Strategic Management’s Stages of Action

The stages of Strategic Management consists of three; Formulation, Implementation and Evaluation.
Formulation includes developing a vision and mission, identifying an organization’s external opportunities and threats, determining internal strengths and weaknesses, establishing long-term objectives, generating alternative strategies, and choosing particular strategies to pursue. Issues involve, include deciding what new businesses to enter, what business to abandon, how to allocate resources, whether to expand operations or diversify, whether to enter international markets, whether to merge or form a joint venture, and how to avoid a hostile takeover. Formulation decisions commit an organization to specific products, markets, resources, and technologies over an extended period of time. Its, determine long-term competitive advantages, for better or worse, the decisions have major multifunction consequences and enduring effects on an organization. Top managers have the best perspective to understand fully the ramifications of formulation decisions; they have the authority to commit the resources necessary for implementation.
Implementation requires an organization to establish annual objectives, devise policies, motivate employees, and allocate resources so that formulation can be executed. Its, includes developing a supportive-culture, creating an effective organization structure, redirecting marketing efforts, preparing budgets, developing and utilizing information systems, and linking employee compensation to organizational performance. It’s known as ‘action stage’, means to mobilize employees and managers to put formulation into action. It’s considered to be the most difficult stage, requires personal discipline, commitment, and sacrifice. Its activities affect all employees and managers in an organization. The challenge of the implementation is to stimulate managers and employees throughout an organization to work with pride and enthusiasm toward achieving stated objective.
The final stage is the evaluation, used to know when particular strategies are not working well; it’s primary means for obtaining the good information, since all strategies are subject to future modification due to external and internal factors changes. There are three activities involved: (1) reviewing external and internal factors (base on current strategy), (2) measuring the performance, and (3) taking corrective actions. Evaluation is needed because of the fact, that success today is no guarantee of success tomorrow.