The Three Types of Strategies

There are three main types of strategies:

1. The corporate level strategy identifies the portfolio of businesses that in total will comprise the corporation and the ways in which these businesses will relate;
2. The competitive strategy identifies how to build and strengthen the business’s long-term competitive position in the marketplace; and
3. The functional strategies identify the basic courses of action that each department will pursue to contribute to the attainment of its goals.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Existential Creativity

Existential creativity is about raising the quality of our existence, enlarging our consciousness, actualizing our potential, and growing and developing in ways that increasingly manifest our inherent humanity. There is a higher side to the human—love, compassion, hunger for knowledge, appreciation of beauty, truth, goodness, spiritual yearnings. Existential creativity in the organizational context is enabling organizational members—its internal stakeholders—to pursue their growth, self actualization, and noble yearnings so that they can recreate themselves and become unique human beings.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Conducting an Interview

Have a plan and follow it. You should devise and use a plan to guide the interview. Significant areas to cover include the candidate’s:

• College experiences
• Work experiences
• Goals and ambitions
• Reactions to job you are interviewing for
• Self assessments (by the candidate of his or her strengths and weaknesses)
• Outside activities

Follow your plan. Start with an open-ended questions for each topic—such as, “Could you tell me about what you did when you were in high school?” keep in mind that you are trying to elicit information about four main traits—intelligence, motivation, personality, and knowledge and experience. You can then accumulate the information as the person answers. You can follow up on particular areas that you want to pursue by asking questions like, “Could you elaborate on that, please?

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Social Audit

A social audit is a step-by-step examination of all the activities that make up a firm’s social programs. The firm may evaluate its own programs in terms of goals, and it may identify new programs that it ought to pursue. Goals are then formulated for these new programs. The general aim of the social audit is to make management aware of the impact of corporate actions on society. In some countries, social audits are mandatory.

Many difficult questions need to be answered when conducting a social audit. When activities should be audited? How should each activity be evaluated? How should social performance be assessed? In general, these questions must be answered on a case-by-case basis.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

The Motivational Framework

Current thinking on motivation rests on the concepts of need deficiencies and goal-directed behaviors. The starting point in the motivational process is a need. A need is a deficiency experienced by an individual. A need triggers a search for ways to satisfy it. Next comes a choice of goal-directed behaviors. While a person actually might pursue more than one option at the same time, most effort will likely be directed at only one person.

In the next phase, the person actually carries out the behavior chosen to satisfy the need. Rewards or punishment will follow the performance. Finally the person assesses the extent to which the need has been satisfied.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Strategy Development

One useful approach to strategy development involves a five-step process in which planners answer five questions about each strategic issue. The following questions should be adjusted depending on whether the direct or indirect, goals, or vision of success approach to strategy formulation is used:

1. What are the practiced alternatives, dreams, or visions we might pursue to address this strategic issue, achieve this goal, or realize this scenario?
2. What are the barriers to the realization of these alternatives, dreams or visions?
3. What major proposals might we pursue to achieve these alternatives, dreams, or visions directly or to overcome the barriers to their realization?
4. What major actions must be taken within the next year (or two) to implement the major proposals?
5. What specific steps must be taken within the next six months to implement the major proposals, and who is responsible?

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Goodbye Industrial Economy, Hello Global Knowledge Economy

Goodbye the state running things, hello Global Joe Citizen empowered by the technology-driven changes in the first decade of the 21^st Century and with a mobility beyond the wildest dreams of those who brought us into this world. Yes, I do mean us, fellow global citizens.

The 20^th Century was all about us having to rely on governments to deal with those issues beyond our personal capacity to influence, regardless of how much concern and anxiety were personally invested. Simply put, this has all changed.

Just as the world landscape is now determined by a new order of collaborative arrangements, so the time has come for us all to seize control of our choices and pursue new personal value-led collaborations.

Together you and I must make it work for all our fellow global citizens, not least the 800 million who will go to bed hungry tonight. If the values, beliefs, ideals, and ethics that we take with us to work each day do not result in our business environment adding rather than detracting from the sum of global cooperation, our long-term personal and corporate business goals are doomed to failure.

But what we do have is a business environment pregnant with possibility and unfettered by past constraints of geography and technology. It is up to us as individuals to nurture an atmosphere where value-led decision making thrives.

Corporate culture looking beyond traditional business horizons is the agenda item of the moment. The public scrutiny and disapprobation flowing from corporate scandals on a global scale request and require a re-evaluation of compliance with ethical, environmental and social imperatives. A new collective, caring culture is no longer just an attitude of mind rather than depth of pocket; it makes good business sense.

Therein is your desirable future: you are the engine that drives new connection between global business and your community. Integrity is the fuel that drives both the engine and the process. Take control of your choices and root them in the eternal triangle of truth, trust and peace. Without truth there can be no trust and without trust there can be no peace. Adopt this landscape for mapping your relationships. Until people trust you, they will not change with you. So many of today’s leaders now fail to fulfill their ambitions for this very reason. Never underestimate the power of good intent. When you change, the world changes with you.

The more your ambitions are aligned to the benefit of humanity as well as your business, the more relevant the product of your labor will be. In turn, the more valuable you become in the market place, the greater your capacity to take control of your choices and your future. A values-led approach and entrepreneurial spirit advancing an enterprise culture are not mutually exclusive.

On the distant future day you finally retire from your business world, your peers, looking back, will judge you on your actions and achievements not just on your beliefs.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

 

Spirit of High Performance

An ability to instill strong individual commitment to strategic success and to create an atmosphere in which there is constructive pressure to perform is one of the most valuable strategy-implementing skills. When an organization performs consistently at or near peak capability, the outcome is not only more success but also a culture permeated with a spirit of high performance. Such a spirit of performance should not be confused with whether employees are happy or satisfied or what they get along well together. An organization with a spirit of high performance emphasizes achievement and excellence. Its culture is results-oriented, and its management pursues policies and practices that inspire people to do their best.

Companies with a spirit of high performance typically are intensely people-oriented, and they reinforce their concern for individual employees on every conceivable occasion in every conceivable way. They treat employees with dignity and respect, train each employee thoroughly, encourage employees to use their own initiative and creativity in performing their work, set reasonable and clear performance expectations, use the full range of rewards and punishment to enforce high performance standards, hold managers at every level responsible for developing the people who report to them, and grant employees enough autonomy to stand out, excel, and contribute. To create a results-oriented culture, a company must make champions out of the people who turn in winning performances.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Boss-centered Leadership

For some leaders, anything goes. The end justifies the means—deceit and manipulation included. This leadership style is known as Machiavellanism, after Niccolo Machiavelli, who set it out in 1532 in his book The Prince. He argued that a leader is justified in using any technique, no matter how deceitful, to manipulate and to control people and to strike down enemies. Researchers have devised various tests to determine the degree to which individuals are “High Machs” (manipulators of other people) or “Low Machs” (not manipulators of other people).

High Machs are coolly aloof. They appraise a situation and other people in a logical and detached fashion rather than emotionally. Apparently this insensitivity permits them to manipulate others while pursuing their own goals.

The Low Mach, the typical “nice guy” who likes and trusts people, is not detached enough to exploit others.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Private Enterprise

Private or free, enterprise is the economic system. It means that most of the country’s goods and services are provided by privately owned firms that compete with a minimum of government controls. The private enterprise system has six key characteristics:

1. Private Ownership of Property: most businesses, land, minerals, buildings, machinery, and personal goods are owned by people, not by governments. This ownership is the right of people. It is an incentive to work hard to acquire and care for our own property. This sort of incentive contributes to the economic growth of the country.
2. Freedom of choice and limited government: Freedom of choice allows businesses to select the products they produce, hire and fire employees, compete for customers and supplies, and make and dispose of profits. Freedom of choice also allows consumers to buy whatever products and services they are willing and able to buy from whichever firms they choose. Freedom of choice implies a limited amount of government intervention in the area of private enterprise. In a free enterprise system, government sets the” economic rules of the game” by establishing basic laws and regulations that ensure society’s welfare. But within the context, individuals and organizations are left largely free to pursue their own interests and inclinations.
3. Consumer sovereignty: Consumers rule; the more carefully they make their decisions, the more clearly the economy will reflect their needs. The more money you spend in the marketplace, the greater your influence.
4. Profits: Profits make businesses responsive to consumer wants. Profits are also a good indicator of where to expand and how to compete better. As a shop owner you can also compare the overall profits with past results or with profits of other businesses to gauge how well your shop is doing. Profits are the clearest standard of performance available to a business. But consumers often misinterpret business profits. They also don’t always understand how profits direct a business’ efforts. And consumers usually substantially overstate how high business profits actually are.
5. Competition: Most business leaders believe their industries are highly competitive. But the term “competitive” has many meanings. Pure, or perfect, competition exists in an industry when 1) there are many firms of about equal size, 2) all firms produce the same product, 3) each firm can enter or leave the industry when it wants, and 4) all firms and customers are well-informed about prices and availability of products. No industry completely satisfies all these conditions, although some come close. Most industries operate under conditions of imperfect competition. This means they satisfy some but not all the conditions of pure competition.
6. Productivity: Productivity is essential to the economy, whether it means designing faster microcomputers or better-testing toothpaste. Increased productivity helps offset inflation and keep prices down. Productivity is defined as real output (the value of the product independent of price changes) per working hour, and it is usually written as a percentage.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.