Question

The course decomposes the subject of Strategic Business Management into 3 components:

1. Strategy

2. People

3. Delivery

The assignment is to address each of these in turn, specifically addressing the following 3 questions: .

1. How do you stress-test a strategic plan?

2. What are the preconditions to an engaged workforce?

3. Why do disconnects arise between the creation and execution of strategy?

Answer 1

1. Stress testing is a form of risk assessment, which works with the objective of analyzing how the given system works or reacts under various favorable and non-favorable situations.

In my company, we use the fault tree analysis for conducting the stress tests of any strategic plan developed for business. The methodology of fault tree analysis (FTA) works with the objective of analyzing the system comprehensively and identifying the potential factors which may result in failure of the overall system.

2. The primary pre-conditions to an engaged workforce are:

• Employees are satisfied with their job
• Employees are motivated to work for the company
• Team synergy and camaraderie is favorable for positive work environment

3.Disconnects arise between the creation and execution of strategy because when a manager creates a strategy, he does not account for all the external and internal factors which may have considerable impact on the strategy. When the strategy gets executed, it gets exposed to the various factors and hence the deviations happen from the standard behavior, resulting in the gaps or the disconnects.