Week 5:

Strategist: 

Strategist means a person with the ability to design the innovative path towards the company's goal with profitability. They possess the potential to evaluate a company's SWOT.

The main types of people who have strategic elements on their jobs are Chief executive officers, non-executive directors, senior managers, strategic planners and consultants, operational managers and middle level managers. They are responsible towards making strategies on their own fields.

Strategic planning is an organizational management activity that is used to set priorities, focus energy and resources, strengthen operations, ensure that employees and other stakeholders are working toward common goals, establish agreement around intended outcomes/results, and assess and adjust the organization's direction in response to a changing environment. (balancescorecard.org)

Difference between Strategic Planner and Strategic consultant:

Strategic Planner:

Strategic planning is an organizational management activity that is used to set priorities, focus energy and resources, strengthen operations, ensure that employees and other stakeholders are working toward common goals, establish agreement around intended outcomes/results, and assess and adjust the organization's direction in response to a changing environment (balancedscorecard.org, 2013).

Strategic planners are the ones who plan and coordinate the strategy and its steps. They gather information, analyse them and innovate strategies that builds a road map to success. They are the internal part of organization and are available at any time when needed within the organization.

  
Strategic Consultant:

They are the separate consultant company who gets hired by the business organization for a certain period of time. They make various strategies and generate options for the firm. Likewise, they make strategic decisions for the organization and help them to adapt with the environment. They work for the various business industries. However, they are more expensive than the strategic planners.

Reference:
Strategy management group [Online] Available at https://www.balancedscorecard.org/Resources/StrategicPlanningBasics/tabid/459/Default.aspx (Accessed on March 2013)