Thinking Strategically in Management

How important is strategic management? It largely determines which organizations succeed and which ones struggle. Differences in the strategies managers choose and how effectively they execute them help explain why a company like Amazon is thriving and Barnes & Noble is floundering, how Facebook all but killed MySpace in social networking, and why Apple is beating Microsoft in the world of mobile computing.

So, what does it mean to think strategically? Strategic thinking means to take the long-term view and to see the big picture, including the organization and the competitive environment, and consider how they fit together.

Strategic Management refers to the set of decisions and actions used to formulate and execute strategies that will provide a competitively superior fit between the organization and its environment so as to achieve organizational goals.