Scenario: Let us consider that the small software company was data centric in nature and therefore was not aligned to the real time economy model of IoT(Internet of things).
As a CEO of the software company that was catering to the needs of Microsoft but now has to make a strategical plan for the future, the ten step plan was followed.
Since strategic planning is a long term plan, the CEO has outlined that by 5 years the company will not only manitain the existing IT infrastructure for providing hardware services but also will develop a software cloud services platform with pricingthat would be competetive in the market.
Discussion:1. The development of the strategic plan was very cumbersome as senior managers were very difficult to convince and there was a lack of readiness in accepting changes to existing processes and practices.Many of them felt that the company wasthrowing away money into a platform that not many people in the organisation were qualified for handling.Since several functionalities within the organisation would be merged , management at the senior level were confused asto the new rolesand responsibilities that would be thrown on their way.Another issue was that the management at both senior and mid level, felt that the strategic plan lacked a structure.
The process could have been made easier if the CEO had held a couple of formal or informal meetings with Tier 1 as well as Tier2 management levels to explain fully the ramifications of the changing strategy as well as the extent of involvement of each group in the overall planning phases.The creation of a separate team that includes representatives of all levels within the organisation would have thrown more insights on the strengths and weaknesses of the organisation and how these could be used in strategic planning. Also budgetary and financial requirements had to be arrived at for the same. Probably calling in an external consultant to understand the key strengths of the company and to provide a structured plan for developing a strategic plan is necessary considering that the time period for the company to come up with a strategic plan, test it and implement it was very short as its major client was closing the contract.
2. Most small software firms would find step 2 easier to implement but often have difficulty or face challenges in the defining goal phase as the senior managers may not cooperate for the strategic planning.
3. The company supervisors could face many issues as listed below:
- Lack of time management
- Location of sites far apart for making it difficult for real time communication/ addressing of problems
- Lack of clarity about the role
- Employees may resist supervision
- lack of support from senior managers
These challenges may be overcome by holding regular and frequent review meetings with senior managers and solving issues as and when they arise quickly. Also by creating a change agent role at each level would definitely help in overcoming certain challenfges at each level of the organisation.
Kindly use the above as reference for answering your assignment.
