Corporate Strategy - A ninja's eyeview

Corporate Strategy - A brief introduction to key concepts

Some prominent authors to read include: Trout, Kaplan & Norton, Drucker, Porter.

What is Strategy

A strategy is a plan (usually long range or at a high level of abstraction) for achieving a set of goals.

Corporate Strategic Planning Cycles

Many large companies have annual strategy formulation cycle, where past results and current circumstances are reviewed, and new long term directions and key objectives are set down and documented in a strategic plan.

Strategy Formulation to Strategy Execution

A recent development has been a shift in emphesis from Strategy Formulation to Strategy Execution. This came from numerous studies highlighting that the majority of value is lost in the translation from Formulation to Execution. A lot of strategy execution these days are about implementing software that help to cascade and translate objectives and strategy from the highest abstract goals down to the nitty gritty of execution and tracking.

There exists many strategy frameworks, approaches and toolboxes. Some are specific methodologies owned and subscribed to by certain management consultancy groups, while others are published in papers and books.

Strategy Approaches include: The Balanced Scorecard, Performance Prism, Value Based Management, Hoshin Kanjri

Balanced Scorecard, KPI's

Kaplan and Norton has advanced various iterations of the balanced scorecard method, which is essentially a framework within which to classify your objectives and actions, and to assign KPI's (Key Performance Indicators) to objectives to create objectively measureable criteria. Many scorecarding and dashboarding softwares implement some variation of balanced score card, or is compatible with it.

Balancing Objectives and KPI's

The idea of balancing objectives, are to ensure that the correct weighting is given to various considerations of which objectives need to be achieved, and to balance between short term and long term concerns, and financial and non-financial aspects.

To aid this process of identifying key objectives, 4 perspectives are usually used to classify and elecit complete goal statements, namely: Financial, Customer, Internal Business Processes, Learning and Growth.

Information Strategy

Knowledge Management

Systems for storing, tracking,protecing, sharing and collaborating on the companies knowledge assets.

ERP, CRM

These systems have become indispensible in modern corporate environments.

Kaizen

Kaizen is a mindset and an approach that can be applied either at the individual level, or at at the organisational level.

At its simplest it translates to "Continuous Improvement". For more read on to: Kaizen and 80/20 Principle for Personal Success.

What is Six Sigma

Six Sigma is a rigorous and disciplined methodology that uses data and statistical analysis to measure and improve a company's operational performance by identifying and eliminating "defects."

Six Sigma is often implemented as an enterprise wide strategic initiative.

The goal of Six Sigma is to increase profits by eliminating variability, defects and waste that undermine customer loyalty.
Six Sigma can be understood/perceived at three levels:

1. Metric: Defects Per Million.
2. Methodology: A structured problem solving roadmap and set of tools.
3. Philosophy: Reduce variation in your business and take customer-focused, data driven decisions.

Certified experts in Six Sigma are referred to as Black Belts and Green Belts.

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