IT4 USAC: Worksheet No.6 Strategic Planning

Strategic Planning

The strategic Planning is a process taken by some business to better approach their directions or where they want to be in the future including capital ideologies. The strategic planning process is a multi-step process in which meeting each and every one of the requirements is crucial to the overall success of the plan. Some of these major points that the process includes the following:

Vision

The vision statement in the strategic planning process is the first step that the business, organization or, major corporation should take. The vision as suggested by Erica Olsen (vision), should ask questions like where the business is headed. Sometimes the vision, could be considered as the main gear moving the company forward not only to the owner’s but to the workers that are involved directly to the company as much as its owner. Taking into consideration the vision of the workers is as important as to asking the main owner what their vision should be, because by doing so they will be motivated enough to achieve those long term goals in their jobs. The vision statement step could be divided into three main types of visions, and they are:

Quantitative- this includes to whom the vision statement is directed to or the fixed amount of people that the vision is looking towards.
Competitive- this includes, the vision of competing against a major organization or business in order to become a stronger one
Superlative- is a vision of becoming the number one in the field.

These of course are the main visions statements types, but not necessarily the only ones in the topic for what we have knowledge of there could be a thousand more vision statements, but these are the main ones we are more familiarized with.

Mission

The mission of an organization is the second step in the process of strategic planning. The mission is basically, the reasons to WHY? Certain decisions are taking in the organization. The Mission of the organizations could be also considered the core main structural element in the company or business. The mission statement within its structure should follow a set of steps, which allows to achieve the intended mission, as suggested by Erica Olsen (Mission). The mission statement should be carefully thought out with the input of the staff in order to become stronger and also more prepared organization.

Values

The values statement is a process within the process of the strategic planning because it focuses in personal interpretations of what real values are. The values statement explains to the costumers and to the outside world what the company believes in. The values statement similar to the mission statement should take into consideration the input of the employees reason being, because in certain cases they are indeed personal believes that not everyone might agree with. The values statement is a very complicated topic because of the difference in ideologies, but overall if discussed by the co-workers the solutions could be achieved.

Objectives

Like the booklet suggests the objective statement is the third step in the overall strategic planning process. The objective statement is the decision for a 3 to 5 year long broad reaching statements, as suggested by Erica Olsen (objectives). The objective statements, one way in which the business could digest the objective statement easily could be the use of a strategy map, in order to see the entire organization as a whole.

SWOT

Last but must definitely not least the use of the SWOT strategy is used by an organization to identify four major categories affecting their business. The four categories that the SWOT refers to would be strategies, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to the business. These four categories are very crucial to the overall composition of a strategic plan within a business because it helps the organization, company or organizations identify the areas that they should focus on in order to achieve that main desired outcome, for the future good of the business.