Process for Crafting a Strategy

A strategy for a company lays out how a company is going to fulfill short term and long term goals that are hopefully promoting and furthering the company toward their vision. There are five key steps in order to create and execute a strategy successfully. The first step is to decide what the vision of the strategy is and how that will affect the multiple areas of the business including marketing and possibly the actual product. This will give the overall goal of the strategy and hopefully the ultimate result of the company. An example of this is Starbucks. They have multiple goals and outline their goals using their mission statements for the different strategy. The second step is to decide on how this goal will be accomplished. This could be the principles of the mission statement that state what they are going to accomplish and then how they will measure success.

The third step is to create the actual strategy to get to that goal. This is a strategy that hopefully can react as well as be proactive in how they respond to changes in the external and internal environment. The fourth step is actually implementing the strategy and putting the staff and managers on the front lines to achieve the goals of the strategy. This is where the operations side of the business is really put to the test and the planning of the strategy becomes essential. The last step is to determine how the process went and how the implementation of the strategy went throughout the company. This is where management and the authors of the strategy make needed changes throughout their company. Starbucks has a clearly outlined mission statement and principles however they don’t have a strong way of measuring their strategy in regards to a couple of their strategies.

Porter’s five generic strategies

The five generic strategies are strategies that are enhanced depending on the needs of the company however they are the five standard ways to try and create a competitive edge.

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