Managing strategy as a career

In the coming years, strategy making must be thought of as an innovative process, as rich in impulsiveness and delightful as any other art. Strategy making eventually leads to strategy management.

Strategic Management is the process of building capabilities that allow a firm to create the value for customers, shareholders and society while pursuing in competitive markets. It is a tool undertaken by the managers to locate and monitor the activities within their control that will enable an organisation to achieve its desired objective. What does strategic management as a career entail?

Scope

Today, emerging economies are the world’s growth engines and India is playing an increasingly significant role in taking it forward on a larger scale. As a result,  the strategic management process requires competent individuals to ensure its success.

Expanding opportunities and growing competition have been making companies
incorporate corporate and competitive strategies. The path to success in a highly competitive and fast-growing global market is filled with barrier. The challenge for
leaders is to identify then produce and prolong a competitive advantage in a globally connected environment.

Growth

In our increasingly organised world, the need to expand and maintain competitive
advantage by pursuing rapid growth has never been more acute. But to attain that growth, senior leaders must make strategic choices along two critical dimensions.

First, they have to look at the avenues of growth such as innovation, consolidation, or diversification and second, they have to look at the modes of growth such as internal development and alliances or acquisitions. Strategic growth platforms are long term initiatives for high scale profits increases. Broad examples of commonly selected strategic-growth platforms include pursuing specific and new product areas or entering new distribution channels.

For a business to flourish thrive it needs to incorporate high growth strategies that consistently allow you to expand sales and profit margins. High growth can be an impelling force to encourage future growth and expansion going ahead.

Consider tactical areas like product development enhancing brand reputation, market penetration, strategic diversification followed by goodwill from revenue generated. In the coming years, growth of strategic management will be phenomenal as it will strengthen our ability to think and act strategically and build the organisation to participate, grow and be successful.

Skills

To achieve success in the field, one must be equipped with the some of the skills mentioned below:

Anticipate: Conduct market research and business simulations to understand competitor’s perspectives, evaluate their likely reactions to new initiatives or products, and predict potential disruptive offerings.Open to new ideas: Strategic thinkers insist on multiple options and do not get locked into simplistic go/no-go choices. They pursue a disciplined process that balances diligence with speed, considers the trade-offs involved, and takes both small and extensive goals into account. In the end, deliberate leaders must have the courage of their convictions informed by a strong decision process.

Challenging ideas: They challenge their own and others assumptions and encourage different points of analysis. Only after careful manifestation and assessment of a problem through many angles they take influential action. This requires persistence, nerve, and an open mind.

Align: Strategic leaders must be find a common ground with the stakeholders, who may not have similar views. You would been to actively reach out to them and develop and open communication and trust Learn: As a focal point of the company, strategic leaders
encourage a culture of investigation, and they search for the training in both successful and unsuccessful outcomes.

Job opportunities

Strategy jobs are viewed as some of the most desirable in a large corporation because they provide access to the overall picture, the visualisation and the main issues that establish value in an organisation. They will in  frequent contact with senior management and will get the opportunity to see how decisions really get made in an association.

At the entry level, one would work as a strategic planning associate or manager or would work on assignments directed by more senior members of your group. The work will focus on collecting facts, putting together presentations, talking to members of the organisation to understand a problem. As you gain experience, you will  get more opportunities to direct strategy and interact with senior management.
Strategic planners can often work on specific assignments as internal management
consultants. The job’s requirements requires a careful understanding of the market, and proposing strategies that will revitalise the company’s growth.

Remuneration

Strategic Management is an immensely rewarding profession and competent individuals will rise in terms of skills and expertise.

In the beginning, one can earn around Rs 25,000 – Rs 30,000. With enough experience, one can earn more than Rs 50,000- Rs 1 lakh per month.

(The author is the Director of JK Business School, Delhi)