Strategy Demystified: Your Dynamic Map To Achieving YourEvolving Business Vision

Strategy Demystified brings clarity to strategy management. Determining the firm’s current position is the first step. Then, figuring out where the leader wants to take the business, based on current and future capabilities and external environmental factors, is the next. Finally, the CEO must prepare the business to implement or execute the plan including having a supportive culture. This last point is overlooked by most organizational leaders; however, it is the prime reason why 70% of change initiatives fail. Most approaches to strategic management take a myopic mechanical view of the process. What is left out is aligning the culture and the people to the goals. Measuring mechanisms like the Balanced Scorecard and Management by Objectives support the alignment of the people and organizational functions. The leader must be involved in the strategic management process. Pieces can be delegated; one person can’t be everywhere. But, with delegation there must be accountability. Organizational residents take their cue from the top; so, the leader must demonstrate the importance of strategic sanagement and aligning leadership and culture with the intended destination. Follow the steps in Strategy Demystified and you will arrive at your destination.

As a middle management and senior executive, consultant, and university faculty member Jim McClain has been involved in strategic management for forty years. His years of experience are reflected in the pages of Strategy Demystified. Jim is the senior vice president of business development for Agribiotic Products, Inc., a firm that offers microbe formulas for crop enhancement in agriculture and horticulture. He teaches Strategic Management Seminar and Global Strategic Management at California State University Fullerton. He resides in Oceanside, California. __