Introduction to strategic management

Last updated November 20265 sectionsabout 5 min read

Key takeaways

Strategy is the long-term direction and scope of an organisation, aimed at achieving advantage through its configuration of resources within a changing environment, to fulfil stakeholder expectations.
Strategic management is the ongoing process of analysis, formulation, implementation and control that keeps a strategy aligned with the organisation's environment and objectives.
Strategy can be read through three lenses: as design (deliberate, top-down planning), as experience (built on what has worked before) and as ideas (emerging from experimentation across the organisation); a strategist gains from applying more than one.
Private-sector strategy is driven by profit and competition and measured by revenue and market share; public-sector strategy is driven by public value and mandate and judged on service delivery, equity and legal compliance.
Kenya's public sector runs at national and county level under the 2010 Constitution's devolution settlement, alongside state corporations, so strategy must respect the division of functions and political and public accountability.

Definition of strategy and strategic management

Strategy

A long-term direction and scope for an organisation, aimed at achieving advantage through its configuration of resources within a changing environment, to fulfil stakeholder expectations.

Strategic management

The ongoing process of analysis, formulation, implementation and control, each taken up in its own chapter below, that keeps an organisation's strategy aligned with its environment and objectives.

Approaches to strategy

Design (rational planning) approach

Strategy as a deliberate, top-down analytical process leading to a formal plan.

Experience-based approach

Strategy evolving incrementally from managers' accumulated experience and judgement.

Ideas-based (emergent) approach

Strategy emerging from innovation and experimentation across the organisation, not only from the top.

Strategic lenses

Strategic lenses are different ways of viewing how strategy actually develops, and a strategist benefits from applying more than one lens rather than assuming only one is correct:

As design: deliberate planning.
As experience: built on what has worked before.
As ideas: emerging from variety and experimentation.

Public versus private sector strategy

Private sector

Driven primarily by profit and market competition, with relatively clear performance metrics (revenue, market share).

Public sector

Driven by public value and mandate, accountable to citizens and political oversight rather than shareholders, and judged against service delivery, equity and legal compliance rather than profit.

The Kenyan public sector structure

Kenya's public sector operates at national and county government level (following the 2010 Constitution's devolution settlement), each with distinct mandates, alongside state corporations and other public entities. Strategy in this sector must account for this layered structure, the division of functions between levels, and political and public accountability alongside operational objectives.

Exam tip

The public/private distinction drawn above is foundational to the whole paper, whenever a later chapter's private-sector framework (Porter, BCG, Ansoff) is applied to a public-sector scenario, expect the exam to test whether you adapted it correctly, e.g. substituting public value for profit as the success measure.

Self-check

(a) A county government develops its strategy incrementally, building on what has worked in previous years, rather than through a single formal planning exercise. Identify the strategic lens this reflects. (2 marks)

(b) Distinguish how success is measured in the private sector from how it is measured in the public sector. (3 marks)

(d) State the three strategic lenses. (2 marks)

Show worked answer

(a) The experience-based approach (2 marks).

(b) The private sector is judged primarily by profit and market competition, with relatively clear metrics like revenue and market share; the public sector is judged by public value and mandate, service delivery, equity and legal compliance, accountable to citizens and political oversight rather than shareholders (3 marks).

(c) Strategy must account for the division of functions between national and county government, the layered structure devolution creates, and the need to coordinate rather than develop national and county strategy in isolation from each other (3 marks).

(d) Design; experience; ideas (2 marks).