268 Handbook of research on strategy process groups who may be interested in these statements include alumni, who may donate money to support the program, and other business schools which indirectly affect the school’s rankings through the reputational surveys. I also realize that my statements must go beyond just the generic propositions often adopted in mission and/or vision statements – such as ‘excel at teaching, service and research and be the leader’. Effective pos- itioning statements must capture some uniqueness of the entity. I will also work hard to keep these statements concise and understandable at a high level, following Peter Drucker’s advice to make sure that they can fit on a ‘T-Shirt’ (Drucker, 1990). Next come Priorities . Once the positioning is set, the leaders must establish scope and priorities. What is most important to assist the entity in achieving the vision? What must be done differently and what should be continued? The most critical decisions (and often the most difficult) are related to the elimination of activities that are not essential to the core mission and vision. What should we not do? The Payments portion of my model is where the ‘rubber hits the road’. The way that strategy is really implemented is through resource alloc- ations and incentive programs. Many organizations are overly reliant on what my wife refers to as ‘SALY’ – same as last year (plus or minus a few percentage points). This is not strategic. I will be sure to carefully spend my allocated budget on the kinds of activities that are necessary to move the consulting program in a new direction. Finally, there is Performance . I will need to construct a few (no more than three) overall performance metrics to track how well the strategy is working. It is important to consider the long term perspective as an over- focus on short term performance metrics can have devastating results (perhaps a contributor to our current economic woes). In my case, I will set a strategy with a three year performance window. Now that I have introduced the theoretical underpinnings, definitions and objectives for the strategy process I plan to follow, it is time to move to action. The start- ing point is the internal analysis.
INTERNAL ANALYSIS Theory
One of the dominant theoretical perspectives related to the internal analy- sis related to strategy is the resource-based view or RBV (Barney, 1991). The RBV theory posits that organizations can work toward competitive advantage through strategic management of resources and capabilities,
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