| Summary: | After a period of being considered relatively unfashionable, strategic planning is now making a comeback on a large scale. This form of scheduling was consistently used in the 1960s but fell out of favour in the 80s as quality strategy became the key feature. The past decade has seen the re-emergence of strategic planning and, despite some opposition, it is now widely recognized that this is fundamental to the success of your organization. But first of all we must ask what exactly is strategic planning? What are its key implications? How in-depth or far ahead do you need to plan? And, crucially, how can you ensure that your business plan is triumphant? Needless to say, there is much that has evolved since the 1960s. Times have changed, organizations expanded and entities such as e-commerce and globalization have come to the fore. "If you don't know where you're going, you'll end up someplace else."--Yogi Bera Mike Freedman describes strategy as the "framework in which choices are made about the future nature and direction of an organization" thus implying that the whole company must be in accordance with a strategy. It is no longer considered effective for a CEO to formulate a plan in isolation and simply roll it out to employees, for in order to set realistic targets, input is needed from the whole organization. As regards planning, it is important to distinguish between this and decision-making. A good business will only make decisions for the present because whilst we can anticipate the future, we cannot guarantee anything. In this sense, flexibility is the key. This sentiment also holds true regarding innovation, for it has been suggested that long term planning stifles any innovative tendencies and encourages mere repetitions of other strategies performed by other organizations. Whilst there is something to be said for learning from the experiences of others, originality is a key factor in business success, and flexibility is inextricably linked to this concept. Similarly, there are no hard and fast rules for how far in advance you choose to plan, as long as you are prepared to remain open to change and remember that essential differentiation; planning is not deciding. Illustrated above are just some of the factors which contribute to the success of a business plan. Follow the pointers in our Briefing in order to formulate, test and implement your own innovative and effective tactical plan.
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