Strategic Planning

ADMG 424

Why do we need a strategic plan?

Strategic planning is considered to be a company’s game plan. It is the outline that a company uses to implement managerial choices.

We need a strategic plan for many reasons. One reason we need strategic planning is because how would a business know how to get from point A to point B in order to get to point G without some sort of direction? How will a Manager be able to direct and guide their workers in the absolute correct direction if there is no plan to follow, making directions null?

Not only in just directing, but also in research, organization, and evaluation is strategic planning needed. A plan for researching ways to better a company or the workforce shouldn’t be sought out with just an end goal; and that end goal being “to make this company better”. There should be a way to reach that end goal however, going into a situation practically blind never helps anything. A strategic plan will help reveal all that is needed to be researched and sought out. This issue will be the same for organization and evaluation along with anything else that is in the realm of strategic planning.

What will make a strategic plan effective?

A strategic plan needs a few things to be effective. It needs to be able to develop a vision and mission, identify an organization’s external opportunities and threats, determine internal strengths and weaknesses, establish long-term objectives, be able to generate alternative strategies, and choose particular strategies to pursue. All of these details are needed in order for a strategic plan to be effective because without them, holes in the strategic plan start to appear. For instance, if there was no back-up or alternative strategies and the original plan fell through, that means possible weeks to months of work trying to reach a goal are now gone.