Suresh .V. Menon-Principal Consultant & Principal Trainer
The purpose of strategic evaluation is to evaluate the effectiveness of strategy in achieving organizational objectives. Thus strategic evaluation and control could be defined as the process of determining the effectiveness of a given strategy in achieving organizational objectives and taking corrective action wherever required. From this definition we could infer that the nature of strategic evaluation and control process is to test the effectiveness of the strategy as well as to take corrective action to keep it continually effective. During the two proceeding phases of strategic management process, the strategists formulate the strategy to achieve a set of objectives and then implement the strategy. Now there has to be a way of finding out whether the strategy being implemented is guiding the organization towards its intended objectives. Strategic evaluation and control therefore performs the crucial task of keeping the organization on the right track .
In the absence of such a mechanism, there would be no means for strategists to to find out whether or not the strategy is producing the desired effect.in this manner , through the process of strategic evaluation and control , the strategists attempt to answer the two sets of questions as given below:-
Importance of strategic evaluation
The process of strategic management requires that the strategists lay down the objectives of the organization and then formulate strategies to achieve them.The process of implementation of strategy starts with the identification of key managerial task which form the basis for the creation of organizational structure and design of systems. Here it should be reiterated that the segregation of key managerial task leads to a situation where individual managers are required to perform a small portion of the overall task required to implement a strategy. The fact that individually a manager performs a set which are correlated to the other task. The importance of strategic evaluation lies in its ability to coordinate the tasks to be performed by individual managers and also groups , division or strategic business units through control of performance.in the absence of coordination and controlling mechanism individual managers may pursue goals which are inconsistent with the overall objectives of the department.
We can also amalgamate Six Sigma with strategic management by implementing the monitor and control phase of six sigma to check that the processes are improving ,so my suggestion to organizations to include six sigma in their strategy plan and train the managers of the organization on six sigma so a part of the organization goal of improving the quality of the products and continuously improve the process is taken care of.