What do you mean by Strategic Planning?

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What is Strategic Planning?

Strategic planning sets the long-term direction of the organisation in which it wants to proceed in future. This is depicted in Fig.1.

Strategic planning

Fig. 1

Strategic plan is the process of envisioning the organisation’s future and developing the necessary goals, objectives, and action plans  to achieve that future.

One of the critical aspects of leadership is strategic planning. Through strategic planning, leaders mould an organisation’s future and manage change by focussing on an ideal vision of what the organisation should and could be in three, five, or more years in the future.

Strategic Planning

The objective of strategic planning is to build a posture that is so strong in selective ways that the organisation can achieve its goals despite unforeseeable external forces.

Difference between Goals, Objectives, and Plans

Goals: Based on the vision and mission of a company, goals are set. Goals are attempts to improve organisation’s performance by making mission statements concrete. The goals could be:

  • improving customer satisfaction target
  • cost reduction targets in a year
  • improving shareholders’ value
  • improving market share

Objectives: Objectives represent the operational definition of goals. Objectives can be measured, they have a time dimension and they reduce conflicts.

Plans: The plans typically describe specific tactics, assign responsibilities, identify how sources can be allocated, schedule activities and efforts and specify vision targets.

Definition: Strategic planning can be defined as the process of deciding on objectives of the organisation, on changes on these objective, on the resource used to attain these objectives and on the policies that are to govern the acquisition, use and disposition of these resources.”

 Examples of strategic planning in an organisation may be: planned growth rate in sales, diversification of business into new lines, type of products to be offered, and so on.

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