Levels of Strategy Making

Business Level

This level consists of primarily the business managers or managers of Strategic Business units. Here strategies are about how to meet the competition in a particular product market and strategies have to be related to a unit within an organization.

The managers at this level translate the general statements of direction and intent churned out at corporate level. The managers identify the most profitable market segment, where they can excel, keeping in focus the vision of the company. The corporate values, managerial capabilities, organizational responsibilities, and administrative systems that link strategic and operational decision making level at all the levels of hierarchy, encompassing all business and functional lines of authority in a company are dealt with at this level of strategy formulation. The managerial style, beliefs, values, ethics, and accepted forms of behavior must be congruent with the organizational culture and at this level; these aspects are diligently taken care of by strategic managers.

Operational Level

Planning alone cannot create massive mobilization of resources and people and can never generate high quality of strategic thinking required in complex organizational context. For this to happen, the planning should be carefully dovetailed and integrated with significant administrative systems viz. management control, communication, information management, motivation, rewards etc. It is also vital that all these systems are supported by organizational structure that defines various authority and responsibility relationships, among various members of the company and specifically at operational level. The culture of the organization should be accounted for, and these systems should find adaptability with the culture of the organization.