Strategic Planning - Lesson Plan: 2 x 1 hour lessons

A series of 'off the shelf' lesson plans and resources for use in the classroom. These lessons deal with Strategic Planning and are relevant to the following specifications:

• AQA: Unit 6
• Edexcel: Unit 5 and Unit 6
• OCR: Module 2880

Aim:

The Activity and the lessons are aimed at providing students with an opportunity to practise some of the skills necessary for writing a business report similar to the requirements of the AQA paper 5, the OCR business project and thematic enquiry. The emphasis, therefore, is on encouraging students to use the information provided (along with any other information they feel is of benefit) to provide an analysis and evaluation of the issue concerned.

The case study provided is that of Tesco, the supermarket retailer. Tesco has expanded rapidly in the past ten years and has become the UK's largest supermarket. The growth has been based on a sound strategy of customer focus, expansion of services and goods, and domestic and international expansion. The news that it had broken the £2 billion profit level should, you may have thought, sent investors flocking to buy shares, but the share price fell because of concerns about what the future might hold for the business.

The aim of the report, therefore, is to get students to use the whole range of their business studies knowledge and understanding to analyse Tesco's current position and to offer an assessment of where it goes from here. Has it reached its peak? Has it exhausted all of its expansionary options? What should its strategy be from now on?

Students should be encouraged to use the Mind Map and PowerPoint Presentation as a means of basing their analysis. For example, should Tesco now adopt a cost leadership approach or maintain a market focused approach? Students have been given a wide range of information on the company and may use some or all of it in their report. The most important thing to stress is that the information should not be merely repeated but used to analyse the strategic options open to the firm.

The report should be presented in an appropriate format with headings and sub-headings relating to the different aspects of the information the student chooses to use. For example, there might be a section dealing with a financial analysis of Tesco making use of ratio analysis, there might be another section looking at the possible further expansion opportunities in the UK.

If required, a word limit can be put onto the report or time spent researching the issues and then the write-up of the report done under timed conditions in the class to replicate the scenario faced in examinations.

Learning Objectives:

At the end of the lessons, students should be able to:

• Select, interpret and organise material appropriate to the task
• Recognise and use a range of business terms, concepts and methods in analysing a problem, for example, using ratio analysis
• Write a coherent and well argued report using appropriate report protocols
• Produce a report under specified time constraints (if following the lesson structure below)
• Analyse and evaluate a range of information and data in relation to the task

Resources:

• PowerPoint Presentation - Business Strategy [134 KB] (basic version also available for quicker download [98 KB])
• Mind Map - Business Strategy
• Activity - Strategic Planning: Tesco
• PCs for student research

Lesson Structure:

Lesson 1

1. Introduce the Activity and explain the learning objectives and the task. (5 minutes)
2. Show the PowerPoint Presentation and Mind Map and discuss the issues arising. (15 minutes)
3. Spend some time discussing the information provided in the Activity and the issues that might arise and the range of business concepts and methods that could be applied (ratio analysis, product portfolio analysis, market versus cost based strategies, marketing mix, etc.). The aim is to give students some guidance to the approach they will have to take in the report. (20 minutes)
4. Allocate the remainder of the time to allow students to do some planning for the report. (20 minutes)

Lesson 2

1. Provide a further 15 minutes for final planning and preparation for writing the report. (15 minutes)
2. Give students 45 minutes to write up the report. (45 minutes)