Strategic Management

 

Strategic management is the foundation for any firm striving to be successful. As defined in our text, strategic management, “is the art and science of formulating, implementing, and evaluating cross-functional decisions that enable an organization to achieve its objectives.” For Adobe, this was recently more evident than ever with the decision to move to a cloud-based structure. In order to be effective, they needed a solid game plan to move forward with strategic implementation.

Separate from the planning phase, implementation is a crucial part of ensuring action taken goes according to plan, and possibly adjusts as necessary in order to achieve the results outlined in the plan. As you can imagine, this stage is not only critically important but also extremely difficult. Coinciding with a relatively newer trend, Adobe has a Chief Strategy Officer (CSO), Scott Belsky, that oversees this portion of the business.

After a strategy is planned and implemented, evaluation must take place to confirm various aspects are working as intended and similar to implantation, require change, if necessary. Corrective action isn’t always necessary but can be identified in this stage by measuring performance and setting up valuable key performance indicators. This stage is also critical because this is where lessons are learned and used for future implementation strategies.