The idea of rising above the tumult of day-to-day business to ponder the future of markets and competitors is looking attractive again. Business owners have worked to improve their efficiency, but this may not be enough to generate distinctive competitive advantages.

Strategy Planning is a major focus in the quest for higher revenues and profits. Companies today are pursuing novel ways to hatch new products and services, expand existing businesses, and create the markets of tomorrow.

A recent study by the Association of Management Consulting Firms found that executives, consultants, and B-school professors all agree that business strategy is now the single most important management issue and will remain so for the next five years. ``Strategy has become a part of the main agenda at lots of organizations today,'' stated Vijay Govindarajan, a well-known strategy professor at Dartmouth College's Amos Tuck School of Business Administration

But if strategic planning is back with a vengeance, it's also back with a difference. Consistent with Method’s For Management’s model, there is no abstraction, sterility, and top-down arrogance. Frequently owners become consumed with operating and financial details instead of competitive positioning and the creation of future markets and too divorced from the day-to-day reality of line managers.

MFM assists in strategic planning by keeping the planning process close to the realities of markets, to key customers, and suppliers. Strategic thinking should be seen as an opportunity to transform a corporation and change the rules of an industry to its advantage. They decry incremental change.


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