Question

Core Competencies and Strategic Outcomes
Every organization has core competencies it must consider during its strategizing process. These competencies can include its knowledge or domain expertise on specific business activities, specialized technologies or infrastructure, and the unique skills of its employees. Accordingly, an organization must align strategies with its core competencies to achieve its growth and expansion goals.

What are the various core competencies that a firm must recognize and strategize business based on these competencies? List as many core competencies as possible. Why is each competency important and how can it assist in accomplishing a desired strategic outcome?

Strategic Planning and Management Techniques
Strategizing is an important managerial task that companies must implement well. Strategy implementation requires significant resources such as capital and people to work effectively.

How can strategic planning and management techniques and theories be applied to business organizations? Be specific and use examples to illustrate your response.

Answer 1

Core competency: It is an organization's defining strength, providing the foundation from which the business will grow, seize upon new opportunities and deliver value to customers.

A company's core competency is not easily replicated by other organizations, whether existing competitors or new entries into its market.

1. Establishing Focus: The ability to develop and communicate goals in support of the business’ mission.

2. Providing Motivational Support: The ability to enhance others’ commitment to their work.

3.Fostering Teamwork: As a team member, the ability and desire to work cooperatively with others on a team; as a team leader, the ability to demonstrate interest, skill, and success in getting groups to learn to work together.

4. Managing Change: The ability to demonstrate support for innovation and for organizational changes needed to improve the organization’s effectiveness; initiating, sponsoring, and implementing organizational change; helping others to successfully manage organizational change.

5. Managing Performance: The ability to take responsibility for one’s own or one’s employees’ performance, by setting clear goals and expectations, tracking progress against the goals, ensuring feedback, and addressing performance problems and issues promptly.

6. Attention to Communication: The ability to ensure that information is passed on to others who should be kept informed.

7. Interpersonal Awareness: The ability to notice, interpret, and anticipate others’ concerns and feelings, and to communicate this awareness empathetically to others.

8. Building Collaborative Relationships: The ability to develop, maintain, and strengthen partnerships with others inside or outside the organization who can provide information, assistance, and support.

9.Diagnostic Information Gathering: The ability to identify the information needed to clarify a situation, seek that information from appropriate sources, and use skillful questioning to draw out the information, when others are reluctant to disclose it.

10. Analytical Thinking: The ability to tackle a problem by using a logical, systematic, sequential approach.

11.Forward Thinking: The ability to anticipate the implications and consequences of situations and take appropriate action to be prepared for possible contingencies.

12. Strategic Thinking: The ability to analyze the organization’s competitive position by considering market and industry trends, existing and potential customers (internal and external), and strengths and weaknesses as compared to competitors.

13. Technical Expertise: The ability to demonstrate depth of knowledge and skill in a technical area.

14. Entrepreneurial Orientation: The ability to look for and seize profitable business opportunities; willingness to take calculated risks to achieve business goals.
15. Fostering Innovation: The ability to develop, sponsor, or support the introduction of new and improved method, products, procedures, or technologies.

How can strategic planning and management techniques and theories be applied to business organizations?

Strategic management is the process in which an organization develops and implements plans that espouse the goals and objectives of that organization.

The process of strategic management is a continuous one that changes as the organizational goals and objectives evolve. Small businesses engage in strategic management to ensure that they adapt to trends and external changes such as globalization.

Several key concepts characterize strategic management and the development of organizational goals.

1. Goal Setting: At the core of the strategic management process is the creation of goals, a mission statement, values and organizational objectives. Organizational goals, the mission statement, values and objectives guide the organization in its pursuit of strategic opportunities.

2. Analysis Strategy Formation: Analysis of an organization's strengths and weaknesses is a key concept of strategic management. Through internal and external analysis, the organization creates goals and objectives that will turn weaknesses to strengths.

3. Strategy Formation: Strategy formation entails using the information from the analyses, prioritizing and making decisions on how to address key issues facing the organization.

4. Strategy Implementation: Strategy implementation is putting the actual strategy into practice to meet organizational goals. The idea behind this concept is to gather all the available and necessary resources required to bring the strategic plan to life

5. Strategy Monitoring: Strategy monitoring entails evaluating the strategy to determine if it yields the anticipated results as espoused in the organizational goals.