What Is Strategic Planning And Why's It Important?
Rather than get into a long and perhaps convoluted definition of what strategic planning is, let's just put it in plain and easy to understand English. All it means is that an organization sits down and figures out where it wants to go over the next year or so, figures out how to achieve their goals and also figures out how they will know it they made those goals or not. It's not brain surgery, but strategic planning does require some serious thought about the future of your company. By the way, strategic planning usually focuses on an entire organization.
Well, you don't just sit down and start planning with no focus or goal in mind. You need to have a strategy (that's why it's called strategic planning). In other words, there are a variety of models and approaches to this and they depend, among other things, on the nature of an organization's leadership. This is a polite way of saying the planning process will likely be directed by the President. Period. Now having said that, the culture of the organization is also an element of the strategic planning process. However you will note that the culture of an organization is usually directly reflective of its leadership.
Other elements of the strategic planning process include how complex the environment is in the organization (how diverse), how large it is, and the experience or lack thereof of the planners. The next thing to take into consideration is which model of strategic planning will be used?
There are several varieties of strategic planning that could be used such as goals-based, issues-based, organic, scenario and so on. And yes, there is some controversy over scenario in that some think it's a technique not a model. The most common model is, as you likely guessed, goals-based and the focus is the organization's mission, vision and values. This mostly involves goals that need to be worked towards to achieve the mission, strategies to achieve the goals and the who, what and when will it be done by kind of planning. Issues-based planning takes a good at (no big surprise here) issues facing the organization. Then works on strategies to tackle those issues, and action plans. Organic planning may speak to the organization's vision/values and then outline action plans to achieve the vision, but only by following the values. Some planners like a certain approach to planning. Some plan for one year, many for three years, and some go five or ten years. That of course would be what you would call long range strategic planning. What you may also get here is either a really long plan or a really short one, depending on the content and other details. Usually, and of course there are exceptions to the rules, planners are already aware of what will go into a strategic plan. That being said, it still helps to clarify plans and make sure management is all on the same song sheet. Basically, the planning process is way more important than the document produced at the end of the sessions.
Knowledge Management
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