For this assignment, imagine that the senior leadership has placed you in charge of leading a retreat in which your diverse team will make key decisions about your strategic plan. It is your task to lead the discussion, stimulate healthy debate from diverse points of view, and leave with a strategy that is right for your business. The strategic plan will not be performed yet; however, you will have chosen a strategy by the end of the retreat.

Keep in mind that in the first 4 weeks of this course, you reflected on how to think strategically, and you analyzed your customers and competition based on solid data that you have gathered. You also performed key analyses using that data and you reflected on your company’s mission, vision, and values and how this relates to the strategic plan. Now it is time to actually use that data and analyses to choose a strategy that best suits your company.

This assignment has two parts. In the first part, you will summarize your approach to the workshop. In a 2 to 3-page essay, be sure to address the following:

1. Setting expectations: What are your key expectations for this workshop?
2. Managing status: How will you minimize the status effect to ensure all can contribute?
3. Setting ground rules: What are the most important ground rules for how people should make comments and how decisions will be made?
4. Managing conflict: What will be your approach to conflict resolution?
5. Getting started: How will you begin the workshop?

In the second part of this assignment, choose the three most critical criteria Tracy discusses in Chapter 7, of Business Strategy, and then discuss what you predict the results of the analysis will be once the meeting has been conducted.  Feel free to exercise creativity here because the goal is to consider different ideas for choosing a strategy for your plan. You will need to place yourself in the role of other various participants in your retreat, in order to consider diverse points of view.

Part 2 of the assignment should be approximately 1 to 3 pages. Support your paper with a minimum of three scholarly resources.

Length:  5 pages (not including the title and reference pages)

References:  Include a minimum of 5 scholarly resources.

Your assignment should demonstrate thoughtful consideration of the ideas and concepts presented in the course and provide new thoughts and insights relating directly to this topic. Your response should reflect scholarly writing and current APA standards.