Evaluating competitive strategies. Too many corporate plans fail to give even minimal attention to the present and future action of competitive firms. They set out elaborate strategies without any real consideration of competitive reaction. A simple analysis of each major competitor’s existing strategy can be extremely helpful in overcoming this weakness. In most cases, analysis of this kind leads to the identification of opportunities or threats that call for current management decisions.
Contingency plans. Most companies with active planning programs recognize the value of asking “what if” questions, taking important contingencies into account. Yet few really address this issue in a substantive way. A frequent excuse is that there are so many potential contingencies that it would take years to analyze them all.
The obvious answer to this objection is that one can and should be very selective, and deal only with the one or two possible contingencies that could upset the entire strategy.