Step 5: Strategy Types and Competitive Advantage details various level of strategies for any organization. In my view, aside from the obvious importance of understanding your organization’s competitive advantage, a most critical reading for the assessment of an organization has to do with core competencies.  Essentially, the core competency reading (see in-step link) is asking you to determine what competencies your organization needs to carry out its mission. Core competency raises a variety of issues to consider in your writing: How does your organization sustain its core competencies?  What are the threats to the organization’s core competencies? Later in the paper when you are analyzing Critical Resources (Step 7) your readings on core competencies will help you determine if sufficient resources are being allocated in support of core competencies. An associated reading (see in-step link) discusses how to access your organizations competitive advantage. Without a competitive advantage how can an organization survive?

Step 6: Organization Size and Structure: The key issue in this step is the impact of size and structure on performance. Is your organizational agile enough to respond quickly to various demands? If your organization is growing or shrinking? What impact does that have on meeting mission, goals, vision and objectives?  Alfred Chandler, in his 1962 classic, My Years at General Motors (then the largest company in the world), observed “structure follows strategy.” In other words, an organization must develop strategies for meeting it mission, vision, values and goals before it considers which structure will best serve meeting MVVG. Is your organization structured in a manner that maximizes its chances for meeting its MVVG?