Planning and control

In this lesson

1. 0:00 Planning and control fundamentals
2. 0:22 Competitive advantage: Netflix vs Blockbuster
3. 2:27 Performance management and strategic planning
4. 4:14 Setting SMART objectives and SAT criteria
5. 6:16 Strategic, tactical and operational levels
6. 8:06 Three levels of planning within organisations
7. 11:31 Designing effective performance measures
8. 14:24 Strategic versus operational management
9. 18:08 Resolving conflicts between short and long term

About this lesson

You'll explore how organisations build sustainable competitive advantage, then discover the three levels at which planning and control operate: strategic (long-term, market-focused), tactical (medium-term, area-focused), and operational (day-to-day execution). The session covers setting SMART objectives, evaluating strategies using the SAT criteria (suitable, acceptable, feasible), and designing performance measures that align across the entire organisation without creating conflicts between short-term and long-term goals. You'll see how strategic planning cascades through an organisation using real examples like Netflix, Volkswagen, and supermarket chains, showing how corporate objectives flow down while achievement flows back up. A critical theme throughout is alignment: your performance measures, controls, and management actions must all support your overall strategy, whether you're pursuing cost leadership or differentiation. The lesson also highlights a common pitfall in large organisations—the conflict between short-term financial targets and long-term value creation—and explains how poor communication, misaligned bonuses, and inconsistent timescales can undermine your strategy. By the end, you'll understand why "what gets measured gets done, and what gets measured and paid definitely gets done," and you'll be equipped to evaluate whether an organisation's planning and control systems are truly supporting its strategic objectives or working against them.

Duration: 20m