What is Strategic Planning - Complete Guide
by: sourceecommerce
Definition of Strategic Planning
Strategic planning in organizations originated in the 1950s and was very popular and widespread between mid-1960s to mid-1970s, when then people believed it was the answer for all problems, and corporate America was "obsessed" with strategic planning. Following that "boom" strategic planning was cast aside and abandoned for over a decade.
The 1990s brought the revival of strategic planning as a "process with particular benefits in particular contexts" (Mintzberg, 1994).
Stretegic Planning is the process of deciding on objectives of the organization, on changes in these objectives, on the resources used to attain these objectives and on the policies that have to govern the acquisition, usage and dispotition of these resources.
Strategic planning is the process of determining what your organization intends to accomplish and how you will direct the organization and its resources towards accomplishing these goals in the coming months and years. Strategic planning is concerned with the long-term direction of an organisation through the configuration and utilization of its resources, to meet the challenges presented within a changing environment
Argenti recommends that a corporate plan should provide a coarse grained strategic structure for a long term future:
Production
- Location of a new factory
- Determining the product programme
- Scheduling specific jobs
Marketing
- Examine the export market
- Media planning for advertisement
- Planning sales contact to be made by a salesman in the next week
Finance raising capital
- Determining maximum levels of credit for customers.
- determining what action to take against nonpayment by a specific customers.
Personnel
- Deciding on changes to be made in the organization structure.
- Determining, which workers would be in each shift.
- Determining, who would be promoted to fill the post in organization.
Process and Stages of Strategic Planning
Strategic planning has three main components, plan development, plan execution and plan review . these components are main three stages of any planning process.
1. Plan Development
Develop your planning through following stages:
- Develop the history of Association. visualize the development levels of organization
- Finding the current status of a firm like final Account etc.
- Examine the current Authorities or commanding structure .
- Develop a clear vision statement.
- Determine guiding principles like association’s intention and expectations.
- Identifying the firm’s strengths, weakness, opportunities etc.
- Define the people who will be responsible for plan.
- Educate and communicate plan.
- Developing long term objectives.
- Developing short term objectives.
- Monitoring the process.
- Tactical decisions made in routine.
- Strategic decision should be made by management
2. Plan Execution
Plan execution is the second phase of strategic planning process. plan execution works well with plan development .it has three main components:
- first one is program that convertobjective into reality
- second one is procedure., procedure is the roadmap for execute a plan
- third one is budget to fund programs
3. Plan Review
Reviewing is required to improve the plan and well execution. You can review your plan through serveys, management conferences, in meetings etc. Industry experts suggest that associations and their managers review their strategic plans annually.
