Evaluate the importance of aligning strategy among the levels of an organisation.

In
your evaluation, critically examine how the strategic lenses of an organisation may or
may not affect the degree of alignment among levels. Be sure to support your claims
with specific references to the Learning Resources and your prior experience.
Organisations strategic issues are commonly analysed from different strategy
lenses. Strategic lenses are a concept of strategic management. The lenses are different
ways of viewing strategy development. It examines the flow of tasks and information, or how
you get things done. Each lens reveals many different traits and qualities. Using
the strategic lens, one looks to optimize workflow to meet the goals and objectives of the
company. This article  a  will cover four angles from which strategy can be viewed and
implemented on a corporate level; they are strategy as design, strategy as experience,
strategy as ideas and strategy as discourse.

1. Strategy as a Design

This takes the view that strategy development  can be a local process in which the forces
and constraints on the organisation are weighted carefully through analytic and evaluative
techniques to establish clear strategy direction. This creates conditions in which carefully
planned strategy implementation should occur.  They are rationally, thoroughly researched,
analytically considered strategies made by experts.

It is top-down approach to strategic decision making. It takes no input from manager

involved in day to day operations. Strategic decisions are imposed on them, they may
resent this approach. It is suitable in fast and rapidly changing environment where decision
making is separate from implementation.

It is suitable where major cultural change required and where employees input is of less
important or they are not able to give their inputs may be because of lack of knowledge and
willingness. It can be used where close-control is necessary and where employee turn-over
is higher.

Typically underpinning a design approach to strategy development are these:

First in terms of how strategic decisions are made:

 Careful analysis can identify those most likely to influence the organization
significantly.
 This analysis provides a basis for strategic positioning: that is, the matching of
organizational strengths and resources with the changes in the environment of the
organization so as to take advantage of opportunities and overcome or circumvent
threats.
 This analytic thinking precedes and governs action.
 Objectives are clear and probably explicit, there is careful and thorough analysis of
the factors internal and external to the organization that might affect its future and
inform management about the strategic position of the organization,
 There are tools and techniques that enable managers to understand the nature and
impact of the environment an organization faces, competences, influencing power,
organizational culture and links to strategy.

The design lens also makes assumptions about the form and nature of organizations:

 Organizations are hierarchies tops management who take important decisions and
lower management who implement the strategy
 Organizations are rational systems. Organizations are seen as analogous to
engineered systems or, perhaps, machines.
 Organizations are mechanisms by which strategy can be put into effect.
 This system can be controlled in a rational way too. Control systems (e.g. budgets,
targets, appraisals).

Implication For Management

Managers often see strategy about their organizations, and that as the design lens suggest
that’s because of:

 Strategy is about planning and analyzing.

 The design lens provides the basis of an approach to managing complexity that is
logical and structured.
 Important stakeholders may expect and value such an approach.
 Rationality is deeply rooted in our way of thinking and in our systems of education.
 We live in a time of computer technology, global communication.
The design lens is useful in thinking through and planning strategy. It is useful but not
sufficient.

2. Strategy as Experience

Here the view is that future strategies of organisations are heavily influenced by the
experience of the managers and others in the organisation based on their previous
strategies. Strategies are driven not so mush by clear-cut analysis as by the taken-for-
granted assumptions and ways of doing things embedded in the culture of organisations.

It is bottom-up approach to strategic decision making. Those involved in day to day

operation contribute their experience. It requires negotiation or bargaining with lower level
employees. It has no risk of resentment on the part of employees because they are involved
in the process.

It is suitable in stable, taken-for-granted cultural assumptions are dominant, employees are

knowledgeable, committed to work. It is strategy based on historical information. Strategies
are extension or modification of previous strategies based on their outcome. It can cause
business being failed to take account of the changes in environment which can be best
identified at senior level and thus fail to respond to changing business needs. It can be
adopted in well-established organizations or business have recently being taken-over with
owners does not have knowledge and experience of the business.

The experience lens views strategy development as the outcome of individual and collective
experience of people in organizations who influence strategy or make strategic
decisions and the taken-for-granted assumptions.

 Individual Experience and Bias: Individual experience can be explained in terms of

the mental (or cognitive) models people build over time to help make sense of their
situation. When managers face a problem they make sense of it in terms of the
mental models which are the basis of their experience. The same mental models, the
same experience, can lead to bias. People, managers included, make sense of new
issues in the context of past issues; they are likely to address a problem in much the
same way as they dealt with a previous one seen as similar. The reasons of this are;
Cognitive bias is inevitable, the future is likely to be made sense of in terms of the
past, and Bargaining and negotiation between influential individuals.
 Collective Experience and Organizational Culture: Organizational culture is the
‘basic assumptions and beliefs that are shared by members of an organization, that
operate unconsciously and define in a basic taken-for-granted fashion an
organization’s view of itself and its environment’.

Implication For Management

 Managers’ understanding of the strategic position of their organization and, indeed,

the strategy followed by that organization is likely to be heavily informed by such
collective experience. Managers therefore need to be aware that the views of their
colleagues on strategic issues — indeed their own views too — are inevitably
 influenced by such experience. Questioning and challenging such taken-for granted
experience is of key strategic importance in strategic management.
 Major problems can arise if significant strategic change is needed.
 Thinking about how to build innovatory and ‘learning organizations’ is an important
strategic consideration.

In summary, the experience lens provides a view of organizations as cultures within which
people make decisions about or influence strategy on the basis of their cognitive (or mental)
models and established ways of doing things (or routines).

3. Strategy as Ideas

Neither of the above lenses is especially helpful in explaining innovation. Then how do
ideas come about? The ideas lens emphasizes the importance of promoting diversity in and
around organisations, which can potentially generate genuinely new ideas.

It is approach requires innovation. These ideas can emerge from any level or anywhere in
the organization. It requires encouragement to employees to give their views and
suggestions and a mechanism to accommodate these ideas into strategy.

It is suitable in unpredictable macro-environment, where ability to respond to unforeseen

situations is required. It can be used organization developing new product or breaking into
different markets. It can be used in innovative industries where innovation is the key to
success. E.g. telecommunication industry and fashion industry. It can also be used in newly
established business where owners as well as employees have little previous knowledge
and experience. They can benefit from pooling of knowledge and experience.

Ideas lens is helpful in explaining the sources and conditions that help generate innovation
in organizations; it sees strategy as the emergence of order and innovation from the variety
and diversity which exists in and around organizations.

The design lens provides a view of organizations as systems or machines and the
experience lens as cultures. The ideas lens provides a view of organizations as akin to
organisms living within an environment.

Importance of Variety

Variety potentially exists for all organizations at different levels and in different forms. There
is an ever-changing environment, there are different types of businesses, there is a variety
of different groups and individuals and their experience and ideas within an organization
and there are deviations from traditional ways of doing things. Such variety and its
spawning of change at different levels mutually reinforce itself.

Creating Context

The evidence is that innovation comes, not from the top, but quite likely from low down in an
organization. People interpret issues in different ways according to their experience and
may come up with different ideas based on personal experience. Such ideas may not be
well formed or well informed and, at the individual level at least, they may be very diverse.
The greater the variety of experience, the more likely there will be innovation. However, it
may be possible for managers to foster new ideas and innovation by creating the context
and conditions where they are more likely to emerge because there is sufficient variety
within and around the organization for them to do so. This might be achieved in different
ways. First, by considering what the appropriate boundaries are for the organization:

 The more the boundaries between the organization and its environment are reduced,
the more innovation is likely to occur.
 Within organizations what matters is interaction and cooperation to encourage
variety and the spread of ideas.
 An organization that seeks to ensure that its people are in contact with and
responsive to a changing environment is likely to generate a greater diversity of
ideas and more innovation than one that does not.
 If innovation matters, questioning and challenge is more important than consensus.
 Experimentation. Some organizations have formal incentive programs to encourage
experimentation.
 The temptation of managers is to try to clarify and direct.

Adaptive Tension and Simple Rules

High levels of control and strict hierarchy are likely to encourage conformity and reduce
variety. So the more elaborate and bureaucratic the top-down control, the less likelihood of
innovation. Establishing appropriate levels of control therefore becomes crucial. Some
complexity theorists argue that innovation and creativity emerge when there is sufficient
order to make things happen but not when there is such rigidity of control as to prevent such
innovation. This is the idea of ‘adaptive tension’ or ‘edge of chaos.

The argument is that such simple rules act as guiding principles of behavior, patterns of
which form into consistent strategic directions. these order generating rules have come to
be known as ‘simple rules’.

Implication For Management

 Environmental sensitivity: It is not possible for top management to know or

understand and plan the future.
 Creating context rather than plans: innovation will not be achieved by determining
‘tight’ strategies and control systems. It is more likely to be managed by creating
forms of organization and cultures of organization which encourage variety and
informal networking.
 Imperfection matters: new ideas are unlikely to emerge ‘fully formed’ — indeed they
may be the result of ‘imperfect copying’. Managers have to learn to tolerate such
imperfection and allow for failures if they want innovation.

4. Strategy as Discourse

This lens sees strategy in terms of language. Managers spend most their time
communicating. Companies communicate their strategies by presenting year reports, vision
statements or press releases. Managers and shareholders debate about strategy when they
discuss the future of the firm. We can see strategies as stories, including a beginning (the
present) and an end (a successful future). Therefor command of strategy language
becomes a resource for managers by which to shape ‘objective’ strategic analysis to their
personal views and to gain influence, power and legitimacy.
In formulating your answer, consider the following questions:

 What challenges do organisations face when crafting strategy?

Politics

Resistance

 How do operational and strategic issues manifest themselves at different

levels of an organisation?  

 Post your submission by Sunday 11:59 pm (23:59 hours) VLE (UTC) time on the due
date at the latest.

Length: in an approximately 500-word response (+/- 10%), address the aforementioned

questions in the discussion board.

 This discussion is student led. You are advised to offer feedback to at least one colleague's
contribution.