STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

 

NAME OF THE STUDENT

 

COURSE

 

TUTOR

 

INSTITUTION

 

DATE

Strategic Management

Jeffrey Robert commonly known as Jeff Immelt was born in 1956. He is the board chairman as well as the CEO of General Electric in the US. He replaced Jack Welch after his retirement in 2000. Previously, Immelt was the CEO and President of the Medical Systems department of GE currently referred to as GE Healthcare (Wikipedia, 2011).

In his new position as board chairman Immelt emphasized in his address to University engineer students in Thayer School on the significance of prospect business opportunities with China and other states in the distant East. Since then his active role in offering commencement addresses in several Universities has earned him at least six honorary doctorate degrees (Wikipedia, 2011).

Immelt also combined the two traditional strengths of GE but with a different goal. These two strengths are namely development ability and process orientation. This meant a drawing a plan that could attract new proceeds from current businesses. Immelt made it clear that his aim is not retain the GE culture called productivity but to transform it to organic growth of 8% which beats all the world records (Harvard Business Review, 2006).

In order to achieve this GE carried out a research on the percentage on products that have been recently introduced in thirty companies. They applied the found metrics on GE and it did not work since the metrics did not match up with the GE income. This prompted them to adopt the organic revenue augmentation which Immelt strongly believes will yield a double or triple growth rate that goes further beyond the world GDP (Harvard Business Review, 2006).

Immelt has also invested in commercial excellence. He strongly believes that effective marketing of sales creates a great margin in work productivity. Marketing is essential in giving a price and it aligns functions. The initiation of the marketing process was adopted before the growth initiative by hiring a lot of marketers. This facilitated a huge growth and great connections (Harvard Business Review, 2006).

Strategic management that is effective focuses on keeping an eye on external forces and trends along with internal performance, refreshing intelligence and revision of strategy when needed and in the required format. There is also a greater need to move emphasis from the measurement of performance to its management. This is due to the ubiquitous nature of the systems for performance measurement. In addition, real performance management improves performance while maximizing the public services benefits (Franken, Edwards, & Lambert, 2009).

The risk management process would greatly benefit the company. Risk management anticipates possible triggers or actual threats such as disaster, accidents or losses. It positively gives a timely and budgetary control for the business plan as well as the allocation of resources. It also improves on the planning of the business, the making of decisions and prioritization. Besides, achieving success in an environment of global business calls for proper management of challenges as well as expectations. Therefore stakeholders and socio-political strategies of risk management play a major role in the fulfilment of the strategy vision (Andrew & Jozsef, 2008).

Core competence is a crucial element for consideration especially with the overview of key competitors. They are unique capabilities that afford some competitive advantage levels that involve knowledge, skills, systems and functions that are underlying. The factor that greatly determines the core competence of an organisation is the unique advantage earned over the competitors. For instance, an organisation that deals with IT, functions together with capabilities and skills are termed competent if they can support business processes directly (Hayes, 2011).

Business managers have the responsibility to manage the policy formulation process for there to be any meaningful accomplishment of policies. In this case the manager controls the input in the organisation, collects crucial information and gives advice and recommendations. He also manages finances, the organisation and its personnel in order to achieve the set objectives. Thus the manager plays a key role in operating from both levels of the formal process which involves legal practices and informal process which follows in practice (Elliott, 1997 ).

Shareholders persistently exert pressure designed for acquiring greater profitability hence reasons for business owners to redefine previous strategies more frequently. However devastating it may sound, these changes in redefinition of strategies go in favor with the demands of the customers due to their change of priorities and needs. On the other hand, there is an increase in the complexity channels by organizations in attempts to produce products as well as services that cross multiple boundaries in relation to the geography and functions of the organization. Therefore, there remains higher chances to fail as a result of the facilities and workforce needed to be involved to realize the program of strategic management. Strategic planning is thus important to put in check all factors that may negatively affect an implementation of change (Franken, Edwards, & Lambert, 2009).

 

 

 

 

 

 

REFERENCES

Elliott, J. (1997 ). Tourism:politics and public sector management. United Kingdom: Routledge.

Franken, A., Edwards, C., & Lambert, R. (2009). Executing Strategic Change. UNDERSTANDING THE CRITICAL MANAGEMENT ELEMENTS THAT LEAD TO SUCCESS , 51 (3).

HarvardBusinessReview. (2006, June). Growth as a Process. Retrieved July 20, 2011, from http://www.ge.com/files/usa/stories/en/Growth_The_HBR_Interview.pdf

Hayes, I. S. (2011). Developing a Core-Competence Based Strategy. Retrieved July 1, 2011, from http://www.clarity-consulting.com/developing_a_core-competence_strategy_summary.htm

Jozsef, P., & Gross, A. C. (2008). The Global Management Consulting Sector. Business And Economics , 43 (4), 59-68.

Wikipedia. (2011). Jeffrey R. Immelt. Retrieved July 20, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_R._Immelt