Ideas and Thought

Since twenty-thirty years markets are more and more difficult complex and competitive. In the past, for example fifty years ago, the competition was high but in the last years the change speed and the interdependence of markets have enormously increased. This is principally due to three reasons: the incessant technological change, the globalization of the markets and the competitive maturation of developing countries.

These aspects imply, for the management of a company, to single out some elements having more importance respect to the sea of the other information and that are also less subject to change with time. In a competitive context complex and rapidly changing it is hoped for to have some reference points sufficiently stable that permit a reality  interpretation in order to take decisions, for the medium and long term, having good possibilities to be winning in the future: a global synthesis of the reality that enables the possibility to focus on the critical aspects without dissipating energies considering information having no particular impact on the present situation respect to the enterprises objectives. The following figure reports the six principal elements for an effective corporate management: identity, vision, internal situation, external situation, strategy and implementation.

The identity represents the company culture and behaviour; the horizon (indicated also with vision) is a clear, sincere and concrete idea of the final objective of the company; the internal situation is made up of the economic and patrimonial situation, the organizational structure, the products and the services, the distinctive competencies and the future potentiality; the external situation is constituted by Porter's five competitive forces, the labour market, the access to credit, the legislation and the technological state of art; the strategy identifies the path leading from the present situation to the vision achievement; the implementation is realized by the operative planning, the strategy execution and the control activities. The principal concepts of the above figure are:

• centrality and importance of the indicated six elements;
• the strategy supervises, regulates and plans the implementation;
• the implementation is an element as the strategy. The strategy without its implementation is a nonsense.
• the strategy as inputs three fundamental elements: the internal situation, the external situation and the horizon/vision;

• the vision should rise from and be influenced by the external situation and the identity.
  

The above figure is for sure a generalization and loses a lot of information respect to the sum of all the particular cases. On the other hand it presents, in a concise way, all the critical concepts and elements constituent the basis of strategic decision of companies.

In a world more and more complex and mutable the synthesis should facilitate the interpretation of the reality and permit to take medium and long term decisions focused on the most important information and not on contingent details of the present situation.

(The web site http://www.i6elementiperunastrategia.it/ has more about these issues.)

"My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go." Shakespeare