Strategic Planning: Mission, Vision, Goals, and Objectives
1.1 Strategic Planning in the Private Sector
Strategic planning had its origins in the a private sector in a period of rapid growth and change that began in the late 1950s and early 1960s. As B.W.
Scott observed in a 1965 publication of the American Management Associa- tion,
Strategic planning is a systematic approach by a given organization to make decisions about issues which are of a fundamental and crucial importance to its continuous long-term health and vitality. These issues provide an underlying and unifying basis for all the other plans to be developed within the organization over a determinant period of time. Thus, a long-range strategy is designed to provide information about an organization’s basic direction and purpose, information which will guide all of its operational activities [2].
When Robert S. McNamara left the presidency of the Ford Motor Com- pany in 1961 to become Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy administration, he took with him a multi-year planning process that had helped him gain a per- spective on the key strategic decisions in that company. McNamara’s abilities as a manager and the role of long-range planning as an essential ingredient to this effectiveness were widely discussed in the media. As a consequence, managers of large organizations all over the country began to wonder if they too should attempt such a long-range planning effort.
While some companies attempted to formalize a planning process during the 1960s simply because “it was the thing to do,” there were more substantial reasons for this movement toward a more comprehensive and long-range ap- proach to organizational decisions. The 1960s were a period of steady economic
growth and general prosperity, especially in the United States. Many corporate executives realized that they had to choose carefully from among numerous at- tractive opportunities for growth. During this period, many businesses chose to diversify, sometimes through acquisitions, and to enter into international mar- kets. Such strategic moves increased the managerial complexity of large cor- porations in geometric fashion. New methods and technologies clearly were needed to help top management cope with an increasing array of strategic deci- sions. Formal, long-range planning seemed almost like a godsend to these top managers.
It has been estimated that three-quarters of all large corporations in the United States had some form of strategic planning in place by the end of the 1960s [3]. Eight basic approaches of corporate strategic planning have emerged over the past 35 years: (1) the Harvard policy model, (2) strategic planning systems, (3) stakeholder management approach, (4) business portfolio methods, (5) competitive analysis of key forces, (6) strategic issues management, (7) strategic negotiations, and (8) logical incrementalism [4].
A recent survey of 1500 companies worldwide indicated that more than two-thirds failed to integrate strategic planning with their financial and tactical planning processes [5]. One explanation for this disconnect is that all too often strategic planning is viewed as a senior management activity, causing executives to divorce it from planning activities at the operations level. According to the Hackett research, only 38% of management and less than 10% of the employees in the average company are given access to the strategic planning process. Many companies do not link incentives and rewards to strategic goals. Bonus pay is linked to financial plans for 97% of the companies, whereas only 58% of the same companies also tie incentives to strategic plans. As a consequence, many companies have failed to fully align their business goals with their strategic focus.
Based on their studies of planning in numerous corporations, Lorange and Vancil suggest five fundamental characteristics necessary to achieve effective strategic planning [6]:
1. Strategic planning is a line-management function. The corollary is that managers in the organization who will use a strategic planning system must design it.
2. An effective strategic planning system must help line managers make important decisions. Line managers are not interested in plans; they make decisions. They will devote time and effort to planning only if it assists in their decision-making process.
3. Effective strategic planning involves a process by which line managers work together to resolve strategic issues.
4. Strategic planning systems are unique to the organizational environ- ments in which they reside. “The overriding design rule is that there is no general design.”
5. An effective strategic planning system changes continually as a result of changes in the external environment of the organization as well as shifts in internal structure and power relationships.
According to the proponents of strategic planning as applied to the private sector, this approach:
1. Is oriented more toward actions, results, and implementation than is traditional public planning;
2. Promotes broader and more diverse participation in the planning process;
3. Places greater emphasis on understanding the organization (or com- munity) in its external context through an environmental scan;
4. Encourages more competitive behavior; and
5. Assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the organization in the context of external opportunities and threats.
A key feature of corporate strategic planning is an assessment of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) as the basis for developing strategies and action programs to achieve goals and objectives. SWOT analyses (sometimes referred to as situational assessments) underscore the basic principle that the formulation of strategies must be predicated on a good fit between an organization’s internal capability (its strengths and weaknesses) and its external situation (in part, reflected by its opportunities and threats). A SWOT analysis can help an organization determine its distinctive competencies which, in turn, will help determine what the mission of the organization should be.
A sound understanding of the values of customers/clientele is important for strategic planning in the private sector. While customers may be able to articulate what they want today or tomorrow, they cannot tell what will be exciting as a product or service three to five years from now. To define these products, the values that underlay today’s customer requirements must be found.
These underlying values must then be matched against what is possible to come up with the exciting quality of the future.
It also is important to prepare the organization to compete with products and services that will be brought to the market within the next three to five years.
A key is to examine how technologies will evolve. Technological evolution often takes the form of an S-curve: at first, new products develop very quickly, then the number of changes slows, indicating the need for a major breakthrough in the product line. The monopoly cycle represents another line of evolution, in which
products tend to diverge and then are grouped together. Under the concept of increasing dynamism, uneven development of parts shows where the weak links in the system are and where the next product breakthrough must come. Other lines of evolution have included the conversion from macro to micro entities and the development of automation.