The process that organizations use to make strategic decisions is which of the following?

Strategy Implementation
Strategy implementation is an action-oriented activity; it is concerned with making the chosen strategy operational by translating it into action plans so it can be executed successfully. Implementation provides the connecting loop between the strategic choice - selected strategic option from formulation - and execution and control. It revolves around the management of people resources, and business processes. Implementation assumes the existence of an operations infrastructure such as; organization structure, systems (e.g., payroll system, performance management system, employee compensation and benefits system, employee on-boarding system, etc.). This infrastructure is dependent on operations structure such as: facilities, processes, etc. If the overall strategy does not work with the business' current structure a new structure should be installed at the beginning of this stage.

Strategy is implemented through the use of

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Strategy implementation is an action-oriented process for building a capable organization  that can make the selected planned/formulated strategy work as intended, through execution of the initiatives in those plans to realize the actual strategy. Strategic initiatives are the means through which a company translates its goals and vision into practice. They are the specific actions or goals an organization adopts to bring its vision to life.  They are the first tangible objectives of your strategy, and are crucial to the execution of the strategy and the organizations development. 

Strategy implementation planning is one way by which an organization's objectives, strategies, and policies are put into action through development of initiatives (programs and projects), budgets and procedures. Implementation planning involves the following:
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1. Establish  Organization Structure - Determine and define Roles, Responsibilities and Relationships that build an organization for achieving those goals and objectives. Set expectations among your team, and clearly communicate your implementation plan, so there’s no confusion. Document all the resources available including employees, teams, and departments that will be involved.​​
2. Establish Strategic Objectives - Identify the goals the new strategy should achieve. Goals help establish a clear picture of what you are trying to attain. Account for variables that might hinder your team's ability to reach the identified goals and lay out contingency plans. Usually, strategic choices selected for implementation are expressed as high-level statements that resonate with the board, and executive level management. Ensure the strategic choices are sound and described in statements that clearly communicate what top management wants and expects. The statements should be expressed in terms that middle-level and line management would understand; such as the products and services to offer and in which markets; what resources, capabilities, and competencies are needed to support these products and services; how to acquire or build these resources.
3. Cascade Strategy - Translating the selected strategic choices into organizational methods (functional strategies). This involves translating the organization's strategic goals into annual objectives and the actions needed over the next one or two years to implement the major proposed key objectives. The objectives are then assigned to organization units with the right competencies and capability (as defined by their functional strategies) to ensure successful implementation of the selected strategic choices.  ​
4. Delegate Work - Determine who needs to do what and when. Develop action plans to help determine "what" specific actions or activities need to be carried out by "who", and "when" in order to achieve a goal within the constraints defined by the objective statements. ​An action plan gives a time table for implementing a strategy.
5. Putting Plan into Action - Execute the plan, Monitor progress and performance, and provide continued support. One effective strategy for monitoring progress is to use daily, weekly, and monthly status reports, and check-ins to to provide updates; reestablish due dates and milestones, and ensure all teams are aligned.
6. Take Corrective Action - Adjust or revise as necessary. Implementation is an iterative process, so the work doesn’t stop as soon as you think you’ve reached your goal. Processes can change mid-course, and unforeseen issues or challenges can arise. Sometimes, your original goals will need to shift as the nature of the project itself changes.
7. ​Get Closure on the Project, and Agreement on the Output - Everyone on the team should agree on what the final product should look like based on the goals set at the beginning. When you’ve successfully implemented your strategy, check in with each team member and department to make sure they have everything they need to finish the job and feel like their work is complete.
8. Review of How the Process Went - Conduct a retrospective. ​Once your strategy has been fully implemented, look back on the process and evaluate how things went. Ask yourself questions like:

• Did we achieve our goals?
• If not, why? What steps are required to get us to those goals?
• What roadblocks or challenges emerged over the course of the project that could have been anticipated? How can we avoid these challenges in the future?
• In general, what lessons can we learn from the process?

​A strategy is fully implemented, if the corporate strategy is fully implemented, i.e., the corporation has the capabilities, comparative (enterprise) advantage, and business portfolio

and the business business strategy is fully implemented, i.e., the business unit has the customers, value proposition, and skills 

. In practice a strategy is never fully implemented since the environment factors on which strategy assumptions were based are in constant flux. Technically, a strategy can never actually be fully implemented because everything that was necessarily assumed when formulating the strategy - about customers, technology, regulation, labor market, competitors, and so on - is in a constant state of flux.  There will always be a gap between where the company is and what its strategy call for. Closing this gap is implementation.

Successful strategy implementation can be challenging, and it requires strong leadership and management skills. Effective delegation, patience, emotional intelligence, thorough organizational abilities, and communication skills are crucial.
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Strategic issues in strategic implementation include:

• Ineffective communication
• Ineffective alignment
• Ineffective change management
• Ineffective performance management
• Ineffective project management
• Ineffective strategy.

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Implementation plan includes several different components that need to be coordinated and managed through the assignment and direction of personnel to carry out the plan. Implementation deals with organizational design changes and structural modifications, motivational plans, reward and punishment systems, leadership style, and control and information systems.

Strategy implementation is all about “how” the activities will be carried out, “who” will perform them, “when” and "how often" will they be performed, and “where” will the activities be conducted. And it does not refer only to the installation or application of new strategies but also to existing strategies that have always worked well in the past years, and are still expected to yield excellent results in the coming periods. Reinforcing these strategies is also a part of strategy implementation.

Once planning goals are set in the strategy formulation stage, managers organize the human resources and other resources that are identified as necessary by the plan to reach the planned goals. ​Strategy implementation means the strategic plans are carried out and translated into positive actions. These are essentially two (2) aspects/parts to implementation:

There are three (3) approaches to implementation control, including authority, persuasion, and policy.

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Planning - The cascade of objectives - decisions and actions down through the organization; this requires that there exists an appropriate operations infrastructure.​

1. Controlling Execution - Monitoring performance to make sure that planned results - outcomes of successful execution - are actually achieved.

​The planning aspects of implementation revolve around decisions about managing people and processes, taking into consideration management issues central to strategy implementation.
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Although strategy implementation requires a customized approach, the following are some general tasks that managers must perform to successfully implement the selected/chosen strategy.
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1. Exerting Strategic Leadership - Strategic leadership is a potential source of competitive advantage, and, therefore, highly essential for successful strategy. Strategic leadership is construed as the ability to anticipate, envision, maintain flexibility, and empower others to create strategic change as necessary. Strategic leadership is concerned with managing the entire organization and addressing the environmental changes in the industry and outside the industry, Successful strategic leaders in organizations effectively and gainfully influence the employees' behavior and thoughts. They are capable of creating intellectual capital.
2. Building a Capable Organization - This includes the following steps (1) developing competent personnel, this involves putting together a strong management team, and recruiting and retaining employees with the needed experience, technical skills, and intellectual capital; (2) developing competitive organizational capaboilities, this involves building core competencies, and competitive capabilities; and (3) dynamic organizational structure, this involves structuring the organization and work effort. It includes organizing business functions and processes, value chain activities, and decision making in such a way that help successful ‘strategy execution.  
3. Linking Budget to Strategy - Effective strategy implementation requires reallocating resources to ensure that relevant business function/divisions/departments have sufficient budgets to do their work successfully. Budgetary requirements must be determined carefully, so that fund allocation can be made judiciously. When managers change strategy, resource reallocation becomes necessary if a particular business function/area has to play a more critical strategic role.
4. Establishing strategy-supportive policies and procedures - The organizational policies and operating procedures/work procedures must have conformity with strategy. Strategy-supportive policies are essential, as they provide useful guides for decision making. Similarly, strategy-supportive work procedures or work practices are unavoidable as any deviation from the existing ones may create resistance from employees. It is important that managers formulate policies and procedures in such a way that they can provide support to effective strategy implementation and execution. When a company embarks on implementing a new competitive strategy, the senior management should undertake a comprehensive review of the company's existing policies and procedures. 
5. Instituting Best Practices - Best practices refer to the innovative manner in which activities or business processes are performed by companies, which are considered 'best-in-industry' or 'best-in-world'. In other words, best practices are those business activities of competitors or some other organizations that have proved very successful in achieving business goals. A company may have best practices, for example, in exceeding customer expectations or in motivating employees. A company can identify the best practices of other companies through benchmarking. Benchmarking is searching out the best practices of other companies. It finds out how well a company performs particular activities and processes against the best in the world. Benchmarking best practices and then adopting them is important for successful strategy implementation.
6. Instituting Mechanisms for Continuous Improvement - Mechanisms for continuous improvement of business operations and processes (including products and services) are many. Some of the most widely used of these are: Business Process Re-engineering, Total Quality Management, and Six Sigma.
7. Installing Support Systems - Successful strategy implementation entails the establishment of several support systems to carry out/on business operations. Well established support systems strengthen company capabilities and at the same time faciitate better implementation of the strategy.
8. Design Strategy-Supportive Reward Systems - The Reward and motivation systems in the company need to be such that they promote better strategy implementation. The reward system should be linked to strategy related performance and measures.
9. Build a strategy-supportive culture - Strategy implementation is made relatively easy when the corporate culture is compatible with the strategy. When the corporate culture does not fit the strategy either the factors/aspects of the culture is changed or the strategy id modified. Managers face real challenges in changing the inbuilt existing corporate culture into a strategy-supportive culture.
10. Design Strategic Control Systems - This involves managers selecting a strategy to implement and appropriate organization structure then creating control systems to evaluate and monitor the progress of activities directed towards implementing the strategies. This provides managers with the tools to regulate and govern their activities. Managers adopt corrective actions through adjustments in the strategy if variations are detected. Strategic controls can be both proactive and reactive.

These are some of the various strategy implementation tasks common to most companies that strategy implementation needs and strategy implementers need to take care of while giving careful consideration to the emerging changes that regularly take place in the organization.

Strategy Implementation ​​​consists of all the decisions and actions, and plans required to turn strategic choices into reality.​ Although a manager may talk about "implementing a differentiation strategy", the real implementation of a strategy happens at the bottom of the strategy hierarchy and the organizational hierarchy, through the actions of operational employees who carry out planned tasks that add value to the company's product. Such tasks may include: research and development to add new features, monitoring production to ensure company's products meet high quality standards, and marketing the product to add brand value in the eyes of consumers. Successful implementation depends on the following organization system elements being in place:

1. Resources - One of the basic activities of strategy implementation is the allocation of resources, both financial and non-financial resources, that are (a) available to the organization, and (b) are lacking but required for strategy implementation. Do you have adequate funding (financial strength) to support implementation, covering the costs and expenses that must be incurred in the execution of the strategies?" and "Do you have enough time to see the strategy throughout its implementation?" Financial strength is a factor in its won right that influences other internal environment factors. 
2. People - These refer to the human resources. There are two issues to be addressed; (1) "Do you have enough people to implement the strategies? (2) "Do you have the right people in the organization to implement the strategies?"
3. Structure - Is the structure clear-cut with lines of authority and responsibility defined and underlined in the "chain of command?" "Are the lines of communication throughout the organization clearly defined by management?" Organization structure essentially defines how the work needed to carry out the mission is divided among the workforce/people.
4. Systems - What systems, tools, and capabilities are in place to facilitate the implementation of the strategies? What are the specific functions of these systems? How will these systems aid in the implementation? The availability of the appropriate systems can significantly impact the implementation and execution performance. If the right systems are not available, or the available systems are not up to expected standards then workers and management may be hindered in the performance of the duties. If the inadequate systems are used by customers then customer satisfaction will suffer. These are systems that support the organizational structure; they include:system of accounts, communication systems, information systems, order processing systems, customer relations systems, and other basic systems that support operations. These systems basically collect data, analyze the data and move the results around the organization to inform management decisions and actions.  
5. Culture - Organization culture is influenced by the values and beliefs of the organization, and manifested in the attitudes of employees and partners, and their ability to "go the extra mile". Negative attitudes can severely and adversely impact the organization's capacity to successfully implement and execute its strategies. 
6. Management - The capability of the management team and the leadership styles employed by managers will also have a major impact on employee morale and motivation, and organizational culture.

These component elements have to be in place for competent implementation; and are generally in agreement with the key success factors or prerequisites for effective strategy implementation as identified by McKinsey 7S. 

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Goal Setting and Objectives
An objective is an outcome measure, not the measure of a process designed to achieve the outcome. If you can’t establish baseline or target numbers, it’s a sign that your objectives aren’t really goals. In reality, they are strategies or tactics.

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A strategic objective is a business need that is defined in quantifiable and measurable terms. Strategic objectives are big-picture performance indicators (goals) for a company, and they describe what the company will do to try and fulfill its mission. The business need must be bound by both a baseline and a target (how much?), as well as time (by when?). We must know the level of improvement required and how much time we have to achieve the established targets.

Corporate objectives are those that relate to the business as a whole. Corporate objectives tend to focus on the desired performance and results of the business. It is important that corporate objectives cover a range of key areas where the business wants to achieve results rather than focusing on a single objective. Peter Drucker suggested that corporate objectives should cover the following areas:

1. Market standing - Market share, customer satisfaction, product range.
2. Innovation - New products, better processes, using technology.
3. Productivity - Optimum use of resources, focus on core activities.
4. Physical and Financial Resources - Factories, business locations, finance, supplies.
5. Profitability - Levels of profit, rates of return on investment
6. Management - Management structure; promotion and development
7. Employees - Organizational structure; employee relations
8. Public Responsibility - Compliance with laws; social and ethical behavior.

They are usually set by the top management of the business and they provide the focus for setting more detailed objectives for the main functional activities of the business. 
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Implementing the Selected Strategy
Strategy implementation from a strategy content perspective involves implementation of corporate, business and operations strategy re-enforced by the implementation of the relevant functional strategies.

Corporate strategy at its core concerns itself with the entirety of a business, where decisions are made in regard to its overall growth and direction. Corporate strategy implementation entails making corporate strategy operational by translating corporate level strategy goals into programs and projects that accomplish those goals. If the corporation has the capabilities, enterprise advantage, and business portfolio it wants its corporate strategy is fully implemented.

​Corporate strategy entails a clearly defined, long-term vision that organizations set, seeking to create corporate value and motivate the workforce to implement the proper actions to achieve customer satisfaction.​ When clearly defined, a corporate strategy will work to establish the overall value of a business, set strategic goals and motivate employees to achieve them. ​The pillars of corporate strategy include; allocation of resources, organization (structure) design, portfolio management, and strategic trade-offs.

Implementing corporate strategy involves:

1. Understand the strategic goals - Understand the goals in terms of various strategic initiatives that the goals really represent to establish the business portfolio the organization wants.
2. Translate Goals into major programs - Translate goals into major initiatives at the beginning of operational planning. This is accomplished mapping the goals into chunks of work. 
3. Map programs to Organizational Structure - With grouping of initiatives into programs completed, the question is "How do initiatives impact the organization?" Profit and Loss accountability, organizational structure and resource control must be understood with respect to how they relate to strategy programs. Where will resources need to be shared? How will program funding affect budgets across the organization's structure?
4. Define Accountability for the programs - Accountability must be clear in terms of time frames. RACI models can aid in mapping out Responsibility, Accountability, Consult and Inform roles relative to the programs or initiatives supporting the plans.
5. Break programs down into projects - Operations planning is about execution, so estimating work effort and time to complete correctly, for chunks of work is important. Programs are too unwieldy to be estimated and managed without breaking down the effort into smaller chunks, i.e., projects.

Corporate-level strategy is an action taken to gain a comparative advantage through the selection and management of combination of businesses competing in several industries or product markets. For multi-business firms, the resource-allocation process - how cash, staffing, equipment, and other resources are distributed - is established at the corporate level.

Business level strategy at its core is concerned with the actions and decisions a company plans to take to reach its goals and objectives.

​Implementing business competitive strategy may involve the following:

1. Assess Business situation - Give due consideration to your business situation and make sure your competitive strategy is developed in the context of that business situation. Is the company a mature firm with well-developed brand and reputation for stability, or a brand new startup?  What are your business imperatives? Do you need to grow in size or maximize profitability? These kinds of business objectives shape whats possible and what's optimal.
2. Research target markets and competitive environment - There are two (2) types of research of relevance here; research on your target markets and research on the competitive environment. This type of research offers you the opportunity to understand how your firm is, or could be different from competitors in ways that are meaningful to your potential clients/customers. 
3. Identify Current or potential sources of competitive advantage - In the research step,you may have identified some likely potential advantages; you may consider these and add additional ones for evaluation. Evaluation involves applying the following tests: is the potential advantage true? i.e., is it grounded in reality?; id it relevant?; and is it provable? Is there objective support for your claim?
4. Validate your Competitive Strategy - The choices of competitive strategy are high stake strategic decisions; it is prudent to validate your selection of advantages before implementing them.
5. Develop your competitive strategy -  There are two (2) types of implementation cases an organization might need to consider:

• Type 1 - Some competitive advantage may already have been fully implemented in your company, or you are planning on. In those cases your task is to focus on communicating those advantages to the market place. This element of the plan is called marketing or building brand strategy and focuses on target audiences, messages, communications techniques, budget and schedule.
• Type 2 - ​You are planning to implement a new strategy that involves developing a completely new characteristic of the organization; it involves planning how (tactics) this is going to happen. Does it involve new hires? Training existing staff? Changing policies and procedures? Acquisitions? These sort of organizational changes do not happen on their own. They must be planned for and deliberately implemented.

The business strategy is fully implemented, if the business unit has the customers, value proposition and skills it has chosen to have.

Operations strategy refers to the methods companies use to reach their objectives. Developing operations strategies enables an organization to examine and implement effective and efficient systems for using resources, personnel and work processes. Service-oriented companies also use basic operations strategies to link long- and short-term corporate decisions and create an effective management team.

There are two (2) parts to implementing (making strategy operational) a strategy; both parts require that an appropriate operations infrastructure is in place. The two (2) parts involve consideration of a number of important points relevant to strategy execution such as:

1. Activation of lower decisions - This involves the cascading of decisions and actions through out the organization. The process entails translating the organization's strategic goals into annual objectives and the actions needed over the next one or two years to implement the major proposed key objectives. The objectives are then assigned to organization (functional) units with the right competencies and capability (as defined by their functional strategies) to ensure success implementation of the selected strategic choices.  
2. Controlling Results - This involves monitoring performance to make sure the planned results are actually achieved. It involves the implementation of performance control systems.

​Implementation means the strategic plans are carried out and translated into positive actions.

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1. Establish Annual Objectives - Establishing annual objectives is a decentralized activity that directly involves all managers in the organization. This involves managers identifying and defining the short-term objectives that turn the strategic long-term goals and objectives (of what is to be accomplished) defined in the formulation stage, into short-term objectives - specific, measurable, time-sensitive statements - of what is to be achieved and when they will be achieved. Account for variables that might hinder your team's ability to reach them, and layout a contingency plan. Annual objectives are essential for strategy implementation because they: represent the basis for allocating resources; are a primary mechanism for evaluating managers; are the major instrument for monitoring progress towards achieving long-term objectives; establish organizational, divisional, and departmental priorities.
2. Devising policies for execution of strategies -  Changes in a firm's strategic direction do not occur automatically. On a day-to-day basis, policies are needed to make the strategy work as intended. Policies let both employees and managers know what is expected of them, thereby increasing the likelihood that strategies will be implemented successfully. Policies guide and constrain decision makers and ensures that the various functional strategies are integrated and complementary. Policies establish the conditions to enable effective execution.
3. Allocating resources - This involves allocation of resources - financial, physical, human, and technological resources - to the departments and function areas responsible for executing the strategy. Resource allocation is a central management activity that allows for strategy execution. Strategic management enables resources to be allocated according to priorities established by annual objectives. 
4. Managing Conflict - Approaches for managing and resolving conflict may include: Avoidance, Diffusion, and Confrontation. 
5. Matching Strategy with Structure - Changes in strategy often require changes in existing organizational structure for two (2) basic reasons: structure largely dictates how objectives and policies will be established; and structure dictates how resources will be allocated. Structure should be designed to facilitate the strategic pursuit of a firm and, therefore, follow strategy.
6. Linking performance and pay to strategies - Develop incentive and compensation plans that link performance and pay to strategies through mechanisms such as profit sharing, gain sharing, bonus programs, etc.
7. Minimizing resistance to change - Creating an organizational climate conducive to change
8. Matching managers with strategy - []
9. Developing a strategy-supportive culture - []
10. Adapting production/operations processes - []

During implementation stage, organizations may also find that they have to perform further planning, especially in the discovery of issues that must be addressed.

Implementation of planned strategies involves the process by which an organization translates its chosen strategy into action plans and activities which will steer the organization in the direction set out in the strategy, and enable the organization to achieve its strategic objectives. Translating strategy  aims - goals and objectives - into actionable processes in an ordered fashion is, however, not easy. The setting of priorities and development of plans may present organizations with formidable management challenges.

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Organizations as social systems exist in the real world through people who are members of the organization and some physical structures (such as offices and facilities). Enacting an organization involves translation from the abstract model of the formal definition to concrete system elements, such as assigning individual actors (

) to positions in the organization structure (for example, organized around functional areas) in specific

and

. The assignment of actors to positions is formally made through the signing of legal contracts (created and regulated through organization policies) with the actors. The signature of this contract represents a conveyance of the goals of the position to the actor(s) who are assuming that position, i.e., the goals of the position are expected to be executed by the actor(s) enacting that position.
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Structural decisions of operations strategy are decisions that define the overall tangible shape and architecture (e.g., facility, capacity, technology, etc.) of the operations of an organization.
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​The operations infrastructure consists of the following: organizational structure and the systems, human resources, culture and resources to support it. Within this framework managers have to consider:

1. the way operations function fits into the broader organization.
2. support systems such as information, communication, financial, control and other support systems.
3. internal policies, methods and culture that support the implementation.
4. budgets and resources for operations.
5. integrated supply chains to ensure the flow of materials.
6. motivation of people to pursue targets.
7. leadership to drive implementation forward and to continually look for improvements.

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The appropriate operations infrastructure needed to support an operations strategy has to be in place for strategy implementation to begin.

An organizational structure divides the organization into distinct parts, and defines the relationships between those parts. The structure shows who has responsibility for what,who has authority over whom, and who reports to whom. The main options are: functional structure, product structure, hybrid structure combining the two, some time of matrix structure, or self-managed groups.

The human resources aspects of the organization as a system involve decisions and actions about staffing and staff levels, job responsibilities, employment conditions, motivation, etc.

Organizational culture is an intangible aspect of the the organization as system. It is defined by the values and norms, beliefs and assumptions, and influences the way  people within the organization think and behave.
​Establish  Organization Structure - Determine and define Roles, Responsibilities and Relationships that build an organization for achieving those goals and objectives. Set expectations among your team, and clearly communicate your implementation plan, so there’s no confusion. Document all the resources available including employees, teams, and departments that will be involved.

​Implementation Model
Implementation intentions are modeled as action goals in the action plans that specify an anticipated critical situation linked to it and to an instrumental goal-directed response. Implementation intentions (plans) have the structure of "If situation X is encountered, then I will perform the goal-directed response Y!". Holding an implementation intention commits an individual to perform the specified goal-directed response (action) once the critical situation is encountered. 

The choices to pursue an implementation intentions (plans) that specify an anticipated critical situation linked to it and to an instrumental goal-directed response. ​Both strategy formulation and implementation intentions (goals models) are set in an act of willing. The former specifies the intentions to meet a goal or standard; the latter refers to the intention to perform a plan. Commonly, implementation intentions are formed in the service of goal intentions, because they specify the where, when, and how of respective goal-directed responses. 
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A plan specifies a set of goals and objectives that need to be achieved to successfully satisfy the intended goals of the plan. The goals of the plan are assigned to functional areas (that define key organizational capabilities or departments and then cascaded to the resources in key capability areas for implementation and execution.

​Strategic and operational planning most often use

The action plans are schedules for actions to be taken, and policies and procedures that guide resource allocation and prioritization decisions. The implementation plan defines the responsibility of top, middle and lower level managers focused on the creation of new strategic assets and/or enhancement and strengthening existing strategic assets needed by the entity in order to build an organization capable of carrying out the strategy and maintaining its ability to achieve future outcomes. ​The basic elements of the action plan are a list of activities needed for implementation, and time table showing when, responsibilities for each activity, time table of activities, budgeted costs, expected flow of funds, resources needed, etc.Operations Plans
The Operations Plan describes milestones, conditions for success and explains how or what portions of a strategic plan will be put into operation during a given operations period. The operations plan is a basic tool that directs the day-to-day activities of organizational staff. An operational plan addresses four basic questions: Where are we now? Where do we want to be? How do we get there? How do we measure our progress?
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​Resources are constraints on the course of action. It also involves budgeting - identifying the sources and levels of resources that can be committed to the courses of action. Management can select the type of budget that best suits the planning needs of the organization.

Strategy Evaluation
The evaluation is based on a set of selection criteria/factors that ensures the chosen strategies will be effective. A viable strategy is defined in terms of the degree to which the strategy meets those criteria i.e.,:

1. Consistency - The strategy must not represent mutually inconsistent goals and policies.
2. Suitability (Appropriateness) - Is the strategy consistent with the organization's mission, values, and operating principles? Does it fit with the vision and mission?
3. Consonance - The strategy must represent adaptive response to the external environment and to the critical changes occurring within it as defined by the SWOT Analysis information..
4. ​Advantage - The strategy must provide for the creation and/or maintenance of a competitive advantage in the selected areas of activity.
5. Flexibility - Can it be adapted and changed as needed?
6. Cost-Benefit - Is the strategy likely to lead to sufficient benefits to justify the costs in time and other resources?
7. Timing - Can and should the organization implement this strategy at this time, given external factors and competing demands?

The whole point about strategy is that the critical factors determining its quality are often not directly observable or simply measured; and by the time strategic opportunities/threats do directly affect operating results, it may well be too late for an effective response.

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The cascade within a particular capability area terminates when the organization unit that abstracts that area reaches individual or team of individual resources that fill the relevant positions in the organization unit. The cascading process is based on goal refinement techniques. The goal refinement network model that represents the cascaded goals can be elaborated by associating with each cascaded goal element assigned to a position filled by resources responsible for employing the means to be employed in accomplishing actions/tasks/activities to achieve the specified goals and objectives. Goal refinement and elaboration decisions are critical and decisive in the planning process as alternative actor assignments define alternative system proposals. A prioritized implementation time schedule and budgets can be generated from the planning model.

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