Prior to beginning this discussion, review section 7.4 Contingency Planning in your textbook. Strategic plans are focused on current and future company goals, therefore changes in the environment must be detected and monitored. Changes in the environment that impinge on the company’s strategic plan are known as external triggers and triggers are paired with plans to successfully deal with them. These paired actions are known as contingency plans. What qualities make a future issue a “trigger”?

As an example, consider you are on the strategic planning team for a soft drink company. A merger of two major competitors next year would constitute a future trigger. For this discussion, consider the Environmental Scan and SWOT analysis you conducted in Week 2. Formulate a trigger/contingency pair in the form of a three-part sentence similar to the example in the textbook. Examine it in terms of the three guidelines that good contingency plans should follow.

Post a summary of your selected company and risks that you perceive based on your prior Environmental Scan and SWOT analysis. State the three-sentence trigger/contingency pair and justify your choice of contingency plan using information from the week’s readings and/or other scholarly or credible resources, using the Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources (Links to an external site.) table for guidance.

(NOTE: Incorporate the feedback you receive from your instructor and save your work. It will be part of your Strategic Plan Final Project for this course).

Guided Response: Review several of your peer’s posts. Respond to at least two of your posts in a substantive manner and provide recommendations to extend their thinking. Support your position by using information from the week’s readings, or examples from current events and/or other scholarly or credible resources, using the Scholarly, Peer Reviewed, and other Credible Sources (Links to an external site.) table for guidance. Properly cite any references according to APA style as outlined in the University of Arizona Global Campus Writing Center’s APA Style (Links to an external site.) resource. You are encouraged to post your required replies earlier in the week to promote more meaningful and interactive discourse in this discussion forum. Continue to monitor the discussion forum until 5:00 p.m. (Mountain Time) on Day 7, and respond with robust dialogue to anyone who replies to your initial post.