Strategy Formulation

Solutions to complex business problems require a rigorous dialog between the client and the consultant. The client can be the CEO, the VP - Marketing, or even the general manager of a SBU (Small Business Unit). The consultant is assumed here to be an MBA (Please also check our Special Offers section) student or experienced management consultant, depending on the difficulty level of the case.

To be effective, the consultant must understand the problem by summarizing the question thrown at him. This will help him understand the business problem as also the goals and objectives the client is trying to meet. This will require the consultant to ask a lot of probing and open ended questions and turn the problem solving exercise into a dialog. In the deep conversation that ensues, the consultant will seek clarifications to the original problem and solicit additional information pertinent to the case.

After a while, if the dialog has been focused and meaningful, the consultant will be able to grasp the business case in its entirety.  At this point, if the consultant is experienced, he will be able to think of business strategy frameworks which he can synthesize to formulate his own structured frameworks as a prelude to cracking the case. For a review of the basic frameworks, please refer to the home page. For a review of the advanced frameworks, please refer to the Advanced Frameworks tab on the top.

An experienced consultant should be able to mentally structure the synthesized frameworks he is going to apply to solve the case. Once he has made up his mind (this requires the consultant to be alert and mentally energetic so that he can synthesize the basic and advanced frameworks to come up with his own hypotheses and frameworks which he is going to apply in a structured manner to crack the case), the consultant should tackle the case head on until the client is satisfied.

This page has numerous real-life business cases for practice and review. For a specific business case that interests you, please refer to the link on the left.