I like your point here about monitoring the external environment during strategic plan execution, when you said:

“… intended strategy and realized strategy are not the same due to unforeseen environmental developments, unanticipated resources constraints or changes in the managerial preferences. … we can plan as much as possible to minimize risks, and to properly allocate resources but the market environment changes when we less expect it.”

One key regarding the current operations and “future plans” is the underlying Evaluation Process that this implies. To your point, the Evaluation “phase” really is an ongoing activity for any business. Porter’s Five Forces Model is good to get us thinking about the sorts of competitive reactions or isolated stimuli that will impact our business! Tools such as the SWOTT and the Balanced Scorecard (as we’ll see in Weeks 3 and 4), among others, help ensure that we’re always keeping our eyes open for what’s happening in the market we’re in. We’ll be dealing with both of these tools in this class.

How do your organizations ensure that such things are not overlooked while they’re busy executing their “current” plan?