What kinds of activities should include in the strategy evaluation process

Strategy Evaluation from Taher Ahmed

THE NATURE OF STRATEGY EVALUATION

The strategic-management process results in decisions that can have significant, long-lasting consequences. Erroneous strategic decisions can inflict severe penalties and can be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible to reverse. Most strategists agree, therefore, that strategy evaluation is vital to an organization’s well-being; timely evaluations can alert management to problems or potential problems before a situation becomes critical. Strategy evaluation includes three basic activities: (1) examining the underlying bases of a firm’s strategy, (2) comparing expected results with actual results, and (3) taking corrective actions to ensure that performance conforms to plans.

          Adequate and timely feedback is the cornerstone of effective strategy evaluation. Strategy evaluation can be no better than the information on which it operates. Too much pressure from top managers may result in lower managers coming up with numbers they think will be satisfactory.

          Strategy evaluation can be a complex and sensitive undertaking. Too much emphasis on evaluating strategies may be expensive and counterproductive. No one likes to be evaluated too closely! The more managers attempt to evaluate the behavior of others, the less control they have. Yet, too little or no evaluation can create even worse problems. Strategy evaluation is essential to ensure that stated objectives are being achieved.

          In many organizations, strategy evaluation is simply an appraisal of how well an organization has performed. Have the firm’s assets increased? Has there been and increase in profitability? Have sales increased? Have productivity levels increased? Some enterprises argue that their strategy must have been correct if the answers to these types of questions are affirmative. Well, the strategy or strategies may have been correct, but this type of reasoning can be misleading, because strategy evaluation must have both a long-run and short-run focus. Strategies often do not affect short-term operating results until it is too late to make needed changes.

          It is impossible to demonstrate conclusively that a particular strategy is most favorable or even to guarantee that it will work. One can, however, evaluate it for serious faults.  There are four criteria that could be used to evaluate a strategy: consistency, consonance, feasibility, and advantage. Consonance and advantage are mostly based on a firm’s external analysis, whereas consistency and feasibility are largely based on an internal analysis.

          Strategy evaluation is important because organizations face dynamic environments in which key external and internal factors often change quickly and dramatically. Success today is no guarantee for success tomorrow! An organization should never be reassured complacency with success. Countless firms have prospered one year only to struggle for survival the following year.

          Strategy evaluation is becoming increasingly difficult with the passage of time, for many reasons. Domestic and world economies were more stable in years past, product life cycles were longer, product development cycles were longer, technological advancement was slower, change occurred less often, there were fewer competitors, foreign companies were weak, and there were more regulated industries. Other reasons why strategy evaluation is more difficult today include the following trends:

1.      A dramatic increase in the environment’s complexity

2.      The increasing difficulty of predicting the future with accuracy

3.      The increasing number of variables

4.      The rapid rate of obsolescence of even the best plans

5.      The increase in the number of both domestic and world events affecting organizations

6.      The decreasing time span for which planning can be done with any degree of certainty

THE PROCESS OF EVALUATING STRATEGIES

          Strategy evaluation is necessary for all sizes and kinds of organizations. Strategy evaluation should initiate managerial questioning of expectations and assumptions, should trigger a review of objectives and values, and should stimulate creativity in generating alternatives and formulating criteria of evaluation. Regardless of the size of the organization, a certain amount of management by wandering around (MBWA) at all levels is essential to effective strategy evaluation. Strategy-evaluation activities should be performed on a continuing basis, rather than at the end of specified periods of time of just after problems occur.

          Evaluating strategies on a continuous rather than a periodic basis allows benchmarks of progress to be established and more effectively monitored. Some strategies take years to implement; consequently, associated results may not become apparent for years. Successful strategists combine patience with a willingness to take corrective actions promptly when necessary. There always comes a time when corrective actions are needed in an organization.

          Managers and employees of an enterprise should be continually aware of progress being made toward achieving the firm’s objectives. As critical success factors change, organizational members should be involved in determining appropriate corrective actions. If assumptions and expectations deviate significantly from forecasts, then the firm should renew strategy-formulation activities, perhaps sooner than planned. In strategy evaluation, like strategy formulation and strategy implementation, people make the difference. Through involvement in the process of evaluating strategies, managers and employees become committed to keeping the firm moving steadily toward achieving objectives.

REVIEWING BASES OF STRATEGY

          Strategy evaluation should address such questions as the following:

1.      How have competitors reacted to our strategies?

2.      How have competitors’ strategies changed?

3.      Have major competitors’ strengths and weaknesses changed?

4.      Why are competitors making certain strategic changes?

5.      Why are some competitors’ strategies more successful than others?

6.      How satisfied are our competitors with their present market positions and profitability?

7.      How far can our major competitors be pushed before retaliating?

8.      How could we more effectively cooperate with our competitors?

Numerous external and internal factors can prohibit firms from achieving long-term and annual objectives. Externally, actions by competitors, changes in demand, changes in technology, economic changes, demographic shifts, and governmental actions may prohibit objectives from being accomplished. Internally, ineffective strategies may have been chosen or implementation activities may have been poor. Objectives may have been too optimistic. Thus, failure to achieve objectives may not be the result of unsatisfactory work by managers and employees. All organizational members need to know this to encourage their support for strategy-evaluation activities. Organizations desperately need to know as soon as possible when their strategies are not effective. Sometimes managers and employees on the front line discover this well before strategists.

External opportunities and threats and internal strengths and weaknesses that represent the bases of current strategies should continually be monitored for change. It is not really a question of whether these factors will change, but rather when they will change and in what ways. Some key questions to address in evaluating strategies are given here:

1.      Are our internal strengths still strengths?

2.      Have we added other internal strengths? If so, what are they?

3.      Are our internal weaknesses still weaknesses?

4.      Do we now have other internal weaknesses? If so, what are they?

5.      Are our external opportunities still opportunities?

6.      Are there now other external opportunities? If so, what are they?

7.      Are our external threats still threats?

8.      Are there now other external threats? If so, what are they?

9.      Are we vulnerable to a hostile takeover?

MEASURING ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE

Another important strategy-evaluation activity is measuring organizational performance. This activity includes comparing expected results to actual results, investigating deviations from plans, evaluating individual performance, and examining progress being made toward meeting stated objectives. Both long-term and annual objectives are commonly used in this process. Criteria for evaluating strategies should be measurable and easily verifiable. Criteria that predict results may be more important than those that reveal what already has happened. Truly effective control requires accurate forecasting.

          Failure to make satisfactory progress toward accomplishing long-term or annual objectives signals a need for corrective actions. Many factors, such as unreasonable policies, unexpected turns in the economy, unreliable suppliers or distributors, or ineffective strategies, can result in unsatisfactory progress toward meeting objectives. Problems can result from ineffectiveness (not doing the right things) or inefficiency (doing the right things poorly).

          Determining which objectives are most important in the evaluation of strategies can be difficult. Strategy evaluation is based both on quantitative and qualitative criteria. Selecting the exact set of criteria for evaluating strategies depends on a particular organization’s size, industry, strategies, and management philosophy. Quantitative criteria commonly used to evaluate strategies are financial rations, which strategists use to make three critical comparisons: (1) comparing the firm’s performance over different time periods, (2) comparing the firm’s performance to competitors’, and (3) comparing the firm’s performance to industry averages. Some key financial ratios that are particularly useful as criteria for strategy evaluation include the following: return on investment, return on equity, profit margin, market share, debt to equity, earnings per share, sales growth, and asset growth.

          But there are some potential problems associated with using quantitative criteria for evaluating strategies. First, most quantitative criteria are geared to annual objectives rather than long-term objectives. Also, different accounting methods can provide different results on many quantitative criteria. Third, intuitive judgments are almost always involved in deriving quantitative criteria. For these and other reasons, qualitative criteria are also important in evaluating strategies. Human factors such as high absenteeism and turnover rates, poor production quality and quantity rates, or low employee satisfaction can be underlying causes of declining performance. Marketing, finance/accounting, R&D, or computer information systems factors can also cause financial problems. There are six qualitative questions that can be useful in evaluating strategies:

1.      Is the strategy internally consistent?

2.      Is the strategy consistent with the environment?

3.      Is the strategy appropriate in view of available resources?

4.      Does the strategy involve an acceptable degree of risk?

5.      Does the strategy have an appropriate time framework?

6.      Is the strategy workable?

Some additional key questions that reveal the need for qualitative or intuitive judgments in strategy evaluation are as follows:

1.      How good is the firm’s balance of investment between high-risk or low-risk projects?

2.      How good is the firm’s balance of investments between long-term and short-term projects?

3.      How good is the firm’s balance of investments between slow-growing markets and fast-growing markets?

4.      How good is the firm’s balance of investments among different divisions?

5.      To what extent are the firm’s alternative strategies socially responsible?

6.      What are the relationships among the firm’s key internal and external strategic factors?

7.      How are major competitors likely to respond to particular strategies?

TAKING CORRECTIVE ACTIONS

The final strategy-evaluation activity, taking corrective actions, requires making changes to reposition a firm competitively for the future. Examples of changes that may be needed are altering an organization’s structure, replacing one or more key individuals, selling a division, or revising a business mission. Other changes could include establishing or revising objectives, devising new policies, issuing stock to raise capital, adding additional salespersons, allocating resources differently, or developing new performance incentives. Taking corrective actions does not necessarily mean that existing strategies will be abandoned or even that new strategies must be formulated.

What should be included in a strategy evaluation?

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When should you be performing activities within the strategy evaluation process?

Which are the activities of the strategic management process?