Competitors in the Industry

From the lessons learned in the course, I do believe that in every organisation, the core objective is the achievement of competitive advantage or the edge that the business firm has over its competitors in the industry. To achieve competitive advantage, the business firm like in our company should identify relevant strategies and incorporate these into its strategic plan to direct its operations towards the creation of value for customers and for the organisation. However, before an organisation can start to implement its strategic plan and manage its progress, it is imperative that the organisation is able to differentiate strategy from strategic plan in order to distinguish their respective roles in its capability optimisation and resource maximisation targets.

In my humble opinion, the success of most companies and organisations today acknowledges the contribution of managers like us. We, as managers are supposed to intermingle with the employees and staff members. In this case, I should carefully explain to my employees that success is not only for struggling people but also to high-achieving employees to enhance their capacities. Careful explanation should be done in a way that I will not be degraded or questioning the capabilities of the employees. As a manager, I may direct the employees to develop quality programs that enhance capabilities but it is also very vital for me to give good suggestions in this problem.

I think the context of strategic management goes beyond encouraging and guiding other people to seek solutions to problems. Managers like me must be able to contribute to the substantive thinking necessary to move a business beyond problems and into opportunities. There are many aspects of substantive thinking. The imagination draws on acuities about people's needs and how to satisfy them with a product or service. This imagination is probably the most important in successful strategic management because it is hardly possible to be right about many aspects of a business if the marketing side is wrong. Many managers who have strategic management imagination still lack a sense of products and markets. If, in addition, their strategic management imagination leads them to the point where they fail to acknowledge realities, they sooner or later cause trouble. They mistake the possibility of synthesising a deal for the economic soundness in back of the deal.

From the course, I learned that managers without knowledge of strategic management have more individualistic tendencies than their counterparts building a manager's state towards conformity with his work with less emotional attachment to the company. In contrast to this, managers that implement strategic management are more risk averse to uncertainty than their equivalents which is compatible to their relative formal lifestyle as high uncertainty avoidance put great emphasis to tried-and-tested methods. I also believed that managers that implement strategic management are more likely to be concerned on automatic respect for authority and hierarchy than managers without knowledge of strategic management. The former would tend to act according to expectations while the other exhibits inherent regard to seniority and/ or being a male from young members which are considered learners.

To become efficient in managing people and business, managers should have essential strategic management qualities. As learned that planning is crucial in business management. Planning is commonly known as the process of formulating in advance as organised behaviour action. While it is true that people do not always plan their actions, it is inherent for any organisation especially the managers to plan. However, whether dealing with the context by which planning is occurring or whether on the individual or organisational level, the process takes shape according to the prevailing attitudes, beliefs and goals that are involved.