With the integration of commercial markets, the world has turned into a global village, and the fierce struggle in the competitive environment has forced today's businesses to act strategically. The business management model that began with the classical management process has taken on its new face today with the establishment of strategic thinking, and an era has begun in which strategic thinking provides an important competitive advantage.

Strategic management has developed as a management style that involves easily ensuring the adaptation of the business — a living organism — to its environment, and benefiting from it, in order to secure its sustainability.

In the past, businesses sold what they produced with ease. Everyone who produced, sold. Supply always lagged behind demand. But in the time that has passed from yesterday to today, consumption in the markets reached a certain saturation. The increase in the number of firms, multiple firms producing the same product, and customers beginning to choose between products created the competitive environment.

In this competitive environment, the first condition for businesses to survive became establishing superiority over their rivals. Those producing higher-quality and cheaper products than their rivals began to become the preferred and well-known brands. The most important change in this process took place in the understanding of management.

It is a plain fact that the firms with this competitive superiority did not become brands by chance. Whether they are aware of it or not, the firms that gain superiority in competition are in fact businesses that have adopted the strategic management approach.

These businesses are organizations with vision that know themselves well, know their goals and can act holistically in line with those goals. Organizations that observe the changes around them and their rivals' positions well, that benefit from the opportunities change brings, that position themselves by seeing risks in advance and use their own strengths to protect themselves from those risks, and that likewise strengthen their weaknesses by using opportunities, have always been on the winning side.

This situation in practice has been named the "strategic management" approach in theory. That strategic management is the most important element in gaining superiority has been proven by many cases.

At the foundation of planning done with the strategic management approach lies thinking simply and seeking answers by asking simple questions. Developing a strategic management system with this planning approach will make it possible for businesses to be living organisms.

These questions consist of the following:

1. What is the fundamental reason for our business's existence?

2. What is our business's current position?

3. Where does our business want to reach?

4. How do we get our business to the point we want to bring it to?

5. How do we know we are on the right path?

The more accurately, realistically and clearly businesses can answer these questions, the greater their chance of implementing their plans successfully.

However, looking at examples in practice, we see that although the questions above look simple, answering them is not so easy. First of all, the biggest problem that arises while seeking the answer to "What is our business's current position?" — answered by determining the current situation — is the inability to reach concrete data. Because management with data has not yet fully taken hold in our businesses, difficulties are experienced in determining the current situation. And for a business that cannot set out its current situation, planning its future becomes even harder.

Even so, businesses intending to transition to the strategic management model — although they struggle with the first steps — have at least taken a big step in identifying and understanding their deficiencies and needs in this area.

Companies practicing strategic management are companies able to express what the strategies they will pursue, and the goals that are steps toward those strategies, will be, so that they can advance in line with their vision and mission. These companies determine whether they have reached their goals by using a set of indicators they have defined. Data is needed for each of these indicators. These companies can therefore demonstrate their progress with data. By ensuring measurability, they monitor their own performance — and as a result, they continue their development through continuous improvements.

Author: Atakan Genç