Strategic Choice

How do I go about solving a problem? Shall I follow Top-Down Approach or Bottom-Up Approach for a better solution. What do I need to increase the sales of my product? Do I need to spend more money on Advertising or can I adopt other forms of marketing? Well, every single day, we are faced with some situations where we need to take some decisions. There are choices in front of us and we need to select the best one so that it could be beneficial for our organization as a whole. Strategic Choice is one of the important elements of Strategy Formulation Process. Whether you plan for your budgets, take decisions to improve your sales, think to stop attrition rate, strategic choice plays a key role.

The Strategic choice starts with finding the available options. The options can be about market, products and services, options to improve resources and capabilities or on improving processes. Once the individual options are found on various areas, the next step is to integrate all the available strategic options. The integrations is based on the relationship of those options, impact of options on each other and the after effect of the options on the organization. The most important step is to make the strategic option now. It depends on assessment criteria of the options using various theoretical frameworks and strategic tools. It is also essential to understand whom to involve while making strategic choice. Wrong people make wrong choices. Taking all these into consideration, a strategic choice are made.

Here, I would like to highlight generic strategies used to assess the strategic options. The focus is on Cost Leadership and Differentiation Strategies, which are the basis of competitive advantage in the market. While making strategic choice, the implementation is of utmost importance. The organization can look into improving the internal processes, keeping a quality check and training the employees. Mergers, acquisitions and strategic alliances have become a common decision for the organizations as it involves sharing of knowledge and expertise.

A strategic choice leads to a strategic direction for the organization. Should we compromise?? No