For a company, setting a general objective helps guide the development of strategy and the deployment of tactics.
When a manager defines the medium-term vision of his company, he considers the company as a whole, as an actor in economic and social life, in an interconnected and globalized competitive environment (most of the time).
how to create a business strategy?
When a manager defines the medium-term vision of his company, he considers the company as a whole, as an actor in economic and social life, in an interconnected and globalized competitive environment (most of the time).
Setting general objectives and ensuring their implementation by developing strategies to achieve them is part of the mission of the manager and his team.
Why set general objectives?
The general objectives that a company sets for itself make it possible to define the nature of the relationships that the company wishes to maintain with its external environment (nature and size of the target market, positioning, relationship to the competition, etc.) and its internal organization.
More than a summary of the missions of the different functions of the company (marketing, human resources, finance, etc.), setting general objectives allows the convergence and coordination of operational strategies . This improves business responsiveness, performance and communication.
The manager’s mission is to develop general objectives, define strategies to achieve them and control the deployment of company tactics at the operational level.
How to apply strategic decisions?
The vision of the manager and the purpose he assigns to the company must be implemented through his strategic intentions and their realizations.
The quality of information and monitoring, as well as the managerial and operational skills of the supervising teams are essential points enabling the strategy to achieve the set objectives.
1 – Start by developing a company policy
The first step in developing the company policy and general objectives consists on the one hand of identifying them and on the other hand of analyzing the situation by making an internal diagnosis and an external diagnosis.
These two diagnoses will then be crossed using a SWOT (see our article on SWOT analysis ) in order to identify the Key Success Factors (KSF).
Once this process has been carried out, the company will determine the areas of activity in which it intends to be present as well as allocate the necessary resources (financial, material and human) to develop and maintain there.
2 – Define a strategy and prepare for its implementation
The growth strategy (corporate strategy) acts on the general directions of the company’s activity.
Competitive strategies (business strategy) aim to develop competitive advantages for each activity.
Once the competitive strategies have been defined, they are transcribed throughout the company into operational strategies which include a set of actions enabling the objectives set to be achieved.
The schematic representation of the levels of responsibility and the nature of commitments provides overall coherence of the strategic framework.
For large companies, the question of governance may arise when certain divergences of interests appear between shareholders (owners) and directors (managers).
3 – Deploy a tactic and monitor its application
Deploying operational tactics or strategies involves implementing and following action plans.
List the actions to be carried out, systematically specifying the characteristics of the objectives to be achieved (volume, time, budget, etc.);
Provide monitoring indicators to monitor the proper application of action plans and measure their performance.