The Scope of Strategic Work at Advanced Level
The levels at which strategy is made, who makes it, and what an advanced practitioner is expected to design, judge and defend.
13 min
Activities: 0 of 2
Who this course is for
This course is for people who shape direction, not only follow it: senior managers, heads of function, planning and strategy staff, business owners and those who advise executive teams. You are expected to already know the basic vocabulary of strategy. The course asks you to design strategies and planning processes, judge the quality of strategies written by others, defend your reasoning to a sceptical board, and handle the cases where standard frameworks give the wrong answer.
Strategy is a field where confident language often hides weak thinking. An advanced practitioner is the person in the room who can tell the difference.
Three levels of strategy
Strategy is made at more than one level, and each answers a different question. Corporate strategy asks which businesses or activities the organisation should be in at all, and how the centre adds value to them. Business strategy, sometimes called competitive strategy, asks how one business wins in its chosen market. Functional strategy asks how a function such as operations, finance, human resources or information technology supports the business strategy.
Confusion between levels causes real problems. A functional team that writes a “strategy” without reference to the business strategy produces a plan that may be excellent and irrelevant. A corporate centre that dictates detailed competitive choices to its business units removes the judgement of people closest to the market.
The three levels in one group
A group owns an engineering services business, a facilities management business and a training business. Corporate question: should it keep all three, sell one, or add a fourth? What does the group centre provide that the businesses could not get alone?
What the course covers
The course moves through eight modules. After this orientation, it revisits what strategy is and builds tools for positioning and business models. It then deepens analysis and choice under uncertainty, and adds growth and corporate strategy. The execution module adds the tools that link strategy to measures and resources. Further modules cover designing the planning process itself, a series of realistic cases, and finally ethics, building capability in others and a complete capstone review.
Each module assumes the ones before it. Frameworks are named where they are widely used, but the emphasis is on judgement: when a tool helps, when it misleads, and what to do when two tools point in different directions.
Two contrasting strategy teams
Match the question to the level of strategy
- Should we sell the training business?
- Should we compete on specialist capability or on price?
- How do we recruit scarce engineers for our chosen position?
- What does the group centre add to its businesses?
An information technology department writes an ambitious five-year plan without reading the business strategy. What is the main risk?