Interim Managers: 3 Questions on Strategic Management

Interim managers adept in strategic management are better able to manage an entire business as a whole, rather than just marketing, finance or HR.

Interim managers say that by understanding strategic management, you will be able to understand why companies succeed and fail. To understand this, you need to answer these 3 basic questions.

Where do You Compete

As an interim manager, you need to understand the type of market your company is in. There are many different types of markets ranging from the shoe market to the frozen cookie market. Once you determine your market, you can not only determine the resources that you need to effectively compete in your market, but you can also figure out what are the needs of the consumers. If you can satisfy your consumers, you have a better chance of outcompeting the competition.

How do You Compete

This second fundamental is where you and your company need to determine how you effectively utilize the limited resources you have to best serve your market. By doing this you can better “pick your battles”, as you know which companies you can effectively compete with and the ones you cannot.

Once you determine this, you should try to improve your marketing and product design to be better than the companies you can compete with. Once you can answer these two questions you essentially have formulated a strategy.

How do you Implement your Strategy

With this new strategy, you need to find a way to implement it because if you can’t execute a plan, then there’s no point in having one. Execution of a plan is a difficult task. It requires a strong leader who is able to unite everybody together to achieve this goal. This can be done with positive encouragement or incentives.

A strategy is basically a guideline or map that shows you how you can achieve your goal. The same applies to businesses. These 3 questions are essentially the foundation of strategy. You can think of these three questions as the sides of a pyramid. If you can’t answer one of the questions, then the pyramid will fall, or in other words, your company will fail. That is why as an interim manager it is extremely important to understand how to strategically manage a company.

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