The Strategic Planning Process: The Steps Of The Strategic Planning Process

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Strategic Planning Process Dwight Eisenhower once said “In preparing for battle I’ve always found that plans are useless, but planning is essential” (Berry, 2013). The same could be said for organizations of today, a plan is just a plan, but strategic planning is a deliberative, disciplined approach to producing vital decisions and actions that mold and grow an organization to what it is, and why it does what it does (Bryson, 2011, p. 9). Through the strategic planning process leaders and managers are able to solve problems by understanding where they currently are, where they want to be and how they should get there. The strategic planning process is made up of 10 easily definable steps that if followed appropriately will allow an organization …show more content…
47). To build an agreement the organization will need to identify who key decision makers are, which persons, units, groups or organizations should be involved and perform a preliminary stakeholder analysis to identify whom should be include in the initial agreements (Stevenson, 2012). A stakeholder analysis is very important to the organization during this step because it allows key decision makers to immerse themselves within the organization, which in turn provides members with a better understanding of the circumstances surrounding the organization. Gaining a greater understanding of what is going on within the organization can give stakeholders clues to identifying strategic issues and possible effective strategies to deal with the discovered issues (Bryson, 2011, p. 47). Once stakeholders have a better understanding of what is going on within the organization the initial agreement should be easier to …show more content…
It is important to understand organization mandates placed on an organization because they consist of items individuals within in the organization must do and the various , requirements, expectations, restrictions, pressures and constraints the organization faces (Bryson, 2011, p. 50). Often times, very few individuals ever take the time to read and try to understand an organizations policies or mandates when being hired on because they may be hard to understand. This is important to the strategic planning process because without understanding the organizations mandates individuals may fall victim to making some fundamental mistakes. These mistakes may include the fact the that if individuals do not know what they are supposed to do they are most unlikely to do it, individuals may feel more constrained in their actions more than they truly are and individuals may assume that if they are not told to do something than they cannot do it (Bryson, 2011, p. 50). To keep the organization and its individuals from falling victim to these fundamental mistakes leaders must be able to clarify the organizations

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