Business Architecture, Inc.

Strategic Management Framework - Bringing Order to the Strategic Management Body of Knowledge

Evolution of Order in the Quality Body of Knowledge

The strategic management body of knowledge continues to grow. With this growth, there has been little order along the way. The state of strategic management is much like quality in the 1950's and 1960's. Then people like Deming and Juran brought some initial order to this arena and proved out the principles and practices to a great degree through their work in Japan. Since that time, quality has gone from something mysterious, misunderstood, and confusing to a well organized and teachable body of knowledge.

Six-sigma, Lean, ISO 9001...

Six-sigma is a key subset of the overall body of knowledge of quality that has been employed with great success. Lean is another variant which provides and overall approach for managing quality and waste throughout an organization. ISO 9001 is a compliance standard which establishes a basis for certification. ISO sets a minimal level of acceptable performance.

Baldrige

The Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence is a comprehensive approach to achieving excellence. The Baldrige Criteria is largely embodied in the European Quality Award as well. The Baldrige criteria defines fundamental values and concepts which are embodied in seven categories of an integrated management system, six of the categories are essentially process categories, and the seventh being the performance results of the organization as a whole.

The Baldrige criteria help organizations to take a focused and systematic approach to management of the management and business processes to improve value delivered to customers, overall organizational effectiveness, capability development, and organizational learning. The Baldrige framework is a systems view of an organization used to provide for effective assessment of the individual categories and the synergy of their interrelationships. This assessment and perspective guides the improvement of the business capabilities to produce improved results.

Strategic Management Framework

The strategic management framework presented here provides order and understanding to the ever growing strategic management body of knowledge. It identifies three key facets that work together to provide for a strategic management competency which produces the resulting competitive advantage. These facets are interdependent, interacting in a synergistic manner to produce and sustain a competitive advantage. The process produces the strategy and business design concept with the capabilities of the people executing the process.

The process integrates the four fundamental process stages needed to develop strategy

  • understand
  • create
  • plan
  • deploy

The business design construct identifies the aspects of the business which must work in a harmonious and synergistic manner,

  • the purpose
  • function
  • process
  • structure

The capabilities of the people identify the three categories of capable people needed to successfully execute the process,

  • leaders and managers
  • innovators
  • business architects

This framework provides the means to identify, organize, and understand the interrelationships between the facets or elements of a strategic management competency. As such, it provides a basis for assessment, development, and improvement of strategic management competency much like the Baldrige Criteria does for the overall business.