In the coming years, strategy making must be thought of as an innovative process, as rich in impulsiveness and delightful as any other art. Strategy making eventually leads to strategy management. Strategic Management is a tool undertaken by managers to locate and monitor the activities within their control that will enable an organization to achieve its desired objective. Prof. (Dr.) Sanjiv Marwah, Director, JK Business School (JKBS) writes about the job opportunities available in this rapidly growing field of work
SCOPE
Today, emerging economies are the world’s growth engines and India is playing an increasingly significant role in taking it forward on a larger scale. So, the strategic management process requires competent individuals to ensure its success. Many companies have embraced strategic management. A number of companies have reformulated their mission and objectives. Expanding opportunities and growing competition are making companies wedded to corporate and competitive strategies. The path to success in a highly competitive and fast-growing global market is filled with barriers. The challenge for leaders is to identify, then produce and prolong a competitive advantage in a globally-connected environment. Class leaders are those who can move strategy from concept to reality, develop the management capacities of the top team and beyond, and drive change while remaining cautious about counter measures by the competition.
GROWTH
In our increasingly organized world, the need to expand and maintain competitive advantage by pursuing rapid growth has never been more acute. But to attain that growth, senior leaders must make strategic choices along two critical dimensions: ‘avenues of growth’ (such as innovation, consolidation, or diversification) and ‘modes of growth’ (internal development and alliances or acquisitions, for example). Strategic growth platforms are long term initiatives for upping high scale profit initiatives. Broad examples of commonly selected strategic-growth platforms include pursuing specific and new product areas or entering new distribution channels. For a business to flourish and thrive it needs to incorporate high growth strategies that consistently allow you to expand sales and profit margins. High growth can be an impelling force to encourage future growth and expansion going ahead. The tactical areas to consider are product development enhancing brand reputation, market penetration, strategic diversification followed by goodwill from revenue generated. In the coming years, growth of strategic management will be phenomenal as it will strengthen our ability to think and act strategically and build the organization to participate, grow and be successful.
SKILLS
Anticipate: Conduct market research and business simulations to understand competitor’s perspectives, evaluate their likely reactions to new initiatives or products, and predict potential disruptive offerings.
Challenge: They challenge their own and others assumptions and encourage different points of analysis. Only after careful manifestation and assessment of a problem through many angles they take influential action. This requires persistence, nerve and an open mind.
Interpret: Leaders who challenge in the right way invariably extract complex and contradictory information. That’s why the pre-eminent one’s are also able to interpret. One needs to distinguish patterns, push through uncertainty, and seek new insights.
Decide: Strategic thinkers insist on multiple options at the outset and don’t get prematurely locked into simplistic go/no-go choices. They don’t discharge from the trendy but pursue a disciplined process that balances diligence with speed, considers the trade-offs involved, and takes both small and extensive goals into account. In the end, deliberate leaders must have the courage of their convictions informed by a strong decision process.
Align: Strategic leaders must be proficient at finding common ground and achieving buy-in among stakeholders who havediverse views and agendas. This requires active outreach. Success depends on upbeat communication, trust building, and frequent commitment.
Learn: Strategic leaders are the focal point for organizational learning. They encourage a culture of investigation, and they search for the training in both successful and unsuccessful outcomes.
JOB OPPURTUNITIES
Strategy jobs are viewed as some of the most desirable in a large corporation because they provide access to the overall picture, the visualization and the main issues that establish value in an organization. You need to be in frequent contact with senior management and will get the opportunity to see how decisions really get made in your association. At the entry stage, one would work as a strategic planning associate or manager or would work on assignments directed by senior members of your group. Your work would focus on collecting facts, putting together presentations, talking to members of the organization to understand a problem. With experience one will get more opportunity to initiate a direct strategy and to interact with senior management that provides assignments to your group. Strategic planners can often work on specific assignments as internal management consultants. Job designation would be to understand the market carefully, working with confined administration and to propose a strategy to revitalize growth.
ELIGIBILITY
The course is aimed at post graduates who are interested in pursuing a career in the area of business analysis and development, including industry consulting, as well as candidates who seek a pathway to a research degree in the field of international management and comparative studies. The course focuses on real business issues and how to solve them with a thorough understanding of business analysis and development and the key skills of business consulting. Shape your career with the best possible start followed by latest knowledge in comparative strategic management and put your learning into practice with our unique client facing project.
REMUNERATION
Strategic Management is an immensely rewarding profession and competent individuals will rise in terms of skills and expertise and can earn around Rs. 25,000 – Rs 30,000 in the beginning and with few years of experience down the line they will earn even more than Rs 50,000- Rs 1, 00,000 per month.