Strategic Management & Planning

Having a strategic plan is rather pointless if you don’t put the plan into action. Implementing your strategic plan can sometimes be the most difficult step of the whole process. Coming up with a plan is easy, but getting people stretched over several departments to abide by it and follow it is another story entirely. The good news is that with a little work, the plan can be put into place to help the growth of your company.

One of the ways to help with people not only accepting but also embracing your strategic plan is to get their input with implementing it. While they should have input during the whole process (including the creation of your strategic plan), your employees, the ones who are going to be carrying out your vision, should have some say in the way the plan is implemented in your company or organization.

Another recommendation is to gradually introduce the strategic plan. If you don’t overwhelm your employees with your whole vision all at once, you decrease the chance they’ll be confused and unable (or even unwilling) to implement your strategic vision. On the other hand, keeping your employees in the loop on the big picture goes a long way in getting them to believe in your strategic plan for the company.

Once your employees believe in your strategic plan, implementing the plan will naturally fall into place. Modifications might be needed here and there in your plan as action is taken on the ideas you’ve come up with, but for the most part, sticking to the plan is the best advice. If you begin wavering too far away from the strategic plan for your company or change it too much too often, you devalue all the work you did coming up with the plan in the first place.

While their value may seem obvious to some, the importance of strategic management and strategic planning might not make sense to everyone. It takes a lot of time (and resources sometimes) to come up with a solid strategic look at your company and its future, which can seem like a huge waste of time and resources to some people. It’s an investment that has a lot of payoffs, though. If you don’t see the importance of strategic planning and strategic management, here are some things to consider.

If your company is satisfied with its current rate of growth (even if it’s zero) you might not have a need to map out a strategy for your future. For everyone else, though, those who want their company to grow and thrive, having a strategic plan and sticking to it is one of the most important things that can be done. It’s not a guarantee of success, but success without it is even more difficult.

Without knowing exactly where you’ve been and where you want to go, there’s no way to adequately plan to get from point A to point B. Sitting down to ‘hammer out the details’ will make it easy to see the best option to get your company from where it is now to where you want it to be in one year or ten years. Having a strategic plan can also help you avoid potential pitfalls in the future.

If you were traveling to an unknown destination in your personal life, chances are you would look at a map or atlas to help you find out how to get where you were going. A strategic plan is like a map leading to an unknown destination that is your company’s future. Without this vital piece of the puzzle, it’s going to be difficult, if not impossible, to reach your goals.

Strategy has long played an important role in the history of mankind. Moving from the battlefield to the boardroom, strategy still plays a vital role in the world. The rules have changed a little (the shield has been replaced with a briefcase and the sword with a BlackBerry), but strategy still plays an important part in the way the world works. This is especially true when it comes to business. Those without a strategic plan are at the mercy of those companies that do have one in place.

Strategic Management:

Strategic Management simply refers to the science (some would say art) of coming up with, evaluating and using strategic (long range) plans in the workplace. Primarily used to manage how different departments in a business work together, strategic management is the way smart companies who want to grow do business. It’s an art form that a lot attempt, but very few are successful at pulling off. Looking at the business world, though, you can see what companies employ strategic management in all aspects of their business.

Strategic management can be thought of as the upper tier of management where the big picture decisions take place. By looking at all the aspects of a business (all the different departments at work – both separately and interacting together), it’s easier to effectively manage resources to get the biggest bang for your buck. This is the smallest level of the management pyramid, with very few making these decisions, but the use of strategy at this level is vital.

Strategic Planning:

To manage with strategy, you need a strategic plan. In the simplest terms, this refers to the process of looking at all the various aspects and departments of your business, figuring out how they could best work together, coming up with goals, and writing out a plan together to reach those goals. There’s more to it, of course, but this is the basic concept.

It sounds like a simple thing, but even when you’re dealing with a medium sized business of a few dozen or more employees, it can be difficult to get different departments to work together effectively. The ability to see the big picture and visualize the future, though, is an important part of actually being able to get there.  Strategic planning helps with seeing the big picture and making it a reality by breaking it up into easily managed chunks.