STRATEGIC PROCESS AND PLANNING

Strategic Process and Planning

Strategic Process and Planning

Introduction

Strategic Process and Planning is the process of managing and measuring organisational process. Major corporations such as Wal-Mart, Shell Oil, and Sears, Roebuck, and Co. as well as non-profit and public institutions have successfully put it into practice to outperform their competition. For many organisations, however, the successful assessment and management of the key drivers of process have remained elusive.

In Strategic Process Management, researchers pool their expertise, research, and observations into a detailed navigation of the components of the practice. They address how to identify tangible and intangible value drivers, create core competencies that are linked to the organisation's value proposition, and establish meaningful process indicators. These in turn can be used to gain insights, make decisions, evaluate future directions, and improve learning.

Strategic process and planning is the clear differentiator of market leaders. Of all the competencies, this set of component skills makes the biggest difference to the bottom line. It comes in many forms, including visionary thinking about the future, picking up on customer trends, seeing competitors for what they are, and sizing up a marketplace. Strategic planning determines product and service fit by analyzing the external and internal impacts on the business, as well as examining customers and markets. This information, in combination with a competitive analysis, results in strategies that will help a business grow and sustain profits over the long-term. The strategic planning process is driven by top management and should be conducted on a yearly basis.

MAPPING THE BOUNDARY CONDITIONS

Researchers have observed that too many organisations carry out their strategic management initiatives without making sure that their strategy is clear to all levels of staff. Managers and executives may interpret the strategy differently from others in the organisation. The basis for strategic boundary conditions, or the components of an organisation's vision, starts with considering its main mission and the overall guiding principles. This usually remains constant unless a fundamental change, such as a merger, brings a need for the enterprises involved to harmonize their visions (Aaker, 1999).

There are three components to a visionary mission statement. First, the organisation must have a fundamental purpose; for example, Wal-Mart's purpose can be summed up as, "to give ordinary folk the change to buy the same things as rich people." Second, the core values are essential to setting the organisation apart from its competitors. These values include the increasingly popular notion of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), which bundles together ethical behaviour, economic development and quality of life for employees and the society at large (Andrews, 1998).

The final component of the mission statement is a set of visionary goals that any organisation--commercial, social service, or non-profit--should develop in order to articulate its medium-term ambitions and remain valid and tenable over the next ten years. If organisations reach their goals, they should replace them with new ones to avoid complacency. These three factors need to be meaningful and understood by all employees so they will have clear guiding principles under which to operate (Business ...