Strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by a company’s top management on behalf of owners, based on consideration of resources and an assessment of the internal and external environments in which the organization competes. It involves the analysis of market opportunities and threats, the identification of the organization’s strengths and weaknesses, and the development of strategies to capitalize on its strengths and opportunities while mitigating its weaknesses and threats. In short, strategic management is the process of making and executing decisions that will determine the long-term success of an organization. The following are illustrative examples.

Market Research

The process of researching customers and markets. For example, determining customer needs and pain points with existing products.

Competitive Analysis

Competitive analysis is the process of researching your competitors to benchmark and compare against your own capabilities. The most common method for doing this is known as swot analysis whereby you list your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Goal Planning

Goal planning is the process of setting achievable goals in an environment of competition and constraint. This can apply at the organizational, department, team and individual level. For example, a sales team that sets sales goals for a year.

Business Planning

Business planning is the process of planning a new business or entry into a new market. For example, an ice cream manufacturer that develops a business plan for launching a retail location.

Strategic Planning

Strategic planning, also known as strategy planning, is the process of developing a plan to achieve goals. For example, a sales team that comes up with a camping strategy for reaching new customers to achieve quarterly sales targets.

Strategy Implementation

The development of a concrete plan to implement a strategy that includes resources and schedule. This can be managed as a program, project or as an action plan.

Program Management

The process of implementing change that is ongoing. For example, a toy manufacturer that begins an ongoing program to regularly develop and launch new STEM toys.

Project Management

Project management is the process of implementing a one-time initiative that requires significant coordination and control such as an airline that plans to implement a new flight operations system.

Action Plan

An action plan is a lightweight plan to do something. This is essentially a project that doesn’t require formal processes such as an action plan to launch new content to a corporate website.

Change Management

Change management is the practice of leading change. This is the role of a program or project sponsor who is charged with communicating change, winning acceptance for plans and clearing issues.

Performance Management

Performance management is the process of setting performance objectives for each team and individual and managing performance against those objectives. For example, quickly providing feedback when performance is below expectations. This is a basic tool of strategy implementation.

Issue Management

The ongoing process of dealing with the incidents, obstacles and problems that threaten your strategy. For example, a bank with a mature incident management process for dealing with technology failures.

Operations Management

The process of managing your day-to-day business processes that generate revenue. This is inherently of strategic importance. For example, a solar panel manufacturer that seeks to reduce unit cost through improvements to operations.

Stakeholder Management

Stakeholder management is the process of managing relationships and communications to the stakeholders in a strategy. For example, an information technology project team that manages relationships with dozens of business units that have a stake in their project.

Competency Management

Competency management is the process of building up the talents and knowledge required to achieve goals. For example, if you want to sell into a new country you may require salespeople with the cultural capital to achieve this goal.

Capability Management

The process of building up the business capabilities required to achieve goals. For example, a restaurant that develops the capability to bake their own bread in order to improve food quality and reduce dependence on suppliers.

Business Transformation

Business transformation is the process of implementing high impact changes on an aggressive schedule. For example, an energy company with a strategy to break its dependence on fossil fuels within three years.

Turnaround

Turnaround the process of saving an organization that is failing such as an airline that suddenly sees revenue drop 80% such that they need to immediately reduce costs and secure funding to survive.