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Strategia vs operatività
In questo contesto ci riferiamo a Porter, uno scrittore e studioso di strategia che ci mette in guardia rispetto alla tendenza manageriale che si è creata negli ultimi decenni, di concentrarci sull'efficacia operativa a discapito di un piano strategico di sviluppo a lungo termine. Se vuoi saperne di più leggi l'articolo direttamente in inglese!
What is strategic thinking? In order to answer this question, I would like to refer to an article entitled ‘What is strategy?’ that Porter, a famous strategy writer, consultant and researcher, wrote in 1996. In this article, Porter distinguishes between strategic thinking and operational thinking. He states that in order to reach superior performance they both are necessary but operational thinking cannot replace strategic thinking and needs to be shaped by it.
First of all, what is operational thinking? This is all the thinking that relates to all the activities that are carried out on a daily basis within the organisation, such as production processes, quality control procedures, customer management systems, etc...
Operational thinking aims to improve these activities in order to reduce costs and waste as well as to increase productivity.
On the other hand, strategic thinking relates to a long-term planning, it refers to a long-term direction in which the organisation wants to move. Strategic thinking is a global approach to all these daily operational activities, as a whole. It places emphasis on the interconnections among all these activities and considers the combination of all these activities to be carried out together and / or performed differently a key factor to deliver added value to customers.
In other words, activities are not independent of each other. Instead, they are interrelated and need to be guided through strategic thinking.
In this respect, Porter states that in the last decades of the last century, operational effectiveness seems to have replaced strategy in the sense that fierce competition has pushed all industries to go after a higher profitability through operational effectiveness. Consequently, industries competing with each other have become more and more similarand lost direction instead of keeping their competitive distinctiveness.
In the light of this "operational thinking vs strategic thinking" brief analysis, which is our attitude? Is our thinking strategic so as to be able to differentiate our products and/or services from our competitors’? As managers, are we able to make decisions and sometimes say ‘no’?
