What Is Strategic Planning?

Question

AFTER DETERMINING YOUR ORGANIZATION'S VISION AND MISSION STATEMENTS, YOU NOW WANT TO PUT STRATEGIES IN PLACE TO GUIDE YOU IN REALISING YOUR VISION.

Answer 1

Planning something strategically

Answer 2

Strategic planning is an effort to produce decisions and action steps that will shape and guide what an organization will become, what it will do, and why it will do it.
It is a continuous process, which must adapt to environmental changes, both external and internal. This process must develop and maintain a viable fit between the organization’s objectives and resources and its environmental opportunities.
To be successfull it must be important to the organizacion and have flexible guidelines.
To be effective it should be concise and focused, containing a mission statement, principles, goals, and strategic objectives.

Answer 3

Long term planning, typically 5 to 10 years, based on the organizations overall business objectives and using many scenarios and planning methods that identifies assumptions, risks and environmental factors. In other words, a systematic method to anticipate and adapt to expected changes. It eventually creates an action plan for the longer range objectives and goals of the organization based on clear end results and accurate assessment of the current performances.

Answer 4

There is a thing called the balanced score card. It covers 4 areas.

Financial Perspective - $ goals
Customer Perspective - response time/satisfaction etc.
Internal Business Process Measures- managing bottlenecks, reducing rework & scrap, etc.
Learning and Growth Perspective - employee satisfaction, etc.

You would need to make financial and nonfinancial goals. Then actually choose a few to tackle. And implement them.

Don't seek improvement across all areas at once. Set a time frame for achievement and make sure goals in one area aren't contrary to goals in another area.

Answer 5

Hopefully, through your mission statement, you determined what it is you want to do. Strategic planning is the plan to accomplish these goals. It is a step-by-step, project by project action plan that includes things like budget, who is going to do what, time schedules, marketing /advertising/publicity, organizational structure (who is in charge and who will report to who), etc. One main thing to consider in strategic planning is long-term sustainability -- what is the organization going to do to support itself for the long-haul.

Answer 6

Strategic planning is a management tool, period. As with any management tool, it is used for one purpose only: to help an organization do a better job - to focus its energy, to ensure that members of the organization are working toward the same goals, to assess and adjust the organization's direction in response to a changing environment. In short, strategic planning is a disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, what it does, and why it does it, with a focus on the future. (Adapted from Bryson's Strategic Planning in Public and Nonprofit Organizations)

A word by word dissection of this definition provides the key elements that underlie the meaning and success of a strategic planning process:

The process is strategic because it involves preparing the best way to respond to the circumstances of the organization's environment, whether or not its circumstances are known in advance; nonprofits often must respond to dynamic and even hostile environments. Being strategic, then, means being clear about the organization's objectives, being aware of the organization's resources, and incorporating both into being consciously responsive to a dynamic environment.

The process is about planning because it involves intentionally setting goals (i.e., choosing a desired future) and developing an approach to achieving those goals.

The process is disciplined in that it calls for a certain order and pattern to keep it focused and productive. The process raises a sequence of questions that helps planners examine experience, test assumptions, gather and incorporate information about the present, and anticipate the environment in which the organization will be working in the future.

Finally, the process is about fundamental decisions and actions because choices must be made in order to answer the sequence of questions mentioned above. The plan is ultimately no more, and no less, than a set of decisions about what to do, why to do it, and how to do it. Because it is impossible to do everything that needs to be done in this world, strategic planning implies that some organizational decisions and actions are more important than others - and that much of the strategy lies in making the tough decisions about what is most important to achieving organizational success.

The strategic planning can be complex, challenging, and even messy, but it is always defined by the basic ideas outlined above - and you can always return to these basics for insight into your own strategic planning process.


Strategic Planning and Long-Range Planning
Although many use these terms interchangeably, strategic planning and long-range planning differ in their emphasis on the "assumed" environment. Long-range planning is generally considered to mean the development of a plan for accomplishing a goal or set of goals over a period of several years, with the assumption that current knowledge about future conditions is sufficiently reliable to ensure the plan's reliability over the duration of its implementation. In the late fifties and early sixties, for example, the US. economy was relatively stable and somewhat predictable, and, therefore, long-range planning was both fashionable and useful.

On the other hand, strategic planning assumes that an organization must be responsive to a dynamic, changing environment (not the more stable environment assumed for long-range planning). Certainly a common assumption has emerged in the nonprofit sector that the environment is indeed changeable, often in unpredictable ways. Strategic planning, then, stresses the importance of making decisions that will ensure the organization's ability to successfully respond to changes in the environment.


Strategic Thinking and Strategic Management
Strategic planning is only useful if it supports strategic thinking and leads to strategic management - the basis for an effective organization. Strategic thinking means asking, "Are we doing the right thing?" Perhaps, more precisely, it means making that assessment using three key requirements about strategic thinking: a definite purpose be in mind; an understanding of the environment, particularly of the forces that affect or impede the fulfillment of that purpose; and creativity in developing effective responses to those forces.

It follows, then, that strategic management is the application of strategic thinking to the job of leading an organization. Dr. Jagdish Sheth, a respected authority on marketing and strategic planning, provides the following framework for understanding strategic management: continually asking the question, "Are we doing the right thing?" It entails attention to the "big picture" and the willingness to adapt to changing circumstances, and consists of the following three elements:

formulation of the organization's future mission in light of changing external factors such as regulation, competition, technology, and customers
development of a competitive strategy to achieve the mission
creation of an organizational structure which will deploy resources to successfully carry out its competitive strategy.
Strategic management is adaptive and keeps an organization relevant. In these dynamic times it is more likely to succeed than the traditional approach of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Answer 7

Strategic planning is to use your advantage in your business to develop a roadmap to achieve whatever you goal you want to reach.

You need to assess your strength/weakness and your resources for you business to make your yearly goal.

One of the good example is the SWOT system.

SWOT stand for:

Strength of your business
Weakness of your business
Opportunity that presents for your business
Threats of other competitors or products. (rivary)

Go over this with your staff and I'm sure you can setup a good plan for the next 3-6 month.

Answer 8

All possibilities actions to be deployed with contingencies planning toward achieving the goals. some past experiences and creativities helps, thinking out of the box wiill braoden the views and plan the rivalries requires high skills in management.