STRATEGIC PLANNING
Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy, including its capital and people. Various business analysis techniques can be used in strategic planning, including SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats ), PEST analysis(Political, Economic, Social, and Technological), STEER analysis (Socio-cultural, Technological, Economic, Ecological, and Regulatory factors), and EPISTEL (Environment, Political, Informatic, Social, Technological, Economic and Legal). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_planning).
Thus, strategic planning is one of the most important aspect in our organization. Hence it comprises the mission,
vision,etc. of our organization. It enables our organization define the desired or intended future state. It determines where our organization is going over the next year or more, how it's going to get there and how it'll know if it got there or not. So, there is a need for a thorough and well-planned analysis if we want to conduct strategic planning.
Also, strategic planning can be exhilarating when coming up with new visions and missions and values, talking about long-standing issues in the workplace and coming up with new and exciting opportunities. But without careful action planning and diligently ensuring actions are carried out the plan ends up collecting dust on a shelf. Many organizations develop action plans for the first year of a multi-year strategic plan and refer to that action plan as an "operational plan".
