In a very real sense, Michael Lodato has been working on this handbook for over 45 years - starting in 1968 when, as a new CEO of a small consulting company, he attended a seminar on strategic planning at UCLA. The resulting strategy helped run the company but also served as the first template for his strategic planning methodology. Over the years, as a result of working on real issues, faced by him as an executive and client corporations, the template expanded to add tactical planning and features to handle changes in the business environments that may be coming or have already occurred, to quickly assess the impact of such changes on success, and to adapt to the new realities by making changes to its strategies, tactics and processes in time avoid bad results In short, he added agility to the template that is the substance of this handbook.

This is not a text book or a book on strategic management theory. It is a step-by-step, here’s-how-to-do-it guide to achieving agile strategic management. All of this growth in the strategic management processes came, not as an academic activity. It is written for people who do, or aspire to do the work of strategic management.

As you learn about the processes and read stories about how they have applied to a wide range of situations, think through how you might apply them to the situations, issues and opportunities you face. They are intended to help you unleash the talent that resides in your team and organization.

The resulting methodology includes processes that guide all the work of strategic management at all levels: from strategic, through tactical, and down to individual action items in such a way that there is a strong interdependence among them.