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Group Members
Muhammad Umair

Ahmad Shah

Abdul
Wahab

Definition
Strategic thinking and strategic acting
have a close connection to one another
and to strategic influencing
Strategic acting is important in every
aspect of strategy as a learning
process, but it is a critical part of
learning how to get there, making the
journey, and checking our progress

The Nature of Strategic

Action
Its one thing to have a strategically
compelling idea. Its quite another to
take action based on that idea.

You can use the fanciest computers

to gather the numbers, but in the
end you have to set

Six general competencies

Six general competencies that make
up strategic acting are following

Set clear priorities.

Create conditions for others effectiveness.
Make strategy a learning process.
Act decisively in the face of uncertainty.
Act with the short term and the long term in mind.
Have the courage of your convictions.

Set Clear Priorities

This is the link between what we are doing and how it contributes
to the project goals.
Clear priorities will allow quick resolution of conflicting needs.
Setting clear priorities is one of the most important things
strategic leaders do.
Priorities can change and sometimes circumstances necessitate
exceptions to the general rule.

Avoid Mixed Signals

A leader thinks out loud (without noting it
as such), and some people take such
words as a call to action but others do not.

A leader highlights key organizational

priorities, and yet goes on to put more
resources into other things.

Managing Strategic Priorities at

Starbucks
Starbucks is one of the most recognizable brand
names in the United States and is becoming
increasingly so around the world.
In 1971 as a single retail store in Seattle to become
the dominant retailer of specialty coffee in North
America, with more than eight thousand stores
worldwide
One important element of the process involved
realistically assessing how much capacity the
organization had for new initiatives.

Create conditions for others

effectiveness
One important element of the process involved
realistically assessing how much capacity the
organization had for new initiatives.

Its also important to set clear priorities about how the

business strategy will be carried out

Priorities that deal with the human and organizational

capabilities needed to implement the business
strategy effectively

Make Strategy a
Learning Process
Making strategy a learning process
requires a particular mind-set as well as
distinctive behaviors in each element of
the process.
The foundations of making strategy a
learning process, however, are set in the
formulation of leadership strategy,

Test Organizational
Theories
When business tactics are thought of
as hypotheses by which business
strategy is tested
Tactics have two related purposes
1.The obvious one is execution
2.Another is learning.

Conduct Business
Experiments
The value of using tactical decisions
to enhance potential learning.
The colleague suggested that the
executive would not be able to reach
a clear conclusion

Learn from Your Actions

One way of doing this is with an afteraction review (AAR).
An AAR is a systematic method of learning
from your actions.
The focus is on performing better in the
future by capturing key insights quickly and
then translating them back into action.

Act Decisively in the Face of

Uncertainty
Strategic leadership means acting decisively in the face of
uncertainty.
This can be difficult for many reasons, including these
Changing conditions make it difficult to accurately assess
the risk-reward ratio of an action.
Failure of an initiative carries potential risk to ones own
career, department, or entire organization.
Organizational cultures or formal and informal reward
systems sometimes discourage risk-taking.
It is tempting to reduce uncertainty by investing in safer
bets even if the payoff may also be commensurately less.
Action imposes opportunity costs of not pursuing other
options

Strategic Decisions Always

Involve Uncertainty
Factors like those listed above
notwithstanding, effective strategic
leaders do act in the face of uncertainty
Thats not to say they dont do everything
possible to reduce the uncertainty.
It just means that perfect certainty is
unattainable (and maybe not even
desirable), and so action cannot wait for
perfection.

Assessing the Level of

Uncertainty
Some organizations face less certain
competitive conditions than others
An article in Harvard Business
Review (Courtney, Kirkland, &
Viguerie, 1997) describes four levels
of uncertainty, and different
strategies are appropriate for each
different level.

Levels
Level 1 is called a clear-enough future because there is enough strategic
certainty for managers to develop a single forecast that is precise enough
for strategy development. for example, companies developing a strategic
response to a competitors move in a relatively mature industry are in this
situation.
Level 2 is called alternate futures because the future can be described
in terms of a very small number of discrete scenarios. For example,
companies facing possible regulatory or legislative control are in this
situation.
Level 3 is called a range of futures because numerous outcomes are
possible along a continuum defined by key variables, as distinguished
from the few discrete scenarios found in Level 2. Com
Level 4 represents true ambiguity. So many factors are interacting to
create uncertainty that the future is nearly impossible to predict.
Fortunately, this situation is quite rare and relatively transitory, as
conditions tend to migrate to one of the other levels over timepanies in
emerging industries are often in this situation.

Act with the Short Term and

Long Term in Mind
Strategic acting requires attending to long-term as well as
short term objectives.
Acting with both the short and long term in mind is an
important part of learning how to get there, making the
journey, and checking our progress.
Data that weve collected from more than five thousand
members of teams in organizations indicate that this can
be a challenging tension to manage effectively.
Specifically to perceptions of team effectiveness in
balancing short-term and long-term needs

How Strategic Acting Relates

to Thinking and Influencing
The value of clear priorities is
greatest when they are derived from
good strategic thinking
The advisability of decisive action in
the face of uncertainty depends
largely upon the quality of strategic
thinking brought to bear on the
situation.