Strategic Planning and Leadership

Paper Summary:

The paper offers an overview of traditional strategic planning and explains why the modern approach is to be preferred over the traditional one. The paper first describes the characteristics of a strong leader and examines the importance of understanding and coping with the changes emerging in the external market and industry. The paper then discusses competitive advantages, which can take the form of competencies, resources, and capabilities and then looks at the case of McDonalds to illustrate how a company's stakeholders play a vital role in an organization's ultimate profitability.

Outline:
Traditional Strategic Planning
Characteristics of a Strong Strategic Leader
Understanding the External Environment
Competitive Advantages, Competencies, Resources and Capabilities
McDonald's Stakeholders

From the Paper:

"Not until long ago, organizations viewed change and strategic implementation as a sporadic event, occurring every now and then in order to help the company boost up sales, launch a new product, increase revenues, consolidate market share, reduce costs as so on. The reason why change is assimilated here with the process of strategic planning and implementation is that a new strategy to support the organization in reaching its overall goals generally implies modifications to the way it conducts its operations. As such, in the current context, the process of strategic planning and implementation will be considered synonymous with organizational change."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Adcock, D., Ross, C., Halborg, A., 2001, Marketing: Principles and Practice, 4th Edition, Pearson Education
• Dess, G.G., Lumpkin, G.T., 2003, Strategic Management: Creating Competitive Advantages, McGraw Hill
• Eoyang, E., Comparison Between Traditional Strategic Planning and Adaptive Action Planning, Human Systems Dynamics, Retrieved from http://www.hsdinstitute.org/e-clarity/asp_documents_0001/Documents_Publish/100.pdf. on July 23, 2008

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