Strategic Issue Management

Strategic Issue Management

In this issue the author introduces us on a strategic issue management, describing why is necessary, how works, how to use it and advantages and disadvantages. This issue explains the principal differences which has and how coupled with another systems how to cope issues and which approaches are . This issue also includes two appendix to understand better how a SIMshould work.


Over the years Strategic Management has changed in response to the changes in the environment, nowadays changes happen more often and firms have to be alert to anticipate them, to face them and to overcome them. In the study of different system of management, these ones can be classified as it’s shown in the table 1* in five different systems, at the same time it’s possible todivide in two subgroup; the first one, 50´s and 60´s years, based on a not bluffing future where techniques of the past are enough to cope, and the seconds, the Newcomers, based on future changes and different ways to face or to anticipate. Another point is the structure of the firm and the power within the firm, where stakeholders every time are stronger and have more capability to decisions.According to the author an issue could be at the same time a good chance or terrible threat depending on the approach and on the firm resilience, on the way to face or take advantages, firms looked for the best way, either revising annually or improving the strategic, the first with time shows that was unnecessary and a resource loss but resolutions of these strategy and environment-derived issuesbecomes the central preoccupation of the annual planning process resulting in a required separation between the strategic plan, understood as a stable plan, and issue resolutions, understood as a mechanism to afford the environment and the new and unexpected issues.
To respond this “unexpected issues” on a early and fast way a new systems was created, “Strategic Issue Management” a.k.a SIM,within this system, to assure an early identification the firms should update constantly and be under continuous surveillance, on the other hand to assure a fast response firms should have a senior management group with all the enough resources and authority to face issues, hierarchical lines should disappear to result in a horizontal schema where the issues are allocated to the best equipped groupand resources are assigned to the project and it reports directly to senior management. The responsibilities allocated are just to resolve the issues not for making a plan, here is the main feature.
The way which responsibility is assigned perhaps so from staff to operating lines or from general management to operating lines, depending on features firms and the issues, they will be used.

Thecapability to become threat into opportunities determined the success of the system but to make it “work it becomes necessary to detect less specific weak signal and to respond with weak responses which are progressively strengthened as information becomes more specific”.
A system based on weak signal must be reserved for environment where changes take place often, on the other hand, there issystems under strong signal, to compare in which cases it should be used a strong or weak SIM the author describe the necessary steps, shown that there are three possible sources of information, these are:
• The trend in the external environment
• The evolutionary trends within the enterprise
• The trends in its performance
Once the resources of information are done, those whicharen’t able to apply to the enterprise may be removed from the list and add those which could be more related to the enterprise, on the second step is essential to identify the future impact of the trends on the future performance of the enterprise.
Later described which of these trends are weak, strength, opportunity or threats will be the next step and identify the impact that they can be in the...