INTRODUCCION AL ANALISIS ESTRATEGICO

Introduction to

Strategic Analysis

Every organization needs a strategy. Be it an established business, an emerging entrepreneurial venture, or a non-profit organization, a strategy sets the direction of the enterprise, informs priorities and the allocation of scarce resources, and helps guide the myriad decisions that an organization makes every day.

But what exactly is strategy? Kenneth Andrews provides the following definition:

[S]trategy is the pattern of decisions in a company that determines and reveals its objectives, purposes, or goals, produces the principal policies and plans for achieving those goals, and defines the range of business the company is to pursue, the kind of economic and human organization it is or intends to be, and the nature of the economic and noneconomic contribution it intends to make to its shareholders, employees, customers, and communities.2

Such a definition of strategy highlights its complex nature. Strategy encompasses several different sets of considerations. An organization’s strategic goals, or objectives, refer to the organization’s mission, its unique purpose and scope. The strategic plan, sometimes called strategic intent, is how the organization tailors its offerings and develops and leverages internal resources and capabilities to accomplish strategic goals. Strategic actions are those tangible actions taken to operationalize the strategic plan in pursuit of the strategic goals of the business.

Together, this triad of mission, intent, and actions defines an organization’s strategy. They reveal how an organization creates unique value for its customers and other stakeholders, and how it distinctively positions itself relative to other organizations in its field.

Understanding and assessing an organization’s strategy is criticaly important to many organizational constituents. One need not be the CEO, President, or a member of the top management team to engage in such analysis. Consultants, investment bankers, entrepreneurs, and others frequently must assess the strategy of firms, whether their own businesses, clients’, or competitors’. Managers, consultants, and analysts are frequently asked to identify and assess the strategy of a business

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or an organization. Whether it is to properly value a business or acquisition target, undertake a new corporate initiative, or enter a new market, one needs an understanding of an organization’s strategy to formulate an informed and robust recommendation.

The purpose of this book is to provide an organized framework and a set of tools to aid those who wish to analyze the strategy of an organization, be it their own or another organization they are interested in. This book explains a number of basic tools necessary to be an effective strategic analyst, or strategist, an individual skilled in the art of assessing an organization’s strategy. Strategic analysis is a powerful tool for analyzing the competitive context in which an organization operates. An effective strategist makes reasoned and reasonable recommendations for how an organization should position itself relative to its peers and for assessing what actions the organization should take to maximize value creation for its various stakeholders. While our bias is towards analysis of business organizations operating in market environments (e.g., corporations, small and medium size businesses, entrepreneurial ventures), the tools presented here could be applied to organizations in the non-profit and governmental spheres (e.g., schools, advocacy groups, community organizations, municipal governments).

The Strategist’s Challenge

The strategist’s challenge is to balance the intersection between three critical factors: values, opportunities, and capabilities.

VALUABLE COMPETITIVE POSITIONHow do we create and sustain value?VALUESWhat is our mission?What is our scope?What do we value?OPPORTUNITIESWhat does the market demand?Who else, if anyone, offers this value proposition?CAPABILITIESWhat are our strengths?Where might we have a competitive advantage?

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Values refer to the mission of the organization. What is the organization’s purpose, its reason for existing? What is the organization’s scope; what markets or arenas does the organization operate? What do the organization’s various stakeholders expect of the organization? What do the organization’s leaders expect of the enterprise? What values and beliefs does the organization hold? The answers to these questions are critical for understanding the strategy of an organization and provide the baseline for any strategic analysis. Indeed, the most fundamental question a strategist must initially ask and understand is: what are the organization’s values? An understanding of firm values is the foundation that can give meaning and provide context to the strategic decisions an organization makes.

Opportunities refer to the potential to create value for stakeholders. What does the market demand? What needs may be identified? Who else in the market is satisfying these needs? There are a variety of external forces—competitive, economic, and technological—that influence an organization’s opportunity set. Factors such as the rapid development of information and communication technologies, the increased global reach of businesses, the multinational distribution of labor pools and supply chains, and the worldwide interest and influence of stakeholders of all types have all had a profound impact on the opportunities facing organizations. The strategist requires clear thinking about the economic, technological, and societal environment in which the organization operates as well as an acute consideration of the activities and capabilities of one’s competitors.

Capabilities refer to the organization’s existing and potential strengths. To evaluate an organization’s strategy, one must have both a clear picture of what makes the organization distinctive and a sense of the organization’s ability to marshal resources and leverage capabilities toward desired organizational objectives. This requires, of course, clarity about organizational capabilities: What capabilities do we currently possess? Are these capabilities unique and do they provide the basis for a competitive advantage? What capabilities do we need to possess in the future? How will we develop them?

The challenge for the strategist is to balance these three factors and identify the space where they converge. It is at the intersection of values, opportunities, and capabilities that valuable competitive positions that create and sustain value for stakeholders emerge.

Ultimately, strategic analysis is an integrative exercise. Whereas the functional areas of an organization—finance, marketing, accounting, operations, human resources—often bring specific paradigmatic views to bear on organizational problems and considerations, strategy is about how all the underlying insights of these disciplines are brought back together. Managers do not typically encounter challenges as isolated, atomistic problems with narrow disciplinary implications; rather, they must navigate issues encompassing a whole range of complex, cross-disciplinary considerations.

Strategy is also integrative in the sense that its success involves value creation for its investors, employees, customers, suppliers, and communities. Commonly invoked business axioms such as “maximize shareholder returns” can be useful to the extent that such shorthand phrases imply value creation for investors by way of creating value for key stakeholders—creating goods

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customers want, work environments that energize employee contributions, and so forth. On the other hand, shareholder profit maximization as an organization’s formal objective provides little strategic direction if it implies adherence to the naïve notion that shareholder value is somehow exogenous to creating value for customers or employees or communities. Strategy involves putting these considerations together in an attempt to align stakeholder interests and create value in an integrative and sustainable way.

At the same time, tradeoffs must sometimes be made, and a strategist often faces difficult choices. Tradeoffs between costs and quality and between various customer segments are frequently confronted when considering strategy. The most difficult strategic tradeoffs are often temporal, as between strategic long-term investments and short-term performance. An integrative, enterprise perspective is necessary to think clearly and to exercise sound judgment about how to best create long-lasting value. Individual analytical frameworks and tools, grounded in both theory and practice, can help, but any device used to help analyze strategic problems will prove insightful in some ways, but blunt in others. The key to strategic analysis is to integrate these frameworks and tools to form a comprehensive understanding of the competitive context in which the organization operates.

The Art of Strategic Analysis

Strategic analysis can be a powerful tool when executed well. Effective analyses explore the competitive situation, define key issues, recognize critical assumptions and tradeoffs, and propose strategically sensible recommendations. In any analysis, it is important to be prepared to articulate your major conclusions and provide evidence and analysis in support of them. You should be prepared to not only present your own analysis and conclusions, but also respectively challenge and extend the viewpoints of others. There is rarely one “wrong” or “right” answer to a strategic analysis.

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