Strategic Planning

Strategic planning refers to the pattern of calculated responses to the environment,

including resource deployment, that enable an organization to achieve its goals.

It is a disciplined and creative process for determining where the organization should be
in the future and how to take it there. Strategic planning entails formulating and
implementing activities that lead to long-term organizational success. It is essentially a
decision-making process that involves a search for answers to simple but critical and
fundamental questions: What is the organization doing? How is it doing what it does?
Where should it be going in the future? What should it be doing now to get there?

Strategic planning encompasses issues spanning the entire spectrum of the

organization, from introspective questions of what the organization’s personality is or
ought to be, to strategic operational issues connecting the focus on the future with work
to do to move the organization forward. The strategic plan itself is a written document,
setting out the specific goals, priorities and tactics the organization intends to employ to
ensure good performance.

Strategic planning is a participatory process engendering a shared commitment to

organizational directions. Formulating strategy begins with identifying or clarifying goals
and objectives and determining the methods for reaching them. It involves exploring
such fundamental questions as the following: What major services does the
organization offer? Who are its clients and what type and quality of services would they
prefer? Do workers agree with organizational direction? In what new directions should
the organization move?

Thus, strategic planning must typically include a scan of opportunities, threats and
constraints presented by the environment. This means that the organization must
repeatedly ask itself what potential or pending actions are likely to influence (positively
or negatively) what it does and plans to do? How can the organization forestall or
mitigate the negative influences, as well as take advantage of the potential
opportunities?

Another strategic issue for the survival of an organization is the acquisition of resources
in the vital areas of funding, technology, infrastructure and personnel. Strategic planning
must adequately pursue these resources by anticipating and capitalizing on
opportunities in the external environment that might yield or support them. It also means
predicting threats to organizational resources and intervening (politically, in general) to
ensure that organizational performance and survival are safeguarded.

This level of leadership and intervention generally transpires between the senior
executive of the organization and the governing body in the country. Resource
acquisition entails constantly being on the lookout to create opportunities that will
augment the organization’s resources. This is accomplished by forming new alliances
and partnerships, and by forging new ways of thinking about generating resources.

For strategies to become operational, they need to be communicated, processed and

revised according to feedback from stakeholders, both internal and external. All
members of the organization need to work toward making the strategic plan a reality,
from senior management down to the most junior worker. Implementing strategy
requires matching resources and activities to objectives and, if required, scaling
activities to fit resource constraints (human, financial, technological and infrastructural).

Questions: Strategic Planning

• Is there a formal or informal organizational strategy? Is the strategy supporting a high

level of performance?
• Do the board of governors, senior managers and staff members support the
organization’s strategy?
• Is the strategy generally accepted and supported in the organization?
• Has the strategy helped clarify priorities and set indicators, thus giving the organization
a way to assess its performance?
• Is the strategy used as a way to help make decisions?
• Is the strategy an impediment or a facilitator to capacity building or improved
performance?
• Is there a process for clarifying and revising the organization’s strategy?
• Is there an ongoing process for scanning the environment to consider potential threats
and opportunities?
• Does the organizational strategy identify the opportunities and constraints regarding
core resource areas related to improving or detracting from performance?