Untitled Quiz

Planning Process

• Planning involves determining what to do, planning how to accomplish it, and determining why.

Stakeholders

• Stakeholders are people or organizations affected by a company or influencing it.
  • Stakeholders include internal stakeholders (e.g., employees, unions, organizational culture, shareholders) and external stakeholders (e.g., customers, suppliers, competitors, government, public, market demand, technological developments, demographic conditions).

SWOT Analysis

• SWOT analysis considers Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
• SWOT analysis is a helpful tool for identifying these factors.

SWOT for Calm Seas

• The next step after SWOT analysis is to list them (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats).

Competitive Advantages of Calm Seas

• Calm Seas has competitive advantages like being faster, bigger, cheaper, stronger, more luxurious, and having locally sourced suppliers.
  • The company is also considered sustainable and customer-oriented.

Michael Porter's Generic Strategies

• Cost Leadership Strategy: Pursue lower costs, reduce the selling price to increase market share, match competitors' pricing and make more profit.
• Differentiation Strategy: Make the product stand out with strong quality, features, and service to justify a higher price.
• Focus Strategy: Focus on a specific market niche.
  • Understand the needs of that specific niche and cater to them successfully.

Other Strategies

• Growth Strategy: Expand production.
• Stability Strategy: Maintain the current situation (no new markets or products).
• Retrenchment Strategy: Cut back, sell assets, lay off employees, and leave certain countries.
• Combination Strategy: Expand in certain areas, maintain in others, and reduce the amount or types of products/services in some areas.

Action/Implementation Plan

• Decide how to achieve the goal.
• Develop a plan with:
  • What to do
  • Who's responsible
  • Steps and deadlines. (An example table is provided in the notes).

Additional Notes

• A company might use a growth strategy to develop new products, address their advertising weakness, and address their threat of a lack of skilled workers.
• The plan for Calm Seas should include detailed goals, responsibilities, and steps with deadlines.
• Specific examples of actions (e.g., developing new products, cross-training employees) are in the notes, along with how to deal with them (prototype presentation deadlines, development progress).
• Homework includes analyzing SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) from a class discussion and applying it to Calm Seas and a company on campus.
• Evaluating mission statements of local companies from various perspectives (clarity, purpose, decision-making, etc.) is also part of the homework task.
• A discussion on competitive advantage and how it affects organizational planning is part of the assignment.