Management can then identify the organization's distinctive competence or the unique skills and resources that determine the organization's competitive weapons. The merging of Steps 3 and 5 results in an assessment of the organization's internal resources and abilities and opportunities and threats in its external environment. Strategies need to be established at the corporate, business, and functional levels of the organization. In formulating strategies, management hopes to give the organization a competitive advantage. Strategies must now be put into action.
Strategic planning is only as good as the strategies that are properly implemented.
Managers must also evaluate results in order to know how effective their strategies have been and what corrections need to be made. There are two popular approaches to corporate-level strategies. A. Grand strategies are all-encompassing strategies. A stability strategy is a corporate-level strategy characterized by an absence of significant change. A growth strategy is a corporate-level strategy that seeks to increase the level of the organization's operations.