Strategic Issues

This course will help you understand how a comprehensive evaluation of a company’s external and internal situations can assist managers in making critical decisions about their next strategic moves. Strategic issues are found by pinpointing the precise things that management needs to worry about sets the agenda for deciding what actions to take next to improve the company’s performance and business outlook. Managers need to zero in on exactly what strategic issues company managers need to address. This step involves drawing on the results of both industry and competitive analysis and the evaluations of the company’s internal situation. The task here is to get a clear fix on exactly what industry and competitive challenges confront the company, which of the company’s internal weaknesses need fixing, and what specific problems merit front-burner attention by company managers. If the items on management’s “worry list” are relatively minor, which suggests the company’s strategy is mostly on track and reasonably well matched to the company’s overall situation, company managers seldom need to go much beyond fine-tuning the present strategy. Compiling a “worry list” of problems and issues creates an agenda for managerial strategy making.