What is strategic planning?

Strategic planning involves the structured effort of the organization to effectively identify its purposes for the existing direction that the organization will monitor, and how this direction will allow the entity to achieve its short and long -term goals. Individuals, businesses, government, non -profit agencies and any other type of organizations can use this process of strategic planning in the future. While the methods used in this type of planning process differ, there are several basic steps that tend to use in any settings.

The first step in any strategic planning effort involves providing answers to three basic questions. First, the entity must determine what the organization is doing. It is also necessary to define who benefits from the activities of the organization. Finally, the organizations must assess their strengths and weaknesses because they relate to how these activities are carried out. Once this foundation is in place, it is possible to switch to Further refining future goals and direction of entity.

Many organizations find that the establishment of a mission statement together with a vision statement can ensure that the strategic planning process focuses much more. Although there is some confusion about what is understood by every term, these two statements are in fact simple understandable. The mission statement concerns the main purpose of the organization, the intended recipient of efforts for this purpose and the basic strategies that are used in achieving this purpose. On the other hand, the vision statement focuses on where the entity wants to go in the future and what processes will be used to move the entity in the right direction. Both statements tend to cooperate, thus helping to create a framework, while politicians, procedures and specific activities may be related to the final tes of torganization.

A simple approach to strategic planning includes three basic steps. First, it is important to accurately assess where the entity is today in terms of abilityI and resources. From that point on, the entity identifies where it would like to be in the future at some time and effectively set the goals and goals it wants to achieve. The last step is to decide how to successfully move from the circumstances of today and systematically work on these goals in an organized and logical way. Different experts in strategic planning task use a wide range of names for these processes and sometimes divide each process into a number of steps. The complexity of the accurate approach is often related to the nature of the organization, the type of goals set and what sources can be brought in performing these goals.