.

Strategic Performance

Strategic performance is what occurs between your intent—what you want to do—and its execution by your people. The translation process is essential and constantly has to be managed to ensure total organizational alignment. Without a managed process that gets regular attention, there are too many opportunities for misinterpretation. This results in misalignment and fake work where employees do work that is not related to the goals and strategic direction of the company.

Tailwind Consulting. (2011). Introducing strategic literacy. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/TailwindConsulting/strategic-literacy

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Your Strategic Audit

A strategy audit involves assessing the actual direction of a business and comparing that course to the direction required to succeed in a changing environment. A company's actual direction is the sum of what it does and does not do, how well the organization is internally aligned to support the strategy, and how viable the strategy is when compared to the external market, competitors, and financial realities. These two categories, the internal assessment and the external or environmental assessment, make up the major elements of a strategy audit.

In this module, you will deliver your strategic audit LASA 2 assignment. This is considered some of the most important work in your MBA program. The ability to conduct a strategic audit further positions you, as the learner, as not just being able to understand but to take the knowledge and execute into action. This is where theory and concept make meaning as they are translated into actionable results. In the marketplace, knowledge and understanding are critical, but even more so is the ability to apply and “do” something that enables the organization to assess, realign, and take action to thrive and grow.

The strategy audit is a comprehensive analysis of the company’s business strategy and operating performance. It culminates in a series of recommendations for improving a company’s performance based on the findings and conclusions of a thorough analysis. Whether you are an experienced or developing business professional, by completing this important project, you have added to your portfolio of critical business skills.

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