Managing Strategic Positioning Risks

Patrick McConnell

Chapter 14 discusses some of the standard models used to develop strategies and which may also be used to identify strategic risks. The chapter first looks at how tools for strategy development are used, in general, before discussing examples of how these tools and techniques may be employed for first identifying strategic positioning risks and then assessing them.

Unfortunately with some exceptions, there is little room in traditional strategy models for uncertainty and risk, and, in many cases, it is assumed that, once a decision is made based on a particular tool, then the decision is correct and without risk and also that execution of the recommended strategy will also be without risk.

In this book, it would be tempting to introduce completely new models of strategy specifically aimed at identifying risks, but that would be self-defeating, since the existing strategy models are already used and understood by strategists, who would be loath to discard them. The approach in this book is to work with the widely used models and to identify how they can also be used to identify risks to a strategy, as the strategic options are being developed not afterwards.

STRATEGY