Strategic Planning is a tool that I'm sure everyone has heard of, so much so that we would almost say that like many other famous terms (benchmarking, downsizing, etc.) it ends up using 'Why is it in Fashion', and the only thing What is done is to generate confusion, at all levels, about what it really is and what it is for.
This even reaches the point where it is interpreted as being the 'Solution' to a large number of business problems, even sometimes it seems that the main product of many businesses is their Strategic Plan….
A great confusion that is observed in the common conception of the people, is that Strategic Planning is only 'For Large Companies', which are these with their many resources the only ones that can afford to develop a sensible plan. But be careful because all of us, small, medium and large are playing on the same court, in the market everyone competes, and for the same clients… and rest assured that large companies 'do their homework' (badly or well, but do) so leaving the planning only for the big ones, will do nothing but increase their own chances of 'Death'.
This does not mean that we should all spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop and implement a methodology and a strategic planning cycle, anyone, in a matter of hours can put together a draft outline, can put together a strategic course of action that allows them to stay competitive. (obviously, if you can hire someone to help / advise you so much the better).
Now, Strategic Planning differs from other types of planning, since it is based on developing the strategy that your business will follow over a period of time, and can be designed for a specific area of your business, such as planning your strategy. marketing, as for your business as a whole.
Usually in traditional strategic planning, the highest managers set the company's global strategy and then each of the areas sets its own strategies, fully aligned with those of the company. Usually the plans were made for 5 years, something that today is completely unsustainable, not to mention in the case of Internet companies.
Another confusion that is often observed is that people confuse Strategic Planning with the preparation of a Business Plan (BP - business plan) or with the preparation of an Action plan. In general and to clarify this in a simple way, a BP is developed when it is starting with something new, a new company, a new business area, a line of products / services. The strategy points towards growth while the BP is set at the beginning. The strategy may foresee the development of new business / prod. / serv. for which a BP will be made later.
Although, as we said, Strategic Planning is not everything, it is a very important part of our business, since each action taken should be framed or aligned with the strategy, to ensure that our resources are being invested in the strategic direction that we decided.
But what is all this about? basically it is the search or the process of foreseeing the future, it is to start working from today to define the type of company we want to be. Handling the 'Uncertainty' of the future requires a constant attitude of 'learning' and not of 'knowing' towards the Future.
This process should ideally be carried out by bringing together experts from different areas so that with the sum of their experiences, a range of possibilities or possible scenarios of the market in which we are going to act can be put together. And once this is defined, decide what direction our company will take, and how it will face these possible scenarios, what key capabilities it must develop both at the level of the company itself, as well as of its employees. This is obviously accompanied by constant monitoring of reality, and of customer requirements, to correct our strategy and adapt it to reality.
In short, we can say that it is an extremely useful tool, which tends to eliminate improvisation, reduce uncertainty, align resources to achieve better results, saving money, time and effort. It is not only for specialists but it is applicable by anyone.
And in general it aims to solve questions such as:
- Where do I want to go with my company? What are the ways by which I can do it? What will I need to do it? Why do we do it? What goals do I want to achieve? How could these objectives be quantified? To achieve them, what resources and activities should I carry out? How long will it take for each step or minor goal to reach my goals? Who are going to do it? The responsible. With the current people and capacities is it enough? or will we need to develop others?
To conclude, I would like to leave you a phrase from Peter Drucker, who in his work 'Managing in a time of great change' says that:
