Strategic Planning

Strategic Planning is one the important consulting services. It helps organizations to develop the right plan that will provide a map to the future or at least position their organization to survive for the next three to five years.

This article describes the current state of traditional approaches to strategic planning in nonprofits;

In 1970s and 1980s strategic planning has become a method for examining the appropriateness of an organization’s mission and for positioning an organization to deal with potential challenges in the future.

Traditional approaches

* A set of underlying principles:

* There is a need for a clear, well-understood mission and vision;

* The organizational culture must support trust, honesty, accountability;

* Good communication must be maintained at all times;

* The process usually includes:

* A Coordinating Committee and Planning Committee;

* Task Forces to develop sections of the plan;

Emerging approaches to planning

A number of approaches to planning have emerged over the past twenty years. They include: Whole-Scale, Search/Future Search conferences, the conference model, and future Scape.

* Emerging approaches emphasize large and small group ways to involve as many stakeholders in the system in the planning process

* Approaches tend to Do the environmental and organizational scan in “real time” at a large group meeting;

* They Emphasize looking at the whole system and not parts;

Complex adaptive systems theory’s influence on strategic planning

Another influence on management theory and strategic planning is Complex Adaptive Systems Theory that attempts to understand how physical, biological and social systems operate. The characteristics are the followings:

* Agents with schemata–The agents interact with each other constructing and reconstructing schemata that organize their relations at the local level

* Global patterns of relationship emerge

* Coevolution at the edge of...