You might not agree with the results of this quiz, if so, don't get mad at me for the results you recived. Are YOU a strategic mastermind? Your favorite things may turn against you in this quiz.
Your preferences may hinder you in a bad way. Your favorite food may give you an edge. It all depends on ones own preferences.
You rely a lot on intuition. This approach can be inspiring and energizing for your team as it gives them a dream to aspire to. However, it can also be frustrating and stressful for the team. While it gives a good sense of the long term destination, it can be chaotic as short term directions keep changing. You would be wise to get help to create some structure around your vision so the team's energy and excitement is harnessed to produce results faster and more predictably.
What many Visionary Strategist are surprised by is how the kind of structure being recommended fuels your creativity rather than constraining it. The Tactical Strategist. You love the details of the plan. You learn from your experiences and are thoughtful about applying those lessons.
You are excellent at delegation as you understand the capabilities of the resources around you. People might describe you as calculated or methodical. You like having metrics to evaluate your results.
People like that they know what you expect from them. The Reactive Manager. You get things done. Somehow you keep all the balls in the air. There are customers to be found and to served. There are bills and wages to be paid. There are calls and emails to be answered. Who has time to sit around making plans for 8 or 9 months around. Things will likely completely change by then, so it would be a waste of energy, right? You're respected because you take action.
These managers may not even know enough about their own intentions. In other words, one tries to become number one or number two—or at least to belong to the small group of leading competitors in any market segment. But a company can capture a leading market position only if it offers customers a better product or a better solution to a problem at a favorable price.
The central element of any strategy consists of creating permanent competitive advantages that, in the ideal case, establish a virtual monopoly in the market.
Customers who want success also want to use a successful product. This sort of manufacturing depth has produced a technically superior product—and a leap from fifteenth place to one of the top positions in the world ski market within ten years.
Artur Doppelmayr, an Austrian manufacturer of aerial transport systems, believes his main competitive advantage—in addition to innovative equipment design—is his service system. Doppelmayr provides total quality management, standardization and reduction of components, a worldwide system of warehouses, and skilled personnel prepared to move immediately in emergency cases.
Both of these examples demonstrate strategies that have indirect effects. In the case of a direct strategy, such as taking the offensive in a price war, material and financial resources determine success rather than psychological factors or new-product development time.
Because of the acceleration of change and the increasing complexity of all human institutions, managers must learn to use indirect strategies. These are usually more effective and a better guarantee of lasting success than a direct strategy, although even indirect strategies require financial and material resources.
In theory, the strategically managed company is a confederation of entrepreneurs, with management responsibility vested in strategic business units. Directives are guidelines for decisions reached autonomously and usually have a stimulating effect. Effective directives combine the strategic intention of top management with the initiative and creativity of the individual manager.
But you will frequently find very respectable people lacking in civil courage. Consequently, top management must allow directives to be modified and offer latitude for interpretation. In everyday management practice, business-unit managers must be familiar with the overall corporate vision, philosophy, and strategic intentions in order to act in accordance with them—even if the particular competitive situation forces managers to deviate from an agreement struck with corporate management.
From it, we can ask a related question for evaluating the level of strategic management competence: Are all managers capable of expressing in just a few words the corporate vision, the corporate philosophy, and the strategic goal of the unit for which they are responsible? If managers are not able to do this, the blame lies less with them than with their superiors, who probably also lack strategic management competence.
No business-unit manager can be expected to act independently and take initiative in the interest of his or her company without knowing the corporate vision, philosophy, and directives.
Entrepreneurs and top managers who feel they can improve matters by meddling at lower levels are usually mistaken. When they try, they assume functions normally carried out by other people, make the performance of those people superfluous, and add to their own management duties so much that they can no longer get everything done.
These observations, which were made by Moltke, raise two useful questions in assessing strategic management competence: Are all management positions filled with people who think and act entrepreneurially?
Are their duties, authority, and responsibilities such that they can formulate and implement strategies autonomously in the interest of the company? The answer to both questions will be no if managers unable to meet strategic demands remain in their positions—and if the organization does not permit employees to take entrepreneurial initiative along strategic lines.
Whenever that is the case, the level of strategic management competence certainly leaves something to be desired. Of course, there is always a discrepancy between how the actual organization operates and how it is formally described on paper.
Within limits, in fact, such a discrepancy is desirable. Capable top managers rely on elasticity and uncertainty in the organizational system in order to offer outstanding employees the possibility of taking action autonomously. Therefore, the extent to which top management has erected an organization that promotes creative behavior and permits effective implementation of strategies reflects the general level of strategic management competence.
Strategic planning is the job of those line managers who are responsible for implementing a strategy. For that reason, the key to successful execution of strategy is the early involvement of line managers in the strategic-planning process. This raises three questions: How do line managers temporarily become farsighted planners? How does top management use planning staff effectively? How should managers monitor the execution of strategies?
Successful companies familiarize line managers with strategic instruments in training courses and make sure they know the strategic intentions of their superiors; top management also alters planning-staff functions. In this case, the function of the planning staff is no longer strategic planning. Rather, it is strategic analysis of critical sectors and business areas that are or may become important for the company.
Both functions support line managers—and both line managers and planning staff monitor progress in the execution of strategies. If line managers are not involved in the process of strategic planning, top management certainly cannot claim a high level of strategic management competence. For example, in an Italian textile company, line managers are supposed to be free to plan and execute strategies; however, top managers use a strategic controller to quash the views of those who disagree with their personal expectations or priorities.
The more business strategies and corporate culture are in true harmony, the higher the level of strategic management competence. Companies can only create an atmosphere of maximum creativity, for example, if they reduce hierarchical elements to a minimum. Outstanding companies are usually products of excellent entrepreneurs and managers who have created a corporate culture in which their vision, company philosophy, and strategies can be implemented by employees who think independently and take initiative.
A company can be a management school or a school of life; theoretically, it can be both, but in reality this rarely happens. It is a management school if top managers set out to ground the corporate philosophy and strategies at all levels of responsibility in scientific principles. Thus the company becomes a microcosm of the world rather than just a goal-oriented, single-purpose organization. This little world is not only well-organized but is also an institution that teaches living per se—the cultivation of tolerance, confidence, culture, aesthetics, taste, and humor within the framework of a common corporate philosophy and strategy.
Of course, these kinds of companies are few and far between. And, unfortunately, their number will probably decrease.
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