Strategic Planning

Alex Scott

The major problem facing chief executives is to make sense of a spectrum of information and apply appropriate tools and techniques in driving an organisation through a complex and continually changing competitive environment. The complexity of real life can be structured as a process involving objective setting, analysing competitive positioning, choosing a strategy, implementing it and adapting to feedback over time.

All these steps are crucial and organisations succeed or fail depending on the robustness of their strategic processes. This means there are no easy answers to strategic problems and the solutions offered by business gurus can be seen for what they are: popular appeals to intuition, largely devoid of any conceptual or empirical basis. Strategic planning is above all about thinking effectively, and using the strategic process approach requires a sound understanding of the other core disciplines.

Topics covered

Introduction to strategy, planning and structure.
Modelling the strategic planning process.
Company objectives.
The company and the economy.
The company and the market.
Internal analysis of the company.
Making choices among strategies.
Implementing and evaluating strategy.

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Safwat Kabany
Syria

For Safwat Kabany, from Syria, doing his MBA with Edinburgh Business School was the most logical choice. "I'm in the petrochemical industry and Heriot-Watt University is one of the world-leading academic institutions in this field of industry. I therefore knew a lot about the high standards at Heriot-Watt and these are certainly evident in EBS's MBA programme."

Safwat decided to do the programme as a full-time on-campus student, which was not without its challenges, particularly for a foreign student. "I had to cope with both language and cultural differences, which at first were quite daunting. EBS, however, is very skilled at dealing with people from different backgrounds and cultures and it wasn't long before I felt very comfortable in this environment. The faculty are extremely helpful and take a keen interest in every individual. The facilities at Heriot-Watt for resident on-campus students are excellent and not having to worry about where I would live or how I would feed myself ensured that I could devote all my attention to my studies."...more