Strategic Planning

Strategic planning means a strategy, which is prepared for a special task to achieve the decided goal. In strategic planning, an organisation prepares the plan for four to five years. Here they see more of long-term goals and not short-term ones. This is due to the fact that once they are ready to see short-term goals; they tend to forget about the long-term goals for which they have to face adverse consequences. In the business world, every organisation is focusing on its strategic planning to compete with its business rivals.

Importance of Strategic Planning

Photo by businesspictures

Strategic planning shows the path of success. It gives a clear picture of the company’s vision, mission and goal. When employees have a clear objective in their mind of what to achieve in the coming years, they will definitely be able to achieve their targets or at least strive to the best of their ability. This also results in transparency in an organization.

With the help of strategic planning, the chances of failure decrease and that of success rate increase. Making a strategic plan is not difficult but yes, implementing it in the organisation is a difficult task. For strategic planning, feedback from customers and employees is required but for implementing it, there needs to be proper communication between the planning team. Once the focus is lost the objective of strategic planning also suffers to a great extent. So during the implementation of strategic planning, one needs to be very cautious.

Important Methodologies of Strategic Planning

The approach to strategic planning gives it its uniqueness and more often than not, the outcome of the planning is decided at this juncture. There are many ways to go about strategic planning. Some of these are discussed below.

• The situation-target-path method

This method looks at the grass root level of the situation. The program aims at perfectly judging the situation and then evaluating the situation at hand as to what led to a situation like this and what could be the possible outcomes of the situation like this. Basing on the evaluation done a target is set. The target includes the achievable goals in the time period. Most of the time known as the ideal state the target gives the maximum possible target that can be achieved. The next step is the path decision. A perfect flowchart from the starting point leading up to the target is prepared marking the important dates and the events that lead up to the target.

• The draw -see- think-plan method

Here we start with an image of the final completion, say the target is set first and then the situation at hand is analyzed. A final correlation between the two and the path leading up to the two is thought of and planned.

• The see-think-draw method

Similar to the first method discussed here, this method makes the task a derivative of the present situation. The situation is recognized and then the final plan is drawn.

Strategic planning has other minor methods that are used in all the three plans that are discussed above. The very popular SWOT analysis is a part of strategic planning.

The entire process in the context of strategic planning is extremely important. A tiny mistake in any of the above processes will make proceeding very difficult. Making plans is as important as having a set regulatory that makes sure that the plans are worked out in the proper time schedule.

It is extremely important to adhere to the time schedule as a lapse in one stage carries forward to all the stages. A proper budget has to be prepared so that none of the plans are stuck due to financial constraints and also the manpower required should be properly chalked out. In case of external consultants to be hired, they should be informed of the situation well before hand.

To sum up

A good strategic plan holds the company or the enterprise in good stead. So plan in advance but make sure that it is worked upon.