Leadership plays a great role in the strategic management process. It assists in defining the vision and mission of the company as to how well it can be achieved. The strategic management process involves the gathering of relevant information for strategy formulation, implementation, and monitoring (Renz, 2016). Leaders facilitate the process of environmental scanning to acquire information to determine the future of the organization. The information gathered is used for strategy formulation and implementation as well as monitoring the strategy results to the set organizational target. This paper explores the roles of the leaders in the strategic management process.
Strategic Leaders Role in Environmental Scanning
Strategic leaders in the organization take the role of gathering factual information on environmental events to determine the future direction of an organization. The leaders collect, examine and provide reliable data for a company’s strategic purposes. The leaders in the organization scrutinize internal and external factors which influence the management process of the company. To understand external factors influencing the organizational performance, strategic leaders collect data on technology, customers, and resources to understand how the company can reposition itself to attain a competitive advantage (Norzailan, Yusof and Othman, 2016). Strategic leaders also examine internal factors including the financial status of the organization, employees and company’s equipment. After the execution of environmental analysis, strategic leaders exercise its evaluation frequently hence striving to improve it. From the factors analyzed, the leaders make decisions which facilitate the achieving of organization’s visions.
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Strategic Leaders Role in Strategy Formulation
Strategic leaders determine the roadmap and the best actions to be taken for an organization to accomplish its goals within a given period. After conducting the environmental scanning, strategic leaders formulate a corporate plan to be followed to meet the purpose of the organization (Renz, 2016). The managers create an unswerving formula to guide the management setting the goals for the company. Functional and business strategies should be well analyzed by the managers to channel the management process. Through the strategy formulation, the leaders can know the best methods which will be used to minimize the input while maximizing the output. The strategic management depends on the decisions which are made by the leaders. The leader determines the goal of a faculty and creates the strategies to follow in achieving the goals.
Strategic Leaders Role in Strategy Implementation
The implementation of strategies consists of managing human resources, designing the structure of the organization and distributing the resource. Strategic leaders are responsible for putting the organization strategy formed into action (Donate and de Pablo, 2015). After the formulation of organization strategy, the leaders carry out the operations to fulfill the organization's objectives. They guide the organization’s public following the created channels. The management has to monitor the employee's activities in following the guidelines set for them to ensure effective company’s operations. Strategic leaders equip the employees with knowledge to understand the processes involved to meet the organization’s goals. It is in this stage where leaders encourage the workers to work smartly towards achieving the goals set.
Strategic Leaders Role in Strategy Evaluation
After the strategy implementation, strategic leaders ate tasked with the evaluation of the strategy. The leaders evaluate various benchmarks of performances to determine the best standard and how to ensure the set objective is attained (Covin and Slevin, 2017). The developing means on how to compare actual performances with regular performances. The activities involved in strategy evaluation involve appraising external and internal factors. These factors facilitate the measuring of performance and corrective actions of strategic management. The Evaluation of the strategies makes sure that the organizational plan is reliable and its implementation will meet the objectives of the organization.
Reference
Covin, J. G., & Slevin, D. P. (2017). The entrepreneurial imperatives of strategic leadership. Strategic entrepreneurship: Creating a new mindset , 307-327.
Donate, M. J., & de Pablo, J. D. S. (2015). The role of knowledge-oriented leadership in knowledge management practices and innovation. Journal of Business Research , 68 (2), 360-370.
Norzailan, Z., Yusof, S. M., & Othman, R. (2016). Developing strategic leadership competencies. Journal of Advanced Management Science Vol , 4 (1).
Renz, D. O. (2016). The Jossey-Bass handbook of nonprofit leadership and management . John Wiley & Sons.
