Week 2 - Learning Journal

Journal 2:

1. In your own words an using referenced quotes describe what “strategic management” is?

Any important initiative that are taken by a company’s higher level management involving performance and resource in external environment and which is on behalf of the owners is known as strategic management. It incorporate with developing plans and policies, specifying the company’s objectives, vision & missions, which is mostly in terms of programs & projects, which are designed to achieve these objectives, and afterwards allocating the resources to implement plans and policies, programs & projects.

We can find many quotes given by some brilliant persons to justify our explanation of strategic management.

“If an artist can manage his career, well, that is half the battle to becoming successful.”

                                                                                                     -Martin Dansky

                                                                                                 (Actor, Producer, Director)

“Effective leadership is putting first thing first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.”

                                                                                                      -Stephen R. Covey

                                               (American Educator, Author, Businessman & Key speakers)

2. How is business strategy similar to military strategy? How is it different?

If we analyze the similarities between business strategy and military strategy, than we can find out numerous similarities. Here are some of them:

·By observing & analyzing both, we can find out the similarities, why neglecting fundamentals leads to failure and why others lead to success. They have this thing in common.

·Continuous study and observation of change & advancement, strategies, history of strategies, adapting such to current situation are the basic things that every top business leaders and top military leaders do. This is another similarity.

·Without any experience one cannot have good intuition, and business strategy includes intuition based on extensive experience, and the same applies to military strategy/ leaders too.

·Better co-ordination of strategies and good communication with strategic alliance is critical for both military & business leaders/ strategy.

And, the differences can be listed as follows:-

·        Purpose are different:-

The main purpose and mission is the ultimate difference between the two types of organizations. It can be simply denoted as “Security Vs. Stakeholders Value”.

·        Progression of Career:-

Another difference between business strategy and military strategy is, the way of career progression. Military has a progression like “The Ladder”, while the business has a progression pattern of “Self-Managed”. Its like “The Ladder Vs. Self-managed”.

·        Organization:-

Another important differences between the military strategy and business strategy is that the military strategy follows the policy of “Command and Control” while the business strategy follows the policy of “Collaborative/Matrix Model”. It can be explained as “Command and Control Vs. Collaborative/Matrix Model”.

3. What do you understand by  the terms “strategic analysis”, “strategic                    development” and “strategic implementation”.

·        Strategic Analysis:-

The term “strategic analysis” means observing, looking, and analyzing at the events that are taking place outside the organization currently and that would occur in future. There are two questions that it asks us:-

i) How might what’s happening affect you?

ii) What would be your response to likely changes?

·        Strategic Development:-

Strategic development is also known as strategic planning. Strategic development is the basic fundamental to creating and operating a business. Well, its a game plan that sets objectives and goals which can be changed according to the dynamics of the market shift.

·        Strategic Implementation:-

In simple words, strategic implementation is the process that puts the strategies and plans into action to achieve organizational goals and objectives. Without strategic implementation, a strategic plan cannot achieve its desired goals and objectives.

4. Write about your experience with today’s case study. What answers did you give? Was it easy to answer the question? Did your group agree with each other?

It was a fun experience to know about the growth and development story of UK and development of many towns over there in the past couple of years.

Answering the questions was not that hard for me to answer because most of the answers are already there in the case study, but we needed to study seriously all the case studies.

Our group members agreed in all of the answers of the questions.

Case study: Texas in the Shires

i) Why are Milton Keynes, Peterborough and Swindon growing rapidly?

The reasons for the rapid growth of these towns are as follows:-

·        All of the towns has access to train links and motor ways to London.

·        Commercial property and housing cost are cheaper than London.

·        Both Swindon and Peterborough are close to Oxford and Cambridge.

·        Due to the closeness to motorways and railways, many big companies were attracted to these cities.

· In the 1980s, Milton Keynes and Peterborough had advertisements that were done to attract businesses and families. This helped these two cities to develop very rapidly.

· Milton Keynes had large lands where the roads could be built while, Swindon has building sites which is helping it to expand.

ii) Why might their growth strategy be mad?

Their growth strategy may be considered mad because, now they have centralized their efforts to attract more high skilled employees and students, and are building restaurants, bars and universities. They are losing their homely suburban feel which was their forte. Oxford and Cambridge are very close to them, so the idea to build universities is ludicious.

iii) What do you think – is it a good strategy to continue with?

Due to the cheap property and housing, these towns have many immigrants living there. The immigrants and locals living together creates diversity. This will help them both to adapt and learn about each-others culture. By attracting many businesses, we can say that the town have made the best utilization of their advantage of being close to the train lines and motor ways.

iv) Would you like to live in any of these towns? (list reasons why and why not)?

I first reason why i would like to live in any of these towns would be cheaper housing and property. The other things that attracts me to these towns are closeness of transportation options like motor ways and train links. Employment opportunities would also be higher their of the much attraction of the businesses in these towns.

Meanwhile, the only reason that would keep me away from living in any of these towns would be the noise pollution. These towns are still under construction which means there would be a lot of noise while the construction work takes place. There would not be the environment where i would like to live or work.

REFERENCE

About strategic management, [online] accessed from www.strategicmanagement.net  accessed o0n 2012/12/02

About management, [online] accessed from www.managementstudyguide.com/strategic-management.htm   accessed on 2012/12/03

About management, [online] accessed from onlinelibrary.wiley.com › ... › Strategic Management accessed on 2012/12/03