CIOInsider India Magazine
Strategic Evaluation And Control Overview
Suresh has 26 years ‘plus of overall experience in IT, recent 4 years as Six Sigma Black Belt Consultant & Corporate Trainer, 7 Years in Quality Assurance Software testing, 5 years in Project Management, 7 Years in ERP Gap & Fit, Implementation, Consulting & Testing for Manufacturing Companies and 3 years as Corporate Trainer in the start of my career.
The purpose of strategic evaluation is to evaluate the effectiveness of strategy in achieving organizational objectives. Thus strategic evaluation and control could be defined as the process of determining the effectiveness of a given strategy in achieving organizational objectives and taking corrective action wherever required. From this definition we could infer that the nature of strategic evaluation and control process is to test the effectiveness of the strategy as well as to take corrective action to keep it continually effective. During the two proceeding phases of strategic management process, the strategists formulate the strategy to achieve a set of objectives and then implement the strategy. Now there has to be a way of finding out whether the strategy being implemented is guiding the organization towards its intended objectives. Strategic evaluation and control therefore performs the crucial task of keeping the organization on the right track.
In the absence of such a mechanism, there would be no means for strategists to find out whether or
not the strategy is producing the desired effect. In this manner, through the process of strategic evaluation and control, the strategists attempt to answer the two sets of questions as given below:-
A) Are the premises made during the strategy formulations proving to be correct? Is the strategy guiding the organization towards its intended objectives? Are the organization and its managers doing things which ought to be done? Is there a need to change or reform the strategy?
B) How is the organization performing? Are the time schedules being adhered to? Are the resources being utilized properly? What needs to be done to ensure that resources are utilized properly and objectives are met?
The importance of strategic evaluation lies in its ability to coordinate the tasks to be performed by individual managers and also groups, division or strategic business units through control of performance
Importance of strategic evaluation
The process of strategic management requires that the strategists lay down the objectives of the organization and then formulate strategies to achieve them. The process of implementation of strategy starts with the identification of key managerial task which form the basis for the creation of organizational structure and design of systems. Here it should be reiterated that the segregation of key managerial task leads to a situation where individual managers are required to perform a small portion of the overall task required to implement a strategy. The fact that individually a manager performs a set which are correlated to the other task. The importance of strategic evaluation lies in its ability to coordinate the tasks to be performed by individual managers and also groups, division or strategic business units through control of performance. In the absence of coordination and controlling mechanism individual managers may pursue goals which are inconsistent with the overall objectives of the department.
We can also amalgamate Six Sigma with strategic management by implementing the monitor and control phase of six sigma to check that the processes are improving, so my suggestion to organizations to include six sigma in their strategy plan and train the managers of the organization on six sigma so a part of the organization goal of improving the quality of the products and continuously improve the process is taken care of.
