Strategic Planning: Making Sense of Strategy

This article discusses the importance of strategic planning in management and how Oman Air conducts secret strategic planning to compete in the global market. It also explores the mechanisms used by Oman Air to survive in a highly dynamic environment. The article provides insights into the benefits and risks of keeping strategic planning hidden from middle and lower level management.

STRATEGIC PLANNING
MAKING SENSE OF STRATEGY
Running Head: Strategic Planning 0

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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Conducting Strategy Planning in Secret..........................................................................................2
Mechanism for Survival..................................................................................................................4
References........................................................................................................................................6

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Introduction
Strategic planning is a management activity to plan out what needs to be done, to set priorities, to
strengthen the operations of the company and make sure that employees and stakeholders are
working towards organizational goals. The strategies planned in respond to the changing global
market environment and make adjustments to get the organization in the direction of dynamic
environment. An effective strategic planning is done in order to make progress by looking over
the past experiences.
The company chosen here is Oman Air, based in Muscat a flagship airline carrier of Oman. It
was established in 1993 and presented a pacing growth since their establishment. Oman airlines
not only outreach commuting services but provide benefits to their passengers an inflight
entertainment, mobile telephony, internet facilities and duty free products exclusively (Air,
2017).
Conducting Strategy Planning in Secret
Positioned as a strategy specialist, the company have chosen Oman air an airline carrier of
Oman. The reason behind choosing this company for conducting secret strategic planning is its
goal of enhancing their current growth and succeed as a best airline in further years. Oman air
have an effective marketing plan which lead them to fulfil their organizational goals and create
an effective value set of airlines. In order to demonstrate an effective customer service they have
planned their strategies in a way and kept it confidential which only includes top level executives
while planning these strategies.
Oman air prefer to conduct their strategic planning in secret and the strategies are hidden from all
but the high executives. The reasons behind such step are logically correct from the view point of
a strategy manager who is the only responsible person for making strategies for the company and
managing the whole project. Strategic manager make sure that the strategic plans are
communicated to everybody who needs to be informed about such information take part in the
whole planning and execution of plan made for the company. The communication channels are
set that the strategy will flow according to those flow of communication channels only. It is to be
ensure that the flow of communication channel is appropriate and the strategies is understood to

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all appropriate parties with a clear vision and if any feedback or suggestion is required that can
be communicated smoothly without any obstacle (Morrison, and Mason, 2016).
The main aim behind keeping the strategies hidden from all but top level executives is to keep
the strategies in secret which are of great importance and useful only for top level executives. As
it is evident that Oman air is a flagship airline carrier of Oman operating globally and provide
exclusive benefits to its passengers. There are many other airlines who is challenging the
company by giving strong competition through their strategy. So to compete with such
companies Oman air must plan out their strategy and keep them confidential to avoid any risk of
leaking those plans to those who are not appropriate parties and are not related to the procedure
(Li, Chen, Liu, and Peng, 2014).
As per the analysis, smaller companies can plan their strategies with all management level
executives as they have a quite informal environment in their management and the accountability
is not centralized. Small firms do not face challenges as compare to bigger firms so the issue of
visibility and secrecy does not arise in the case of small firms. Whereas bigger firms have more
complexity in their planning procedure of strategies. The wealthy competitive information
cannot be shared with everyone in the organization and a proper course of action is followed to
strategize their plans. The competitive analysis shown that strategies should remain secret and
confidential to top managers and the required steps must be taken to ensure that such information
is not dispersed beyond the circle. The strategists must perceive before planning that the
strategies should be visible or open to all as it totally depends upon the organization structure and
policies and those organization who follow the top-down approach. In top-down approach the
top level executives are the persons who holds an expertise, acumen and responsibilities to make
significant strategy decisions and they are the ones who will ensure the implementation of
strategies they made. Some companies involve middle level and lower level managers in
implementing the strategies to make sure the support and commitment. But the risk involve in
bottom-up approach where all level of managers take part in forming strategic decisions and
implement the same is of high degree as lower level and middle level managers does not carry
such expertise which is required and the confidentiality cannot be maintain in such scenario. For
the sake of willingness and contribution an organization cannot afford risk in this competitive
environment (Grant, 2016).

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Keeping strategies hidden from all excluding top level executives may be preferred by Oman air
and the reason behind it are the strategies may get dispersed and can be taken advantage of by
rival firms as they can use such information in their own organization or modify their own
strategies to defeat their competitors. In a visible approach the parties involved in the planning
may get attracted and lured away by the rival firms. Company must follow secrecy while
planning as secrecy limits the criticism and guessing which is of great importance and also it
limits the duplicating the organization’s strategies (Harvard Business Review, 2017).
It is concluded that the benefits of keeping strategic planning hidden from middle level and
lower level management is countless but comes with its own pros and cons. The pros has been
discussed above that how they are benefitting company and lead them to compete in the global
market by forming unique strategies. The cons will be few as the other members in the company
may feel neglected who actually wants to contribute in decisions of making strategies and the
company may lose innovative ideas that other members could have been given if they were the
part of the decision making process. The third party (investors, creditors and other stakeholders)
holds no idea of what the company is doing and where is it going as they could have supported
well in the whole planning process of strategy making (Kotler, Berger, and Bickhoff, 2016).
Mechanism for Survival
To deal with the complex competitive environment Oman air has followed few mechanisms to
survive in such environment and include those mechanisms in their strategic objectives which
are providing safety in airline, being in the first and foremost choice among customers,
increasing revenue by reducing overall costs, catering growth in their 10 year plan and
contribution in the development of the sultanate of Oman (Dutta, 2017).
One of the mechanism followed by the company is using less complex business model as
complex models puts an immense pressure on costing methods in the competitive market where
risk for such complexity in operations cannot be afforded. So Oman air follow simpler business
model or a less complexity in business processes and products by keeping in mind the broad
customer needs and a less costly approach to fulfill the strategic objective of increasing revenue
and reducing overall costs (Fast Company, 2017). This approach help company to deal with
competition in airline industry and being a large scale business a complex business model will
create many difficulties in both the environment (inside and outside).

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Another mechanism of the company is mounting costs by adopting the method in their business
model as it is prepared on the basis of offering consumers number of destinations and flexibility
which ranges from last minute arrangement in seats and providing itineraries with an option to
customize the way a customer want it to be. The other benefits of special meals, in-flight
entertainment and private cabins. Basically a system of doing business at a slow pace rely more
on sophisticated system which accommodate continue changes with a purpose of low costs and
higher productivity (Air, 2017).
Being a large service airline the new path of restructuring activities are prove to be valuable and
a must in this dynamic environment of business. A competitive cost structure will tackle the
fundamental cost penalties of their business models and that too without any compromise in
services they provide (Kassem, and Bhatt, 2015). These fundamental changes do carry an
amount of risk factor in them but a successful change will help improve productivity and market
share. The operations of core airline business needs to be competitive by restructuring their cost
models to low cost carriers. The step taken by company lead to newer growth in the whole
industry (Holloway, 2017).
Other mechanism of the company is one of the significant one where they have embraced TBS
(Tailored Business Streams), that have simplified their business policies and streamlines the
existing core processes in order to address the needs of the customers. This mechanism of
automating activities that help company to drastically reduce number of activities which are
performed at airport and save huge amount of time and money. The automation system handles
the process of reservations, changes and customization of last minute changes has benefitted
company mark their success in a short span of time and they are leading well in such competitive
environment. These mechanisms are helping Oman air to survive in a highly dynamic
environment and will continue to do so with an ease in its business processes (Josefy, Kuban,
Ireland, and Hitt, 2015).

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References
Air, O. (2017). Corporate Information. Omanair.com. Available at:
http://www.omanair.com/en/about-us/corporate-information [Accessed 5 Dec. 2017].
Air, O. (2017). Strategic Objectives. Omanair.com. Available at:
https://www.omanair.com/in/en/about-us/corporate-information/strategic-objectives [Accessed 5
Dec. 2017].
Dutta, K., 2017. ORGANIZATIONAL IDENTITY AND STRATEGIC DECISIONS IN A
CHANGING BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT. READINGS BOOK, p.162.
Fast Company. (2017). 6 Strategies For Dealing With Uncertainty In Business. Available at:
https://www.fastcompany.com/1824457/6-strategies-dealing-uncertainty-business [Accessed 5
Dec. 2017].
Grant, R.M., 2016. Contemporary Strategy Analysis Text Only. John Wiley & Sons.
Harvard Business Review. (2017). The Secrets to Successful Strategy Execution. Available at:
https://hbr.org/2008/06/the-secrets-to-successful-strategy-execution [Accessed 5 Dec. 2017].
Holloway, S., 2017. Airlines: Managing to make money. Routledge.
Josefy, M., Kuban, S., Ireland, R.D. and Hitt, M.A., 2015. All things great and small:
Organizational size, boundaries of the firm, and a changing environment. Academy of
Management Annals, 9(1), pp.715-802.
Kassem, M.S. and Bhatt, B.J., 2015. Survival Strategies for State-Owned Airlines: The Case of
Arabian Gulf Carriers. In Proceedings of the 1988 International Conference of Services
Marketing (pp. 126-135). Springer, Cham.
Kotler, P., Berger, R. and Bickhoff, N., 2016. The quintessence of strategic management: What
you really need to know to survive in business. Springer.

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Li, Y., Chen, H., Liu, Y. and Peng, M.W., 2014. Managerial ties, organizational learning, and
opportunity capture: A social capital perspective. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 31(1),
pp.271-291.
Morrison, W.G. and Mason, K., 2016. Low cost carriers in the Middle East and North Africa:
Prospects and strategies. Research in Transportation Business & Management, 21, pp.54-67.