On your way to future strategy manager position

8 min readApr 3, 2021

Learn about tasks, responsibilities, opportunities and other skills for future strategy manager. This is what it takes to be a strategic leader!

Introduction

This article is about future strategy management or how to become a strategy manager. I took for the book several articles from Forbes, Entrepreneur and Harvard Business review. There are several others as well.

I found a couple of inspirational stories about strategic management. These were from people who become successful in their life and work. If you can take at least some of the learning for your daily life it will definitely change some parts.

Remember to keep learning more. This article is your starting point to become future strategy manager. To make more impact in your career, learn and collect experiences, join others and try to make best of your time wherever you go and get to know. Strategic management isn’t rocket science. Many skills are only working with people, but with a target, your goal or organization’s objective!

What strategy managers do

Jocelyn Kung gives three examples for crisis management strategies in Forbes:
1. What to cut: future survivors need the most significant, fast cost structure changes
2. What to preserve: for keeping perspective and also the importance perspectives and
3. Where to take risks: important in both establishing the business and changing existing, note future is often unclear.

You’re often in a situation where you need to react fast. These three strategies may also happen without any crisis, to be prepared for changes in the future.

Harvard Business review lists several tasks for Organization Strategy Management office:
1. create and manage scorecard,
2. align the organization,
3. review strategy,
4. develop strategy,
5. communicate strategy,
6. manage strategic initiatives and
7. integrate strategies priorities to other support functions.

This article assumes that strategic management team needs someone behind the scenes helping in these tasks. If you’re a future strategy manager, these tasks are for you and possibly to your team.

Analyzed data

Most common data is coming from facts, trends and statistics around organizations. Consulting companies can help in collecting, some information is available for free as well. It’s important to use internal and external sources together. This will make your analysis better and more successful.

Depends on organization and people how much different data is available and what’s the invested time in analyzing. Sometimes you need to react fast. It’s possible to use for example big data systems (trends), financial data (facts), market or other environmental aspects (statistics). They will help to make selected strategy to work better in the situation. Note that reason to change strategies can arise from legislation as well.

Business objectives

Business objectives are coming from vision and mission of an organization. Board of directors will select most important objectives and goals and strategic process can start after it. Main reasons to have new or changed business is a crisis or other need (it comes internal or external).

Strategy managers can help others by making both source and output analysis, for example scenarios. Different scenarios are options, you select the one which is most likely to success. If there’s no clear idea for objectives and directions, a strategy isn’t possible to be formulated.

Goal setting

Goals can be both short-term and long-term. Examples for short-term goals could come from marketing campaigns like sales increase in a certain period of time. Example for long-term goals may be part of organizational change like re-structuring or cost efficiency.

Once goals are decided and listed, there need to be Key Performance Indicators which are followed. Goals will not have affection without people. They must be communicated and understood as well. Best way is to assign responsible person for each goal.

How strategy managers take responsibility

Tasnim Nazeer gives tasks how strategic management can boost organizations
1. Build a positive company culture: without feeling to belong, there’s no commitment or interest,
2. Develop healthy communication practices: this means listening and using right methods and tools,
3. Appreciate and reward your employees: it’s important to keep in right direction and celebrate, successes,
4. Invest in training: this means people know and understand, strategic management is also change management and
5. Look into resources and work environment: offer the access and possibilities to success, don’t only demand and manage.

Follow these steps and you will make an impact.

Being part of a team

Strategy manager are often members of board of directors. There could be vice president level position. Also combination like strategy and development or operations is common. Their role is to be both analytical and future and oriented.

Strategy managers must be in contact with different departments. Otherwise no strategy will be successful. Without real impact strategies may not be followed or their objectives and goals won’t be met. It’s a must to see how strategy is implemented in floor level, in all levels. This way corrections can be done before it’s too late. Key Performance Indicators must encourage to right behaviors.

Giving light for the future

It’s not easy to be often against others and keep mind. Another problem is to be creative and future oriented. Who actually can be creative 8 hours a day, five or seven days a week? Typically strategic people aren’t scared about changes even in a situation you don’t see so clearly future. That helps to become future oriented, seeing light at the end of the tunnel.

A good CEO has a vision, but his/her vision is implemented through strategies based on careful analysis. Future isn’t always clear, there must be several competing scenarios. Strategy managers are able to see signals, even the weakest ones. There are tools to use, but not so easy to find the best one always. Different kind of environmental analysis framework and studies will help.

Saying no to others

Barack Obama says he often listened people who said no. This is a good way to get other members of board interested. You will surprise and stop discussion. Then it can be analyzed together more. Careful analysis will have several scenarios to select from, all of them have benefits and risks, etc.

Strategy managers setup direction with others. That’s why saying no is controlling. Because strategic objectives and goals need commitment, it’s important to be sure about direction. Advice why something isn’t correct and need to be changed early enough.

Let’s take a look into needed skills

Since a big part of the strategy is planning, Alison Doyle lists what kind of skills are needed in this process:
1. Analytical: use and get data, sometimes it’s about calculating and sometimes about knowing the relevance,
2. Communication: know how to impact and talk, understand also methodologies and tools,
3. Decisiveness: delegate and setup priorities, where to go,
4. Leadership: have energy and motivate, also you as a person,
5. Problem solving: know about brainstorming but also things like creativity and multitasking, ability to manage your own stress and
6. Others with high scale: projects, processes, human resources, finance, auditing, etc.

Remember these when you work in the area of strategic management. All skills have their place, you need to understand different parts.

Analytics and data

You must understand where to get and how to use statistical data. Simplest way is only use statistics (standard deviation, regression, comparison to trends etc.), but you can also SPSS or hypothetical methods. Most mathematical analysis is more simple, but note that if you want to estimate potential or probabilities it becomes more difficult.

Note also in selecting estimates is highly subjective. This will affect for example in cost-benefit analysis you might do. Pay attention to research methodologies how data is collected especially in public sources. Data structures are not only related to systems. It’s also question about inclusion or exclusion in statistics and analysis.

Decision making

Quick decisions are normally happening all the time, for example annual leave applications, price changes for existing portfolio. Of course situations, products and organizations are different also in these. More demanding decisions include especially organizational changes including new hires or outsourcing certain part of the functions.

Decisions can be made by individuals or groups. Strategic decisions are most likely within bigger groups. You can use methodologies and tools to make decisions. Think about in strategic analysis scenarios and design thinking or workshop for idea generation.

Information management

Not all organizations have clear responsibilities for knowledge and data. Information management is how data is selected, modified/changed and saved. It’s important to have process for archiving data as well.

When new organization starts more advanced information management it must recognize sources and ways how data is modified. There are systems like ERP and business intelligence to save and organize data easily. Theoretical background can be for example Nonaka and Takeuchi’s Knowledge sharing spiral. It comes from knowledge management, but is also related sociological research.

Organizing people and tasks

Leadership means how you treat people and how you make sure you get most out of them. Organization structure affects both people and decisions, also reporting structures. Who has the power?

Great way for a strategy manager is to collect feedback, organize surveys, follow by time, etc. By these tools it’s no so difficult to be connected to others, departments and people. To make sure messages are understood, there must be continuous discussion between teams and management.

Strategies are always changing existing. Give time for people to get understanding and accept new direction.

Project management

Project management skills are often underestimated because some organizations use these positions for something else. They don’t understand the basics for starting and ending, not continuous status which is operations. Schedule, scope and budget are coming from strategic process and analyzed in portfolio analysis. It means there’s no reason to have a project without a strategic objective, a goal.

To be better in project management there are tools like portfolio management and earned value calculation. Background in project management is good for strategy managers. Program manager is more experienced; and in program management level decisions are no longer for one work package or task level like in projects.

Certifications can help to learn basics about project management. But real experience is much more important for any project manager. That’s why only through experiences, not just a short term, managers become better. At least need to be part of the project team.

Conclusion

There are many tools and methodologies you can use to become more strategic, a future strategy manager. To reach your personal success learn and be excited about the future, love the changes and make an impact for your current situation.

Enroll my course Strategic Management. It will teach you methodologies, tools and experiences more by cases and examples, too. This helps you to become a future strategy manager.

Learn more about project management by joining my course Successful Project Manager. It gives you all advice, more content and exclusive lectures to learn more.