Strategic Planning Process

What is Strategic planning? It is strategy formulation and implementation of strategy. This is a practice that all business use not matter what size they are. For an effective strategic plan there are seven steps to follow. Even nonprofit organizations use this for planning functions. We want to put together a plan and focus on the current state of the company and what we would like to avoid in the future.

That is going to be the first step in the process. Then we want to do an operation and business analysis or a SWOT analysis. A SWOT is an internal understanding of the company's strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities. Moving ahead we are going to select and develop strategic options. We want to be able to address the organization's objectives. Establishing strategic objectives is going to be the next step in the process. In this step we are going to look at the overall picture of the organization and what they are trying to establish. The fourth step is going to be to establish strategic objectives. While it is quite common that measures and timeline is given by top management, it is the intention of this step 4 that these measures and timeline is SMART. What it meant was Specific (S), Measurable (M), Achievable (A), Realistic (R) and Time-bound (T). When the strategic options are SMART, it will help to ease the communication toward the lower level of the organizational hierarchy for implementation. After this we are going to execute the plan. The proper deployment plan will make sure that the implementation is not weak or cause problems. Allocation of established resources is going to be the next step in the process. The company needs to insure that this step is not taken lightly. Most of the time it is left up to one individual to fulfill this task which is not the best option. Things can be forgotten about or left out on accident due to the one individual being overwhelmed. The final step is going to be the review of the execution. For an effective strategy the deployment should be in constant review. As time goes on decisions may need to be made in order to keep up with the progress.

Real-time processes and a consistent commitment to strategy formulation and strategy implementation are necessary to stay competitive in the market. We always want to review the mission and vision of the company. To make this work there needs to be a two-way process. Teamwork