what are the strategic thinking tools

A few common examples of strategic planning tools include:

• SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis
• OKR (Objectives and Key Results)
• PEST (political, economic, socio-cultural, and technological) analysis
• Balanced scorecard

Full Answer

What are some examples of companies that didn't realize the impact of personal computers?

What is strategic thinking manager?

What is scenario planning?

Why did Shell use scenario planning?

How can strategic thinking be implemented?

What are the 5 elements of strategic thinking?

These picture shows the five elements essential for thinking strategically as described by Jeanne M....Five elements of thinking strategicallyIntent focused. ... A systems perspective. ... Thinking in Time. ... Intelligent Opportunism. ... Hypothesis driven.More items...•

What are the 4 key components in strategic thinking?

What are the Components of Strategic Thinking? If you're working on your company's strategy, you'll need to engage in analysis, problem-solving, decision making, and leading through change.

What are strategic tools?

Strategy tools are frameworks, techniques, and methods that help individuals and organizations to create their strategies – in other words, to determine what is, will, or should be done to address issues central to the success of the organization, usually beyond the short and medium term.

What are the four tools of strategy?

What are strategic planning tools?SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis.OKR (Objectives and Key Results)PEST (political, economic, socio-cultural, and technological) analysis.Balanced scorecard.

What are the 6 P's of strategic thinking?

In strategic thinking, there are six P's, as follows: Plan, Ploy, Pattern, Position, Perspective, and Process.

What are the six elements of strategic thinking?

Components of strategic thought and action Six common components include: 1) tools for analysis; 2) strategic purpose; 3) values; 4) vision; 5) key goals; and 6) action planning.

What are the 4 strategic types?

4 levels of strategy are;Corporate level strategy.Business level strategy.Functional level strategy.Operational level strategy.

Why are strategic tools important?

In effect, the whole purpose of strategic tools is to aid and guide managerial decision making – ideally, allowing managers to make better, more informed decisions as a result of their use.

How many tools are used in strategic analysis?

8The 8 best Strategic Analysis tools: Four Corners Analysis. Value Chain Analysis. SWOT Analysis. Strategy Evaluation.

What are the 5 strategies?

Mintzberg developed his 5 Ps of Strategy as five different definitions of (or approaches to) developing strategy. He first wrote about the 5 Ps of Strategy in 1987. Each of the 5 Ps is a different approach to strategy. They are Plan, Ploy, Pattern, Position, and Perspective.

What are the five 5 forms of strategy?

Each of the 5 Ps stands for a different approach to strategy:Plan.Ploy.Pattern.Position.Perspective.

What are strategy development tools?

There are several tools that could be involved while conducting strategic planning. The most commonly used tools are: Visioning, Metrics or charts, SWOT analysis, Pestle analysis, Affinity diagrams, Portfolio analysis and Interrelationship digraph.

What are the 4 structures of strategic management?

Executives must select among the four types of structure (simple, functional, multidivisional, and matrix) available to organize operations.

What are the four 4 phases of strategic framework?

The four phases of strategic management are formulation, implementation, evaluation and modification.

What are the key components of strategic?

What are strategic plan elements?Vision statement. The vision statement is an important part of a strategic plan as it provides a short summary highlighting what your business will look like in the future. ... Mission statement. ... Goals and objectives. ... SWOT analysis. ... Action plan. ... KPIs.

What are 4 ways to improve strategic thinking skills?

Here are four specific things you can do to improve your strategic thinking skills.Schedule Time for Strategic Thinking. You are investing in your success as well as that of the organization. ... Monitor the Big Picture Including Trends. ... Ask Questions to Uncover Patterns. ... Embrace Uncertainty and Conflict.

Strategic Thinking TOOLKIT

Strategic Thinking and Planning Toolkit 1 ©C. Lynn Northrup, CPA, CPIM [email protected] www.northrupcpa.com Table of Contents 1. Strategic Thinking and Planning Overview

Strategic Thinking Tools – Leaderhip Thinking Academy

Style / type behaviour – across the page : White Hat thinking This covers facts, figures, information needs and gaps.“I think we need some white hat thinking at this point…means “Let’s hold the arguments and proposals and identify the empirical, the facts, what information we need to support the proposition”

How to engage in strategic thinking?

To engage in strategic thought, you must think and reflect on the big picture—on the diverse players and forces in your competitive environment. Anticipate the future. Use your right brain for intuition and wisdom, your left for planning. As Isaac Newton said “truth is the offspring of silence and meditation.”

What is the meaning of Shih in art of war?

In the Art of War, Sun Tzu introduced a concept he called shih. Shih is the state of calm readiness at which an army stands, with a variety of options at hand. Sun Tzu’s army did not have a specific program or plan, but understood the competitive landscape and all of its options. As battle began, decision-makers high and low knew what to do as each contingency played out.

What is the Roseo model?

He says the metric is meant to get you thinking about the implications of cost versus revenue in terms of return on SEO. The model includes variables such as click-through ratio and rate of conversion of clicks to sales. Not the stuff of CFO thinking in days gone by. As mentioned, since the search term is so intricately linked to your brand, RoSEO can also be thought of as “Return on Brand Investment”.

How many modes of activity are needed to move from ideas to execution?

Authors Bradley, Bryan and Smit suggest that moving from ideas to execution requires seven distinct modes of activity. The authors suggest a looping and re-looping approach to strategy making with the following elements.

What is it called when you are mindless?

Studies show that when you are doing something “mindless” like showering, running, or driving down the interstate, your brain enters a state sometimes called “theta.”. This is similar to the state you are in in the moments between sleep and wakefulness.

What is the book Learning to Think Strategically about?

Learning to Think Strategically asserts that learning is the critical link to transforming strategic thinking ...

Who said the skilled leader knows Shih so well that he/she can use it to achieve effortless victories?

Sun Tzu said that the skilled leader knows shih so well that he/she can use it to achieve effortless victories. He advises:

What are the Components of Strategic Thinking?

If you’re working on your company’s strategy, you’ll need to engage in analysis, problem-solving, decision making, and leading through change.

Why is it important to attend a workshop?

Attending a quality workshop is a quick way to improve your strategic thinking skills or to help your employees develop them through strategic thinking exercises. Rather than simply discussing skills, the goal of instruction should be to help you immediately apply strategic thinking to your unique job role.

What is a simulation lab?

Simulations or learning labs that allow people to practice strategic thinking skills immediately. Debrief and review simulation or learning lab results and highlights strategic success factors that work. Mistakes and failures are important to learn from and provide insights and discoveries.

What is CMOE ahead of the curve?

Ahead of the Curve: CMOE’s research-based books and publications can help employees at all levels develop better strategic thinking skills and perform more like a leader.

Why do business leaders use strategic thinking and analysis?

Business leaders and stakeholders use strategic thinking and analysis to decide what product mix they’ll offer, what competitive landscape to compete in (or not compete in), and how limited resources will be allocated such as time, employees, and capital. They must decide how to best structure enroll others to achieve important objectives and to avoid putting resources at unnecessary risk of loss.

What are strategic plans?

As you create a strategic direction or plan, you’ll analyze: 1 Business opportunities and vulnerabilities 2 Feasible of each idea or risk 3 The costs associated with each move you are considering 4 The likelihood that various tactics will be effective 5 Methods of aligning objectives with the overall plan 6 The effects of competitors, suppliers, customers, and new substitutes might have on your strategic plans

What is strategic thinking training?

Strategic thinking training will help you see how you can improve your organization. An opportunity to review, discuss, and clarify best practices, frameworks, and actionable tools and concepts. Debrief and review simulation or learning lab results and highlights strategic success factors that work.

Do You Need To Be Using a Strategic Framework?

Strategic frameworks are great tools, but they aren’t necessary when it comes to developing and executing strategy. If you have a problem with coming up with an effective set of goals, then probably you should try using a strategic framework. However, if you’re certain about your vision and your roadmap for getting there – it may be that implementing a strategic framework into your Strategy Model only serves to confuse people. If your organization is new to strategic planning, or has an under-developed strategic culture, you might want to hold back on full implementation of a strategic framework. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use a strategic framework. But you don’t necessarily have to implement the framework to your wider team, if you think it will mess with your workflow and organizational culture.

What Are The Benefits Of A Strategic Framework Implementation?

The benefits of a strategic framework apply to two key elements of the management process. The first one of these elements is clearly strategy formulation. Strategic frameworks help in the early stage by giving you a template for categorizing your goals. Using a strategic framework in the formulation phase of your strategy development helps to ensure that you don’t miss anything and provides a great sense of your plan.

How To Choose A Strategic Framework?

Already decided to implement a strategic framework? Let’s decide which strategic framework will be best for the company you work at. The answer to this question is going to come down to what problem you’re trying to solve by implementing a strategic framework. To make things easier, we’ll be focusing only on the two of the best strategic frameworks out there.

Why use OKRs?

Using OKRs is an efficient entrance to strategy management, but it’s not the only one. If you think of strategy management as a complex process, KPIs are on one end and the Balanced Scorecard is on the other, with OKRs in the middle. If your company knows its growth drivers and might scale them, OKRs will work great for your team. But some companies may find the OKR system too limiting and general. For example, you may want to use a different framework if:

What are strategic planning tools?

Strategic planning tools are techniques and models that business leaders use to determine where their business is at present, where they want it to be in the future, and which key metrics and initiatives they should track and pursue to achieve that target state.

What type of businesses should use SWOT analysis?

These businesses might include startups and solopreneur operations.

How does SWOT analysis work?

How does it work? In SWOT analysis, strategic planning teams brainstorm to come up with several strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for their business, then list those items in four quadrants.

What is SWOT analysis?

The great thing about SWOT analysis is that it can be used for annual strategic planning, or everyday decision making. Adapt SWOT analysis to a rapidly evolving market by using it at the individual project level. For example, say your office cleaning service was considering expanding just before COVID-19.

How does a balanced scorecard work?

How does it work: Balanced scorecard is a strategic planning model designed to incorporate both financial and non-financial (customer, internal, innovation) measures. Its precise origins aren’t clearly defined, but it was popularized in a 1992 article by Robert Kaplan and David Norton published in the Harvard Business Review.

Why is the PEST analysis so complex?

PEST analysis is somewhat complex, due to the breadth and depth of the factors it accounts for. On one hand, this necessitates an experienced strategic planning team to effectively use PEST analysis. On the other hand, this makes PEST adaptable for changing conditions. Think of each of the factors that make up PEST as levers.

How many quadrants should teams answer?

Teams should answer those questions in four quadrants, linking them together where possible (similar to SWOT analysis), then translate those answers into operational strategy, individual performance goals, and business planning.

What is business motivation model?

If an enterprise prescribes a certain approach for its business activity, it ought to be able to say why and what result (s) is the approach meant to achieve. The Business Motivation Model (BMM) is an OMG modeling notation for support of business decisions about how to react to a changing world. An enterprise would use it by acquiring a BMM modeling tool and then creating its own BMM - populating the model with business information specific to the enterprise. There are two broad purposes: 1 To capture decisions about reaction to change and the rationale for making them, with the intent of making them shareable, increasing clarity and improving decision-making by learning from experience. 2 To reference the outcomes of the decisions to their effect on the operational business (e.g. changes made to business processes and organization responsibilities), providing traceability from influencer to operational change.

What is BMM in business?

The Business Motivation Model (BMM) is an OMG modeling notation for support of business decisions about how to react to a changing world. An enterprise would use it by acquiring a BMM modeling tool and then creating its own BMM - populating the model with business information specific to the enterprise. There are two broad purposes:

What is SWOT analysis?

SWOT analysis is a technique developed at Stanford in the 1970s, frequently used in strategic planning . SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats and is a structured planning method that evaluates those four elements of an organization, project or business venture. A SWOT analysis is a simple, but powerful, framework for leveraging the organization's strengths, improving weaknesses, minimizing threats, and taking the greatest possible advantage of opportunities.

What is scope of BMM?

Scope. The scope of an enterprise BMM may be the entire enterprise, or an organization unit within it. Higher-level organization units may appear to lower level units as influencing organizations, outside the 'enterprise' boundary, and their directives may have the status of regulations.

What is the Four Corners Analysis?

The Four Corners Analysis, developed Michael Porter, is a model well designed to help company strategists assess a competitor's intent and objectives, and the strengths it is using to achieve them. It is a useful technique to evaluate competitors and generate insights concerning likely competitor strategy changes and determine competitor reaction to environmental changes and industry shifts. By examining a competitor's current strategy, future goals, assumptions about the market, and core capabilities, the Four Corners Model helps analysts address four core questions:

What are the five forces of Porter's model?

Michael Porter's Five Forces is a powerful competitive analysis tool to determine the principal competitive influence in a market. It is a broadly used model in business that refers to the five important factors that drive a firm's competitive position within an industry. By thinking through how each force affects you, and by identifying the strength and direction of each force, you can quickly assess the strength of the position and your ability to make a sustained profit in the industry. Thus Five Forces analysis helps you stay competitive by:

Why do we need to look outside of our organization?

You need to look outside of our organization to identify the changes out there and to look forward and think about the opportunities in future. Strategic analysis is not just about understanding changes. It is about turning this into concrete actions through generating options and choices, making decisions and integrating this into your organization's planning process.

What are some examples of companies that didn't realize the impact of personal computers?

The most common example is that of General Motors in the 1970s, when the company neglected the influence of globalization, environmentalism, and the importance of quality manufacturing; or IBM in the 1980s, when the company didn’t realize the impact of personal computers that lead to the downfall of mainframe business.

What is strategic thinking manager?

A strategic thinking manager must be prepared for any possible scenario, so that, the working of an organization must not stop, and continue at the optimum level. Historically, there have been numerous cases where even the most intellectual and smart people have made wrong assumptions about the future. The most common example is that of General ...

What is scenario planning?

Scenario planning is an off-shoot of strategic thinking that deals in the imagination of all the possible scenarios associated with the execution of a plan. Generally, managers only consider the two scenarios associated with the outcome of a business plan – success and failure. However, strategic thinkers envision several different intermediate scenarios leading to the success and failure of a strategic plan. Hence, with efficient scenario planning, all the negative and consequential scenarios can be resolved even before their real-time occurrence.

Why did Shell use scenario planning?

The biggest hindrance in the path of scenario planning is the lack of clarity and prediction in the top management officials of an organization.

How can strategic thinking be implemented?

Strategic thinking can be implemented through a number of different tools and techniques. Furthermore, out of all the available tools for strategic thinking, scenario planning is the one technique that allows a manager to enlist the different possibilities of a strategic plan with appropriate details. Intrinsically, it allows a manager to identify all the trends and uncertainties associated with a strategic plan. Moreover, it also incorporates the construction of a number of scenarios that can occur in relation to the execution of a business plan. With the construction of the different scenarios, errors in the decision making can be effectively resolved. In this article, a tool for strategic thinking based on scenario planning is discussed, and it is detailed in a step-by-step process.