- Your task is to produce a management report providing Strategic Solutions for an issue or Strategic issue or issues that you have identified in your own organisation or Strategic Business Unit.
The solution(s) should be based on thorough analysis and should involve critical evaluation of a range of potential solutions. The emphasis must be aiming to achieve competitive advantage. The choice of the final strategic decision should be justified. The solutions must not be descriptive of what the organisation is actually doing but analytical and proposing what it could and should do. This may be different to the actual decisions made by your organisation. It may however be a justification of what is actually proposed by the organisation but must justify it in the light of other options and through analysis. Which approach you take depends on the circumstances of your organisation.
Important Note:
As Masters Students and senior business people you should look critically at your organisation. This is not disrespectful but a way of developing your business skills (which is the point of the Exec MBA). You should not therefore merely accept that what is being done is the only potential option. You should look at it from a critical perspective and think if there are different or better options. In business this approach forms part of a healthy discussion which leads the company forward.
The nature of Strategic Issues:
Identification of the issue(s) is essential to the success of your assignment. You must therefore avoid operational issues such as Marketing, HR etc.
Success depends on you being able to understand the difference between operational and strategic issues and actions
Choosing the Strategic Issue. Below are some examples of the sorts of issues that might be investigated. Please note that this is not a complete list and that different ones may be relevant. (Generally you would only focus on one but there may be more that you could consider). The emphasis on the options that are considered should be on achieving competitive advantage:
Decision about which markets to enter
Decisions about potential product or service development
Decisions about which business units to invest in and grow and which to reduce
Growing a new business
Finding a new source of differentiation in the face of competitive pressure
Finding innovative ways to compete hence avoiding competition
Decisions about trade-offs
Decisions about continuing on the current path
Non-Profit or Government Agencies. Despite the fact that some of these may be quite inflexible you should not let this restrict your thinking. You should be prepared to think about the following types of issues:
Development of new services for different segments
Better Value Propositions to satisfy stakeholder groups
The Analysis:
This should be based on extensive study and use of data. The analysis must appear in your appendices. It is not necessary to do this in full report form but should be in the form of a series of annexes which will contain your notes. These must identifiably be your own work and will also be examined through Turnitin. The analysis and appendices must be referred to in your report as evidence and justification for your options and decisions.
