Companies undertake integrated strategic management to improve productivity, efficiency, and quality. ISM is an intervention process that focuses on continuous improvement. It is a cross-functional; management led philosophy, which results in improved organizational performance.
The following skills are required for the integrated strategic management to work.
• Social Skills- organizations are first and foremost social systems. Without people there can be no organisation. Successful businesses today focus on knowledge workers. Knowledge workers are entrepreneurial visionary and creative. They look at their job as a business and serve other workers in the company as their customers. Knowledge is the foundation to vision.
• Analytical Skills- change agents must learn to unfreeze, change and refreeze operations and systems in novel ways, and then determine the financial and social impacts of what they have done.
• People Skills- organization must be able to listen and listen actively, to restate, to reflect, to clarify without interrogating, to draw out the conclusion, to lead or channel a discussion, to plant ideas, and to develop them. Furthermore, to make ISM as success an environment that promotes learning, especially learning from failure should be cultivated. Although, the process should be initiated from the top, the ownership should be moved down to the people who actually have to implement the changes and were to be affected by those changes.
Components of Integrated Strategic Management-
1. Knowledge and Control- knowledge and control components form the foundation of ISM, providing professionals with the ability to automate routine tasks and receive status and event information for planning and action.
2. Policy Setting- policy setting components include the decisions and processes which allow professionals to operate proactively, increasing the value to the organization of the department and the individuals within it
3. Continuous Improvement- continuous improvement components foster an environment for long-range planning and professional growth.
The overall process should have the following important characteristics:
• The organisation should be organized around the goals and should not be organised around tasks. Tasks are means for the achievement of the goals.
• Process and output are closely related so those who use the output of the process should perform the process.
• Remove fear from the employee's mind so as to bring confidence in them and in greater belief for the success of the project.
• Treat geographically dispersed resources as though they were centralised.
• Link parallel activities instead of integrating their results.
• Put the decision point where the work is performed, and build control into the process.
In order for integrated strategic management to function effectively information should be openly shared. Moreover the design of jobs should revolve around five core job dimensions: feedback, autonomy, task significance, task identity, and skill variety. The best organizations are always evolving in this way, but this does not happen spontaneously. The evolution has to be planned, managed, implemented and monitored.
Robin C. Trehan is in charge at CBK Family and National Hotel exchange for taking the organization towards an IT (Investment Trust). He is also an industry consultant in the field of mergers and acquisitions of development companies. He can be reached at robin@cbkfamily.com.