 Well, hi everyone and welcome back. Thanks for joining us. Hope your Mondays going well and welcome to our review of Business 501 strategic management. This is our the first part of our unit to review if you have not Seen our other reviews. They are available in the description below and of course The course itself is available on Sailor Academy's website. So if you haven't started the course Do that and I catch up and not enjoy us But we won't waste anyone's Any more of anyone's time and we'll get right into it again if you have any questions feel free to To leave them down in the chat and I will hand it over to our our great instructor Laura here. Thank you Hi everybody. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening wherever you happen to be in the world Thanks for being here or listening later our goal today is to talk a little bit about unit two and And but before we do that, I wanted to just go over the course learning objectives again. I know we did this at the start of unit one But I think it's always a good idea to check back in and just make sure that You kind of know where we're at as far as those learning objectives go and and that we're we're following them as we go along here. So Our first learning objective as you recall was define strategy discuss the participants and the types of industry structures. This learning objective we actually met last week in unit one. Of course, we'll still be talking about it a little bit to an extent, but That we we definitely focused on this in unit one in unit two. We're really going to focus on this next one, which is select and apply appropriate Strategic management tools to diagnose internal and external factors. This will be a big focus in in unit two. Again, we'll be discussing it throughout the rest of the course, but We'll primarily focus on it in unit two. And then some of our other learning objectives. We'll get to a little bit later on in the course include competitive advantages. We'll talk about different types of common strategies that organizations use and analyze the best one for for certain organizations to to implement And also, we'll talk about the best techniques and how you go about choosing those techniques and with all of the change that we have in the world today specifically around technology. And then finally near the end of our course will be able to synthesize all of this. So we'll be able to look at strategic management as a whole And go through the entire strategic management process to figure out what our organization's competitive advantages, particularly Given globalization technology and all of these things that change very, very rapidly. So those are our course learning objectives. Let's take a look at our unit learning objectives. This is where we're going to take a little bit deeper dive in In some of the areas that we just discussed. So in this unit, we're going to talk primarily about how goal setting happens within an organization. What internal and external factors we're going to use to help us in our strategic planning process. And then also where we'll talk about some of the tools that we can use during the strategic management planning process based on this analysis that we've done. Any any questions so far. Maybe questions from unit one that have been burning over the last week or anything about What we're what we're going to look at today. I have not seen any yet. I will I have I will I'll come back to you later. I have some comments from from last week, but I don't I don't think any specific questions on this. But again, everyone, if you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the chat and we will get to them. Definitely. All right, thank you. So our major topics then today and next week will will be goal setting. Of course, we're also going to talk a lot about Mission and values of an organization and how that ultimately can drive strategy within an organization. We're also going to talk about an internal analysis tool, which is SWOT analysis and also pest analysis, which you may remember in unit one. We address this briefly. But I do want to address it again here in the context of some of the tools that we can use to help put together our strategic plan. And then we're also going to talk about some of the methods that organizations use to make sure that their strategy is effective. So this will be this will be our focus this week and and next week. So let's go ahead and dig right in and talk a little bit about mission statements. So I'm a mission statement. Every organization has one. And the main purpose of it is that it communicates the reason why the organization exists and how it wants to serve its key stakeholders. I don't know that we've defined stakeholders. So let's let's do that quickly. Stakeholder is different than stockholder. Stockholder means that someone owns a piece of the company. Well, a stakeholder is a broader term in that it means anyone that carries about the success of a business. So a stakeholder might be the customers of your company, the the employees, the the community in which your business operates. So stakeholders tends to be a catch all term for anyone that has any interest in the success of of your business. So when we look at that from a mission statement perspective, we really want to look at mission statements as defining what we want to do and how we plan to do it is a pretty good way of thinking about that. It's a little bit different than vision, which we'll talk about in a minute. And you can do a Google search and find many, many examples of really well done mission statements. So let's look at a vision statement. And then I'd like us to talk about how these two concepts, mission and vision, tie into into the strategic plan. So a vision statement is, if you think of it in terms of a hierarchy, a vision statement is usually very long, long lasting, and it's what would be the ideal end state if your organization accomplishes their mission. So it's very future oriented, and it's more aspiring, whereas a mission statement is more focused on how you're going to do your mission. It's more focused on how you're going to do something, how you're going to serve those those stakeholders. So if you think about it in terms of, as I mentioned, the hierarchy, it's usually vision statement is first. That's really a long term end goal. What do you hope to do? And the mission statement then describes how you're actually going to do it. So if we talk a little bit about how these concepts tie together, we can look at this, this graphic, which I think is really useful. We can look at it as the mission and vision. This is how we're going to make all of our organizational decisions based on what our mission says and based on what our vision says. When we do that, then we can develop our strategy and then following that we develop the goals and objectives in order to help us meet our strategy, which then helps us meet the mission and the vision that we've set forth. Most companies do not change their mission and their vision very often. And it's a very important piece because ultimately those statements should drive everything that the organization does. From strategy of course to goal setting to even the day to day tactics that are applied to make those things happen. So the mission and vision is really, really important. And oftentimes when organizations set their mission vision, it's not just the CEO coming up with it. It's usually the whole executive team with involvement from employees in different areas of the business and so forth. In order as a leader in order to really get this buy-in for the mission and vision and then the strategy that follows, you really need employee involvement in development of the mission and the vision. So that's a key piece that I think sometimes it's easy to forget about. We think sometimes that the CEO is sitting in his or her office and coming up with all of these grand visions. But just remember it's a team effort to come up with a vision mission, of course, the strategy and the goals in order to meet that strategy. So this graphic kind of says the same thing, but I think it shows a process which might be useful to take a look at. So we have our mission statement and we have our vision statement. As it's noted below, this is ultimately how we communicate our purpose to stakeholders. And remember, stakeholders is a fairly broad term. So that could be our suppliers, it could be our employees, people that live in the community in which we operate many, many different individuals. So the strategy then as you may remember from Unit 1 is really focused on how are we going to go about achieving our vision and our mission. So think of the strategy as ultimately a roadmap that is going to help us achieve those ultimate goals. And of course, after we have the strategy, we need to set goals and objectives and we'll talk more about that in this unit, but really goals and objectives look at, okay, we have this big overall arching strategy that we want to accomplish. What do we need to do on a monthly basis in order to accomplish that even what do we need to do on a weekly basis in order to accomplish that strategy. You see it's it's very much a hierarchy in terms of how we want the flow to go to develop an appropriate strategy for our organization. Sometimes organizations make the mistake of not really having a clear vision and mission, and then they try to develop their strategy, and it's not very effective, because they don't have a clear vision of where they want to be. Therefore it's difficult to come up with the strategy. I'd like to pause just for a second because I know that that was a lot of information. Are there any questions or comments. We do. I don't see any questions in the chat right now but as always just a reminder. If you would like to put your questions down in the chat we would be happy to answer them. All right. Thank you. So I want us to take a look at the PLLC framework and you've probably seen this before maybe in other business classes. Really the PLLC framework is the functions of what managers do. So we, we know we could categorize everything that a manager does within one of these four categories. And those include planning, organizing, leading and controlling. So let's talk a little bit about what each of those mean, especially in terms of strategy development. So a manager focuses a lot of time on planning. And this can include things like creating the vision and mission, which we just talked about formulating the strategy, and then setting goals and objectives. So planning is really the phase where you're taking a step back and saying, okay, what do we want to do, what do we want to accomplish, and how are we going to go about accomplishing those. So then we can look at the next phase, which is organizing, and we want to put systems in place that helps support our mission vision and our strategy. And this is where organizing comes in because organizing may mean you need to change your organizational design in order to help support your strategy. You want to make sure you have the right culture in your organization, again, to support that strategy. And you may want to create social networks within your organization that will support those goals and objectives and ultimately the strategy as well. The third area or the third things that managers do is leading and leading is an important piece, as you can imagine, because this is what often makes things happen is through good leadership. So we can look at it in terms of being a leader, making decisions, communicating, working within teams, and making sure that your people are motivated in order to help support the mission and vision that you have for the organization. Our last piece is controlling and controlling really focuses on looking at, okay, we had this strategy in these goals, did we meet them or are we on target to meet them. So it's really that measurement piece and the ability to go back and say, oh, okay, maybe we're not doing as well as we think in this area what can we change in order to ensure that we meet that goal within the timeline that we've set forth. So this is the piece often that looks at things like creating systems to support the goals that you want to achieve, working with human resources and all of your people to make sure that they are meeting the goals that you've set for them individually. So this, this is an important structure to think about in terms of strategy because you need each of these four pieces in order to be successful with your strategy. Of course you need the planning piece you need to make sure the mission and vision are on target with your strategic plan. And of course you need to set goals and objectives. You need to organize that make sure you have those systems in place like culture in order to support the mission and the vision. You need to lead to make sure that people are motivated to follow that vision and mission, and then controlling of course you need to be able to go back and see if things are working and if not, you'll want to tweak them and make changes to in order to eventually meet your goals. So you'll see this again. I'm sure throughout your business career. And I think in the context of strategic planning it's important. But also I think it's important to be aware of as a leader and as a manager in your organizations that these all of the tasks that you do as a manager are probably going to fit into one of these four categories, and you need all of them in order to be successful. So you've had a manager that was really good at planning, but maybe not so good at the execution part. Then this framework is not being met, then then that person maybe is doing all of the planning and not focusing enough time on leading and organizing and controlling. So, so let's move on but I really as we go throughout today and really the rest of the course I'd like you to keep this framework in mind as it is a key piece. You can have this great strategy that you've come up with and you know it's going to work. But if you don't have the support of your people and if you're not doing some of these other things like leading the strategy may not work, no matter how great it is. We're good on questions Mike is that right. Um, yeah, I mean we can give you know what we'll give everyone a minute to catch up see if they got any questions and we'll be back in a minute everybody. Okay, well, I think we we got it we got a question in here about about the stages we were just talking about here. And the question is, are the four stages have to follow along with each other, or is it possible to cycle through them moving from one to the other they you know I think the questions are they you know sequentially ordered steps. That's a great question and no they they aren't necessarily I mean of course your vision and your mission is probably going to come first. Throughout the cycle of strategic management. No it's not sequential you'll be doing some organizing you may be doing some leading and jump around a little bit. And then a lot of times you may find that Oh, gosh, this goal that we set, you know, it was too easy we're doing great let's set another goal or a bigger goal for us to meet. So it's not sequential it'll definitely jump around depending on what the organization happens to need at the time. Yeah, that's awesome and then we had that we had another follow up question from someone else about whether or not the stages were simultaneous so I think this is a this is good I think this is a question that multiple people had. And let us know if that answered the question and if not, when we come back to the next part you know put in the chat we'll let you know again. That's perfect and you know I mean of course some things are going to be sequential right I mean you have to have the vision and mission first because that's really going to drive every decision that you make within your organization. But yes, definitely not sequential and based on business need you know one day you may do do more leading than you do organizing, or sometimes you may do more controlling it just really depends. I don't know if we have get anything else but I'll hand it back over. All right, perfect so next I want us to take a look at a tool that we can use in order to assess our strengths and weaknesses of our organization. So if you think about the strategic planning process. We really need to analyze the internal environment and the external environment, ultimately in order to see kind of where we're at, and that helps us know where we want to go. So a SWOT analysis is you may have seen this before it's fairly common so it's just a matrix where you list your organizational strengths, your organizational weaknesses, any opportunities, you see, and any threats that you see. So again, this is a big picture view of as you begin the strategic planning process. So let's let's take a look at strengths first and talk about that in a little bit more detail. So strengths we're looking at our organization internally, and strength may be the processes that you have set up that may be that you can get raw materials from your suppliers really inexpensively. So the other thing that you have a really good branding or really good social media campaigns, whatever the case is, as an organization you want to list all of the things that you ultimately do well. And this can then become a basis for understanding what our competitive advantages in the marketplace, which then can help us set our strategy. Another internal thing that we want to look at here is weaknesses, and weaknesses are important to consider because and be honest about because the weaknesses can be resolved we can fix those, but we can't fix them unless and tell we know exactly what they are. So weaknesses may be, for example, a undependable supply chain, it might be that we don't have enough people to meet our target sales that that we want to meet. It may be our location, it may. So you get the idea can be a lot of different things that we want to, we want to then address. So this can tie together. When we look at our weaknesses, we want to see how we can turn those weaknesses into opportunities. So what weaknesses do we have. Suppose we say our weaknesses that we, we don't have a very good website. Well then that's an opportunity right for us to revise our website and make it better. A lot of companies use this they will look at their weaknesses and turn those and make those into a list of opportunities or things that they can improve. The other way we can look at opportunities is through the lens of what is going on in the marketplace that could be positive for us within our organization. So, for example, there may be social shifts that that could bring about an opportunity for organization. You know, when when COVID happened, for example, that brought about a lot of challenges for all of us but it also brought about opportunities for the use of technology like we're doing right now to to meet and so when you look at opportunities you want to look at it in that broad perspective and how opportunities might help us grow our business. I'm going to sneeze I think. Excuse me. Okay, so opportunities. That's important because that ultimately tells us where we may be able to look toward the future and capitalize on a lot of the changes that are happening with happening within the marketplace. Our last area is threats and these are tend to be the things that we have no or very little control of that we want to be aware of. And this is important to note for organizations as they're putting together their strategic plan, because you want to you want to know what could possibly go wrong is kind of another way of saying that you want to know what can go wrong so you can do it yourself in case it does. So threats might be, for example, a new competitors entering the marketplace. It might be a global pandemic. It might be anything, anything that's going to have a negative impact on your business that you don't have a lot of control So by identifying these threats, when you put together your strategic plan, you have these in the back of your mind and then you can look at how you can manage that risk, should it actually happen. And so it's a very valuable, valuable tool in that way. So again, the SWOT analysis really helps us look at the big picture of where our organization is at, what we do well, what we need to improve on, and what's happening out there in the marketplace that could be positive or or negative that could impact our business. So we can look at SWOT analysis in a different way here. We can look at it in terms of when we look at an internal analysis, these are our strengths and our weaknesses. And then when we look externally and do that analysis, these are our opportunities and threats that we just discussed so internal versus external. We can look at it from the context of positives and negatives. I don't know if I really like that term negatives but our readings use that so well we'll stick with that. But so positives are, you know, the things that we do well, the assets, the resources, the opportunities we have to further grow and develop our business. Whereas the negatives of course would be the weaknesses that we have as an organization, the challenges that we may face and any restrictions that we have. Again, the advantage we're not trying to be negative here, but the advantage of listing these and being aware of them is the fact that it helps us put our strategic plan together a lot better because we're much more well informed within our organization. You know, a lot of people don't like to do that external analysis and it's uncomfortable to talk about weaknesses and it's uncomfortable to talk about threats. But when organizations don't do that they're not very well positioned or prepared to deal with those should they happen because they didn't analyze the risk that you know that may occur so even though it sounds negative we always want to look at that in our strategic planning process as an important part of really our development and our preparation as as an organization. So, this is another way of looking at it. Is this really small. I mean it's a it's a it's a little small I'll see what I can do for people to get it to get it zoomed in a little bit you can. You can go on and do it and everyone we will we will get those slides into the course and in the chat later so if you can't see this you'll be able to see it. Yes, after we complete unit two next week will I'll definitely share those these slides so you can use them as as something to study with also. Speaking a little bit deeper into the SWAT analysis, we want to look at internal and external, as we already talked about. So, just to give you an idea some of the internal things that you may want to look at that that could be strengths or weaknesses include the amount of human resources that you have. Maybe you have a lot of really great employees maybe you have a lot of employees that are really well trained and motivated that would then definitely be a strength. You want to also look at physical resources so this might be things like a physical building it might be any types of assets that you have. It could be physical assets or it could be intellectual property. These types of things could be strengths that that you want to address in your SWAT analysis. Also of course financial resources can be a strength or a weakness, depending on where your company is at in terms of that, and the activities and processes that your organization engages in could be a strength or weakness as well. So when we look at external environment here are some of the things that we want to take a look at future trends what we think could be happening around the world in our own economies that type of thing that could be a benefit to our organization or a threat. We also want to look at the the economy what direction is the economy going and is that going to be beneficial to our business or is it a potential threat that we need to at least consider as we put together our strategic plan. We also want to look at depending on the type of business of course where our funding comes from. If we're a public company stock price that type of thing would be a consideration. If we're a private company, you know bank loans that type of thing would be something that we would want to look at as a potential opportunity or a threat depending on the situation. We'll also want to consider demographics and the changing demographics. And when I say demographics I mean things like age and marital status that type of thing. If you think about changing demographics here in the United States one of the big demographic changes over the last couple of decades has been people choosing to have kids later in life. And that's a huge thing if you're running a business that you want to know, because that means for example, people may have more discretionary income in their 20s. They may have more want or need for travel. So when we look at shifting demographics. That's, that's a very important consideration when we're developing our strategic strategic plan, because it can help us determine ultimately what, what changes are going to happen that we could capitalize on, eventually. We want to of course consider the physical environment so you know the lakes, the rivers, the forest, the mountains, that type of thing and also manage people's expectation of how we handle the physical environment within our organization in terms of pollution and that type of thing. Of course, legislation so local laws, as well as country laws if we're a global company, we need to look at laws and how they could impact our business throughout throughout the world. So, and then of course any, any events that are local or national like the Olympics would be an obvious example there. So, once we've gathered, ultimately all of this information, we then compile it and really can begin to get a clear picture of the direction that our company should go based on the opportunities that we've noted. I thought I was going to sneeze again. I think I'm good. All right. So, the last thing on SWOT analysis that I would like to show you is just an example here. This is in our readings so you can find it there as well. This is for Campbell soup. And of course, an organization is probably going to be several pages long so this is just really a snapshot of what a SWOT analysis might look like. So, for Campbell soup they said that, you know, their strengths are high employee morale, they've increased market share their profit ratio is also increased. So, on the other hand they've noted some of their weaknesses and it sounds like they have some lawsuits, their plant capacity or production has fallen, and they don't have a strategic management system. Okay, so when we look at that, then we can go down and say okay what opportunities might there be for for Campbell soup and then what threats ultimately come out of that. So, you can see here that one of the opportunities that they list is Western European unification. That's a potential opportunity. I suppose that means that they think that they may be able to more easily sell their products. Once that occurred, and another opportunity they note is people being health conscious. I really want to talk about that one because I think it makes a good point that when you go through and are really thorough with the opportunities that you list that can provide you with a really good clue about the strategic direction that you should go. So, wow, you know, people being health conscious. What can Campbell soup then do as a part of their strategy in order to ensure that they're, they're engaging on this opportunity and hopefully making the opportunity profitable. The other the other opportunity they list here is demand for for soup is increasing. So that's, that's an interesting thing of course if you're a company that manufactures soup that's a really big opportunity opportunity that you want to look into. I think the threats is that they list is a low value of dollar and I assume this is in context of the Western European unification that they listed as an opportunity and 10 cans not biodegradable. I think it's important here to note that although they list this as a threat 10 cans are not biodegradable. Don't you think that it would be a good opportunity to for them to consider maybe creating something that is biodegradable, instead of a 10 can. So, even though we think of opportunities is those things that we want to capitalize on sometimes like in this example. That may be something that is worthwhile for them to look into to really differentiate themselves and have a competitive advantage if they have biodegradable packaging. So, there are many examples that you can find online of SWAT analysis of companies that you probably do business with a lot. So I definitely suggest going out and doing a search for those just to really dig even deeper into this topic and ensure full understanding of it. Are there any questions about SWAT analysis or anything else that we've talked about so far. Again, no questions quite yet, but we'll like we did last I will give everyone a minute if they have any questions that they'd like to like like to put up we'll be back in a second or in a minute, I guess, as I said. All right, and we're back we didn't we didn't have any questions there but again if you're joining us later and you have questions feel free to leave a comment below we can get to it next time and of course if you're still listening and have a time to write in the chat. We'll be back with to answer some questions in a minute if you have more of them so but I will I'll hand I'll hand over the reins here again. All right, thank you so we just finished talking about SWAT analysis in the context of being able to use it for strategic planning. I want us to revisit the pestle analysis we talked about this a bit unit one but I think it's worthwhile mentioning here because it is yet another tool that we have in our toolbox in order to create our strategic plan. So if you recall from unit one pestle analysis really looks at the external environment and the external environment in terms of what are the possible things that could occur that could affect our business and our strategic plan. So, the first is political. That of course is a big one the politics occurring within a particular country, the decisions that lawmakers make that type of thing. Most definitely can impact our business and we want an awareness of them as we're putting together a strategic plan. So we can prepare for changes that might happen, or might affect our strategic plan. Obviously, economic is going to be a big one also the economics, if you're operating only in one country of course the economics, such as interest rates and the value of the currency those types of things would all be economic considerations. When you look at making making your strategic plan. Social we've talked a little bit about already. This could be changes in demographics, it could be changes in culture, the way that people think things are socially acceptable. All of these things are definite considerations that we want to think about as we put together our strategic plan. So we need to look at technology to changes so rapidly so taking a look at the technological factors that could have a positive or negative effect on our business is is really key to helping us put together that strategic plan. Environmental so environmental in terms of you know how how how is our packaging recyclable. Do we have recycling bins in our offices, these types of things are important for most businesses but especially for manufacturing businesses that may produce a lot of carbon pollution that type of thing. So we definitely want to look at the environmental factors of our business and make sure that we're doing right by right by the world and the people that ultimately live in our community. I think we want to be aware of the legal changes in the countries that we are doing business and most most companies before they enter a global market will have an expert that is very well aware of the laws and how they may differ from the home country. The laws are changing all the time so we just want this awareness of what kind of legal changes are happening so that we can better plan for for our strategy. And again this is about all of this is about things that we may not have a lot of control over. But if we have an awareness of them, we're able to plan for them and assess the risk before we move forward with with our strategy. At this point I think we're at a really good stopping point in unit two. So I'd like us to stop here and next week we'll finish unit two, where we'll talk about some of the, some of the other considerations in terms of the internal and external external environment that you want to want to think about before you put together your strategic plan. But before we close off I do want to offer another opportunity for questions in the chat. That sounds great. I will start doing our little closing spiel and give people time if they'd like to catch up and remind them that in the description below you can find the links to the previous videos we've done in this series as well as a link to the course itself which of course we're going along with the course so you know get in there and start taking it if you want to keep up with what we're doing. And yeah we'll be back here at the same time next week to do a review part two of unit two and I'll just give everyone a little more time in case they want to do anything in chat. I want to thank everyone again for joining us. Of course as always everyone thank our great instructor here for everything she's doing working us through it. And I think we don't have any questions right now so I think this will be it for us. I just want to again say thank you to everyone for joining us.