Challenges to Strategic Management Systems Oversight

There are numerous challenges to effective strategic management systems oversight.
Some of the challenges are relatively minor. However, there are other challenges that are
serious and ought to be addressed adequately. These challenges include unclear vision and
mission statements, poor communication, and lack of support from key stakeholders in the
organization. These stakeholders are both in the internal and external environment of the
organization. Of these challenges, I believe the most difficult one to overcome is winning the
support of key stakeholders.
To win the support of key stakeholders there is need for a lot of information gathering
and sharing and coming up with different methods of stakeholder engagement for different
stakeholder groups depending on their importance and impact on the success of the strategic
plan. It also requires a lot of back and forth communication and addressing of their
grievances and concerns. It is these reasons that make the challenge of gaining support from
key stakeholders a difficult one to overcome.
Given the importance of full stakeholder support for the success of strategic plans, it
is important to develop methods of overcoming the challenge of inadequate stakeholder
support. One of these methods is to identify all stakeholder groups and establish
communication channels with them (Andriof et al., 2017). Stakeholder groups include
employees, investors, and even important customers. Opening communication channels with
these groups enables them to develop a broader and better understanding of the strategic plan
and its importance to them and the organization. Such communication also creates a strong
buy-in of the strategic plan and its goals from the stakeholders (Andriof et al., 2017). For the
communication to be effective it should not one-off. Rather, it should be done continually

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with all the identified stakeholders regularly receiving updates about the progress of the
strategic plan.

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References

Andriof, J., Waddock, S., Husted, B., & Rahman, S. S. (2017). Unfolding stakeholder
thinking: Theory, responsibility and engagement. Routledge.