The Strategic Management Process

Generic versus Specific Strategy

Corporate Planning

Corporate Planning Process

Balanced Scorecard

Looking at Uncertainty

Strategic Management; The Johnson, Scholes and Whittington Approach

Self-awareness

Strategic Management Tools

Johnson and Scholes Paradigm ‘The Cultural Web’

McKinsey 7-S Model

Mintzberg’s 5-P’s of Strategy

Putting it Together: The Sweet Spot

The Environment: Strategic and Competitor Analysis

Customer Awareness

Tools for Analysing the Environment

SWOT

PESTEL

Porter’s Five Forces

Ohmae’s 3-C’s

Porter’s Generic Strategies

Bowman’s Strategy Clock

Treacy and Wiersma

Kotler

Ethics

References

Strategic Management; The Johnson, Scholes and Whittington Approach

The objective of this approach is to achieve better alignment between corporate policies and strategic priorities. Strategic management is primarily concerned with creating systematic analyses of factors associated with internal and external environments. Together with scenario planning this should provide the basis for maintaining optimum management practices. Scenario planning techniques in turn consist of drivers and assumption’s like ‘What are we measuring and why is it important’? Together with some brainstorming the drivers can be brought together into a viable framework after which probabilities, patterns, connections can be sought to produce initial mini-scenarios. These can be drafted and even flow diagrams produced to identify the various issues arising. The fundamental challenge that faces strategists is whether all approaches can be used in an organisation. This in turn depends on, for example, is the organisation Global, an SME? Is the marketplace in which it operates an evolving or static one? Added to these questions, it is important to keep in mind that there are levels of strategy at play and it is incumbent on the strategist to understand which levels best fit the requirement. The various levels of strategy can be formulated as: ⦁ Corporate level: Overall purpose and scope of an organisation. ⦁ Business level: How to compete successfully in particular markets. ⦁ Strategic business unit (SBU): Part of an organisation for which there is a distinct market for services and goods independent of any other SBU. ⦁ Operational strategies: How the component parts of an organisation deliver effectively the corporate and business level strategies in terms of resources, processes and people.