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MANAGING PROJECTS

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Projects represent nonroutine business activities that often have long-term strategic ramifications for a firm. In this chapter, we examined how projects differ from routine business activities and discussed the major phases of projects. We noted how environmental changes have resulted in increased attention being paid to projects and project management over the past decade. In the second half of the chapter, we introduced some basic tools that businesses can use when planning for and controlling projects. Both Gantt charts and network diagrams give managers a visual picture of how a project is going. Network diagrams have the added advantage of showing the precedence between activities, as well as the critical path(s). We wrapped up the chapter by showing how these concepts are embedded in inexpensive yet powerful software packages such as Microsoft Project. If you want to learn more about project management, we encourage you to take a look at the Web site for the Proj...
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Strategic Leadership: Managing the Strategy Process

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This chapter explained the role of vision, mission, and values in the strategic management process. It provided an overview of strategic leadership and explained different processes to create strategy.
The roles of vision, mission, and values in the strategic management process.
A vision captures an organization’s aspirations. An effective vision inspires and motivates members of the organization.
A mission statement describes what an organization actually does—what its business is—and why and how it does it.
Values define the ethical standards and norms that should govern the behavior of individuals within the firm.
The strategic implications of product-oriented and customer-oriented vision statements.
Product-oriented vision statements define a business in terms of a good or service provided.
Customer-oriented vision statements define business in terms of providing solutions to customer needs.
Customer-oriented vision statements provide managers with more strategic flexibility than
product-oriented missions.
To be effective, visions and missions need to be backed up by hard-to-reverse strategic commitments.
Why anchoring a firm in ethical values is essential for long-term success.
Employees tend to follow values practiced by strategic leaders. Without commitment from top managers, statements of values remain merely public relations exercises.
Ethical values are the guardrails that help keep the company on track when pursuing its mission and its quest for competitive advantage.
How managers become strategic leaders.
To become an effective strategic leader, a manager needs to develop skills to move sequentially through five different leadership levels: highly capable individual, contributing team member, competent manager, effective leader, and executive.
The roles of corporate, business, and functional managers in strategy formulation and implementation.
Corporate executives must provide answers to the question of where to compete (in industries, markets, and geographies), and how to create synergies among different business units.
General managers in strategic business units must answer the strategic question of how to compete in order to achieve superior performance. They must manage and align the firm’s different functional areas for competitive advantage.
Functional managers are responsible for implementing business strategy within a single functional area.
Top-down strategic planning, scenario planning, and strategy as planned emergence.
Top-down strategic planning is a sequential, linear process that works reasonably well when the environment does not change much.
In scenario planning, managers envision what-if scenarios and prepare contingency plans that can be called upon when necessary.
Strategic initiatives can be the result of top-down planning or can emerge through a bottom-up process from deep within the organization. They have the potential to shape a firm’s strategy.
A firm’s realized strategy is generally a combination of its top-down intended strategy and bottom-up emergent strategy, resulting in planned emergence

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