Running head: WEEK ONE WRAP UP 1

Week one wrap up

Farnaz Seyedi (1810633)

University Canada West

MGMT 661 Strategic Management

Professor: Dr. Daren Hancott

Jan. 15th, 2020

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Strategic management introduction

Admittedly, to lead a business towards its goals in the current competitive business

environment, it is essential to plan its activities ahead and perform accordingly. For this purpose,

strategies are created to manage the business, plan for accomplishing the targets, and analyze the

effectiveness of its performance. Managers need to comprehend the business strength and

opportunities as well as market situation as a whole to be able to define the best possible strategy

for the business to thrive. Managers also need to know how to conduct strategic management to

make appropriate decisions for the business and take tactical pitches towards their objectives.

Afterward, they need to monitor their performance and evaluate the expected results and measure

if they have taken the right steps to reach their targets.

Week one takeaway

Indeed, in today’s world of business managers have to consider factors beyond just their

internal environment, they must take into account the external environments, stakeholders and

especially trends to be able to set their long-term competitive strategies. Analyzing the

organization’s environments, the vision and mission of the firm are formed by board of directors

based on their chosen strategies. This forming is a critical action, which any fault can cause

major failures.

As reviewed the Borders case study in the first session of the class, the inability of its

managers in establishing the right vision and mission-led this giant book retailer to failure. The

management was not capable of stabilizing its position in the market and gain an above-average

return. In other words, it was not competitive in the existing market and could not keep up with

the trend.
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Above-average returns are gained when companies explore the external environment

effectively to appoint and implement suitable strategies. Studying the internal and external

environment enables firms to acquire strategic competitiveness and achieve above-average

returns. The value-creating strategy is successfully defined and implemented by a firm when it

achieves strategic competitiveness. This is how firms can compete with its competitors while

utilizing all of its resources and capabilities.

Vision is the final desired achievement of an organization and an image of what it wants

to be as a whole. Vision express the description of the organization and illustrates its

configuration in the future in a brief statement. Mission as a more concrete concept, based on the

vision as its foundation, specifies the customers it tends to serve and businesses it wants to

compete. A mission should identify the characteristic of the firm while being inspirational and

relevant to its stakeholders. Vision and mission are critical inputs of strategic actions.

Another important take away from this session was understanding how to define the

problem statement of a case, which is essential to overcome the matters and help a business

succeed.

The hypercompetitive market is a highly competitive market that changes rapidly so one

company cannot survive with a competitive advantage for a long time.

As explained, learning the establishment of strategies for a business is substantial for

managers. Therefore, strategic management being taught in business schools provides substantial

knowledge for educating skillful managers. Admittedly, the above-mentioned concepts are

highly valuable to me to utilize in my future careers.

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Reference

Hitt, M. A., Ireland, R. D., & Hoskisson, R. E. (2012). Strategic management:

Competitiveness and globalization: concepts and cases. Florence, United States:

South-Western College Pub