Strategic control can be defined as process of monitoring as to whether, various strategies adopted by the organization are helping its internal environment to be matched with the external environment.
Strategic control processes allow managers to evaluate a company's program from a critical long-term perspective.
Types of control
- Premise Control: Premises are assumptions anticipated environment. A strategy is expected to be implemented on the basis of these assumptions. Premises are forecasts of future expectations about political-legal, economic, socio-cultural & technological forces in the external environment. Any change in premises affects the strategy. Premise control is continuous process. It ensures relevance of a strategy. Premise control involves:
- Identification of key premises made while formulating strategy.
- Keeping track of changes in premises & assessing their impact on strategy implementation.
- Re-examination of the validity of premises to make necessary changes at the right time.
- Implementation Control: Implementation control evaluates whether the plans, program, projects & budgets are guiding the organization towards objectives achievements. Resources allocated to them are withdrawn or revised to ensure envisaged benefits to the organization. It involves strategic rethinking. Tools of strategic implementation control are:
- Strategic thrusts: The strategic thrusts for implementation are identified & monitored. For e.g. strategic thrusts can be in terms of new products launch or diversification program.
- Milestone Review: Critical milestones in strategy implementation are identified. They can be in terms of events, resources allocations or end time. They are reviewed to reassess the continued relevance of implementation to objectives achievements.
- Strategic Surveillance: Strategic surveillance a broad range of events inside & outside the organization which threaten the course of the strategy. It can be:
- Selective surveillance: Monitoring is based on selected information sources to uncover external events likely to affect the strategy.
- Organizational surveillance: Information generated within the organization is captured for monitoring.
- Special alert control: Organizations should hope for the best & prepare for the Sudden & unexpected events create crisis. They threaten the course of strategy. Special alert control is triggered by detection of a crisis. It provides rapid response through immediate reassessment of strategy crisis situations. Contingency strategies are formulated to handle unforeseen events. The responsibility to handle crisis situations is given to crisis management teams.