Foundation for strategic scenario planning process
Strategic assumptions are the assumptions that are held by decision-makers when building a strategic plan. All strategic plans should be built upon a grounded, validated and accepted set of strategic assumptions. Any strategic plan or decision is only as good as the strategic assumptions upon which it is based. Strategic assumptions surface and are usually identified when scenario planning is undertaken during a strategic planning process. The strategic assumptions surfacing and testing method (SAST) is one rigorous method of identifying strategic assumptions.
Like other types of assumptions, strategic assumptions are the assumptions held by decision-makers about different types of factors and drivers of change that have influenced their thinking, decision-making or planning. Strategic assumptions may be assumptions about events that happened in the past, what is currently happening or what may happen in the future.[1]
There are nine categories of strategic assumptions. These nine types are the assumptions being made about:[2]
macro-environmental forces (from a STEP or PEST analysis),
the market dynamics (e.g. from an analysis of the Porter's Five Forces model),
the needs of customers,
the expectations and behaviours of other stakeholders,
the availability and allocation of money,
the organization's internal processes,
the strengths and weaknesses of its assets,
its workforce, and
the "Background of Shared Obviousness", that is, the groupthink that exists within the organization around what the company is, what it is able to do and not able to do.
Strategic assumptions are the equivalent in strategic planning to financial assumptions when doing financial projections, economic assumptions when making economic forecasts and scientific assumptions when proposing new scientific models.
^James A. Dewar (2002). Assumption-Based Planning: A Tool for Reducing Avoidable Surprises. Cambridge University Press.
^Mark Hollingworth (2008). "Strategic Assumptions: The Essential (and Missing) Element of your Strategic Plan". Ivey Business Journal. Retrieved 2013-01-31.
and 26 Related for: Strategic assumptions information
Strategicassumptions are the assumptions that are held by decision-makers when building a strategic plan. All strategic plans should be built upon a grounded...
for the origins Operational planning Situational analysis StrategicassumptionsStrategic planning software Strategy Markup Language (StratML) U.S. Army...
Strategicassumptions surfacing and testing (SAST) is a method for approaching ill-structured problems. It can be applied as a dialectical approach to...
A net assessment, also known as a correlation of forces analysis or a strategic assessment, compares the capabilities of both parties and examines the...
citing Greenwood, Cooper, Hinings, and Brown, “Biggest is best? Strategicassumptions and actions in the Canadian audit industry” Revue Canadienne des...
The change, sensational at the time, made nonsense of all the strategicassumptions and plans, current since 1713, based on the premises that the southern...
occupy oil-rich Romania, that would undercut all of the British strategicassumptions on Germany's need to import oil from the Americas. Since Poland...
of its respective departments and schools. The school is a member of Strategic Educational Alliance of Southeast Asia Archived June 17, 2015, at the...
In the field of management, strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by an organization's...
capability (and he almost always does), it may render tactical and strategicassumptions into nonsense. By its very nature, it is not possible to predict...
because it was based on flawed assumptions and false premises, the foremost of which was that the Soviet Union wanted strategic arms limitation agreement much...
2nd ed., ed. Lester Kurtz. Oxford: Elsevier: 1242–1256. 2005. “StrategicAssumptions and Moral Implications of the Constabulary Force.” Journal of Military...
Unitary actor assumption: actors are understood as unitary Dyads: interactions tend to be between dyads (or triads) of states Strategic interactions:...
In game theory, strategic dominance (commonly called simply dominance) occurs when one strategy is better than another strategy for one player, no matter...
territorial limits and its geopolitical code which is “[...] a set of strategicassumptions that a government makes about other states”. These so-called geopolitical...
own strategy x i {\displaystyle \,x_{i}} . Under these assumptions, the two decisions are strategic complements if an increase in each player's own decision...
sustained strategic bombing of railways, harbours, cities, workers' and civilian housing, and industrial districts in enemy territory. Strategic bombing...
Strategic Air Command (SAC) was a United States Department of Defense Specified Command and a United States Air Force (USAF) Major Command responsible...
Game theorists respond by comparing their assumptions to those used in physics. Thus while their assumptions do not always hold, they can treat game theory...
continues to be applied. Proponents of MAD as part of the US and USSR strategic doctrine believed that nuclear war could best be prevented if neither...
Strategic or tactical voting is a situation where a voter considers the possible ballots cast by other voters in order to maximize their satisfaction...
corresponding market. Strategic marketing emerged in the 1970s and 80s as a distinct field of study, branching out of strategic management. Marketing...
generation showed a positive response to canned vegetable products. The strategicassumption behind is that introducing new product varieties will not only improve...
The Strategic Army Corps (STRAC) was a command of the United States Army, with a mission of high readiness, active in the 1960s. In 1961 it was merged...
Strategic leadership provides techniques that focus organizations when they are deciding on their purpose and best business practices that are critical...
The Soviet invasion of Manchuria, formally known as the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation or simply the Manchurian Operation (Маньчжурская операция)...
Global Information