The Beginners Guide to Strategic Planning
Step 1: Start The Process
Why should an organisation engage in Strategic Planning?
Is strategic planning only for large companies?
When is the best time to strategically plan?
If you are asking these questions, you have come to a great spot to find the answers.
Let’s break it down:
What is Strategic Management?
Strategic decisions are important for organisations, decisions can be focused around:
Review of an organisations activities
Short term and long term direction of the organisation
Competitive advantage
Identifying and addressing change in the environment
Additional resources and capabilities needed
Stakeholder management
What is the first step? It’s all about the planning - the success of the a ‘strategic plan’ all comes down to the planning process. The planning process is designed to ensure decision markers critically review their organisation and identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Only by uncovering information during the planning process, can a plan start to develop.
Important factors to consider:
The planning process is designed to highlight and clarify need for improvement within the organisation, identiying gaps and stakeholder needs.
The complex environments that organisations work in
Uncertainty in the future
Impact on operations
Best approach for integration
How to best faciliate change
Internationally recognised and esteemed author Henry Mintzberg recognises the complexity of strategic planning and created Mintzberg’s 5 P’s for Strategy (1).
Plan
Intended course of action: The guidelines to deal with a situation - two essential characteristics: made in advanced of the situation as a process to follow for if/ when the situation arises, and is purposefully and consciously developed - asking why are we doing this, what are we wanting to achieve throughout the planning process will ensure a conscious set of guidelines to follow.
Ploy
Specific plans to outwit opponents: How are we going to beat our competitors?
Pattern
Pattern in a stream of action: What are the regular stream of actions that can be recognised? There are often patterns in organisations which can be identified and guidelines followed to minimise impact of negative situations or maximise for positive situations.
Position
Position in relation to the organisation’s environment: Where does the organisation sit in the industry environment it operates in? Strategy can be considered internally or externally with the strategy as the mediating force.
Perspective
A shared mindset: Is the strategy perspective shared by members of an organisation - a strategy needs to have collective agreeance to be effective.
Once the 5 P’s have been worked through, it’s time to start formulating the plan.
1. Henry Mintzberg, "Five Ps for Strategy" in The Strategy Process, pp 12-19, H Mintzberg and JB Quinn eds., 1992, Prentice-Hall International Editions, Englewood Cliffs NJ.