Helping Your Organization Find Direction to an Optimal Outcome

Strategic management is a level of managerial activity under setting goals and over tactics. Strategic management provides overall direction to the enterprise and is closely related to the field of Organizational Studies.

Strategic Alignment - In the field of business administration it is useful to talk about "strategic alignment" between the organization and its environment or "strategic consistency". According to Arieu (2007), "There is strategic consistency when the actions of an organization are consistent with the expectations of management, and these in turn are aligned with the market." All coincide within one context.

Systems Thinking is essential in keeping management linked to and within this context

Systems thinking is the process of understanding how things influence one another within a whole. True solutions are whole.

In organizations, systems consist of people, structures, and processes, each working together to a greater or lesser degree to make an organization prosper or decline.

It is argued that the only way to fully understand why a problem or element occurs and persists is to understand the parts in relation to the whole.

Systems thinking has been defined as an approach to problem solving, by viewing "problems" as parts of an overall system, rather than reacting to specific part, outcomes or events and potentially contributing to further development of unintended consequences.

Systems thinking is not one thing but a set of habits or practices within a framework that is based on the belief that the component parts of a system can best be understood in the context of relationships with each other and with other systems, rather than in isolation.

This results in dramatically different conclusions than traditional or linear thinking analysis, especially when what is being studied is dynamically complex or has a lot of feedback from internal and external sources.

Captain Sullenberger

By illustration, there were many variables acting simultaneously when "Sully" discovered his jet passenger plane was "in trouble." Assessing the fluid situation as it was changing, he realized he had to put down. But where? He had a massive load of fuel and he was surrounded by city buildings. Forced into descent, he took it into the Hudson, safely, for an optimal outcome, for everyone.

Systems Approach to Problem Solving

It's Cyclical: Assessment, Evaluation, Selection, Deployment

Assessment

It all starts by asking the right questions, and, continuously asking if you are finding the right questions to ask, by an analyst who is well acquainted with searching for the right questions. Moreover, a good analyst is comfortable asking as often as necessary to discover what's at the core of a situation, the base conditions, the relationships of the forces at work.

Evaluation

How the answers fit, match or mismatch, to the desired situation is also part of the question and answer phase. How does one aspect affect another if one or more are done in ways different from the present methods.

Selection

Collaborating while creating an overall design and laying out details for improving your organization's operations gives us (you and me) a head-start in developing basic presets to a winning set of solutions. As we collaborate, the choice of directions begins to reduce to few and then to one. Once there, all you need to do is review and approve the final choice and you're on your way to your new course of direction in double-quick time.

Deployment

The final result will always depend upon how stakeholders will implement the new direction. It comes down to the people in your organization and what meaning they take away from the presentation of change.

"Meaning Makers" are those leaders who will transmit change to stakeholders. Management must become the Meaning Makers, by what is heard and by what is seen to be done. Management's character and intent become key criteria to all in the organization. Indicators issued by leaders become critical to successful directional change. Stakeholders are making judgements continuously, if not consciously, then certainly unconsciously.

Making Meaning - It's not what you say or do. It's what they hear and feel. Precisely measure those to measure your progress, for it will be your stakeholders that deliver results, be it success or failure.