Strategic Planning/Management
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Abstract
Strategic planning besides strategic management are some of the fundamental engines that drive a number of organizations towards their goal achievements and the subsequent success. For every organization, planning alongside management processes go through a series of stages under control by specialized individuals, all with the aim of analyzing both the internal and external environments, defining the organization/business with regards to its missions, objectives, strategy formulations, and building appropriate procedures for controlling and monitoring the organization’s operations. Ken Janowski; the leader of a local healthcare organization is thereby determined to apply the above tools of management, as well as their relevant procedures towards achieving the developmental objectives and success of his healthcare organization.
Strategic Planning/Management
Strategic planning refers to an organizational management activity used in order to set priorities, focus resources and energy, strengthen organizational goals, and ensure that both the stakeholders and employees are working towards common goals. It also assists in establishing agreement around the intended results and/or outcomes, assessing and adjusting the organization’s scope of responding to any possible changes within the environment. Correspondingly, strategic management is the inclusive collection of the ongoing processes and activities, which an organization may utilize in systematic coordination and alignment of their resources and actions with respect to the organization’s mission, vision and strategies towards organizational success. In accordance with good strategic planning and/or management, determination and hard work towards achieving the organization’s goal, Ken is capable of achieving his missions and plans of standing the organization to its firm roots, and making it to operates just like the other successful healthcare organizations.
Hunger & Wheelen (2007) reveals that the key components of strategic management are forecast-based planning, financial planning, superficially oriented planning, as well as the strategic planning. In order to be effective, each of these components must obtain support and exhibit accountability. The most essential financial planning relies on the idea that every organization has to seek their best operational control in relation to their organizational annual budgeting. The organization is obliged to map out their anticipated income and relative rates of yearly expenses, and through this, it may attempt to achieve its objective or meet its goals. According to Hunger & Wheelen, (2007), the forecast-based planning denotes an organizational efforts towards anticipation and reaction to the possible changes within the growth of business beyond a single year. Robinson (1987) elicits that an organization utilizes its basic financial planning strategies as its foundation, and attempts to formulate them according to the required financial and human resources in the long run. In the extremely oriented planning, an organization will strive to respond to the market forces and competitions in a vigilant manner. Market trends are weighed into greater pictures or images in response to the trends and competitor actions. Finally, strategic planning refers to the competitive strategies, edges and plans that an organization seeks while implementing, evaluating and operating upon the targeted changes identified.
The above components of strategic management are achieved and enhanced through the strategic management process. The strategic management process encompasses the definition of an organization’s strategy. It is the process by which managers or administrators make decision on the set of organizational strategies, which enables an organization to achieve better performance or operations. Strategic management process follows various steps which include: environmental scanning, strategic formulation, strategic implementation and strategy evaluation. The environmental scanning denotes a process of gathering, scrutinizing and provision of appropriate information for the strategic purposes (Robinson, 1987). This step helps in the analysis of both the internal and external environmental factors that influence an organization. Upon the execution of these environmental factors, management is evaluated on a continuous basis in order to realize improvements.
The second step in this process is the strategy formulation. Here, a decision is made on the best course of action for the accomplishment of organizational objectives hence achieving the purpose of the organization. Strategy implementation comes in the third step, where strategies are made to work as intended, or they are put into action. According Schraeder (2002), strategy implementation embraces the designing of organization’s structure, resource distribution, decision making and human resource management. Finally, the fourth step in strategic management process is the strategy evaluation, which involves strategy evaluation activities such as appraisal of internal and external factors that are the contemporary roots of strategies, performance measurement, and corrective actions. This step according to Joel (2012), ensures that both the organizational strategies and their implementations meet the organizational goals.