Saturday, November 26, 2011

Leadership: Strategy & Tactics

Strategy is the creation of a unique and valuable market position supported by a system of activities that fit together in a complementary way (Porter, 1980). It is about making choices, trade-offs, and deliberately choosing to be different.
It should not be confused with operational effectiveness or best practices — what is good for everybody and what every business should be doing, e.g., performing the same activities your competitors perform, TQM, benchmarking, or being a learning organization (Porter, 1980). Thus, when developing strategies, the goal is to be different from your competitors. However, this does not mean that you are willing to do anything, but rather determine where the opportunities lie that you can best exploit.
All strategic plans need to tie in with the organization's strategic plan. That is, in going back to the definition of strategy, the leaders of the organization should create the unique and valuable market position; while your goal is to support the organization with activities that fit together in a complementary way. Now that does not mean you cannot do things differently or set your own goals. It simply means that you need to keep your leaders visions and goals in focus when setting your goals. For example, if the leaders have ethics and diversity at the forefront of their strategic vision, you cannot put elearning and knowledge management at the forefront of your strategic goals. However, that does not mean you cannot use elearning and knowledge management technologies to bring about ethical and diversity goals.

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