Strategic planning is the term that is used in the context of strategic management and it can be an incredibly effective process if it is done in the right way. Strategic planning is the process of creating a plan that will help your business achieve its goals. This process involves setting specific objectives, developing strategies to reach those objectives, and putting a plan in place to make it happen. In order to get a better idea about this concept, one should look at some of the important features of strategic planning –
Characteristics of Strategic Planning
Goal Setting
The first and foremost feature of strategic planning is that it is concerned with the setting of goals. Without proper goals, organizations cannot hope to achieve anything. Goals give businesses a direction to move in and provide a way to measure progress. In simple words just like a ship without radar will find itself lost in the sea in the same way a company without goals as set by strategic planning will be aimless and find itself lost in the corporate world.
Market Research
Another important feature of strategic planning is that it involves doing market research properly as companies need to understand their target market and what their customers want besides they also need to understand the competition and how that competition will going to have an impact on the company. In simple words companies by doing market research during strategic planning company ensures that the company has ticked all the boxes which will help the business in developing strategies that will be successful in the market.
Strategic Planning helps in Creating a Roadmap
When you are going on a road trip and if you have a roadmap for the whole journey then your whole journey will be a smooth ride in the same way in the case of companies strategic planning creates a roadmap that lays out the steps that need to be taken in order to achieve the organization’s goals. The roadmap created during strategic planning includes milestones and deadlines so that businesses can track their progress and take corrective steps if there are any major deviations. Without a roadmap, businesses would not know what needs to be done or when it needs to be done.
Strategic Plan should be Realistic
Another important characteristic of strategic planning is that the goals or objectives set out by the strategic planning process should be realistic in the sense that they should be achievable and the strategies should be ones that the company can implement in real life situations rather than such strategies being present in paper only because if the company set unrealistic goals or develop strategies that are impossible to execute it will lead to only frustration and anger not only in the mids of top-level management but also at the middle level of management and lower levels of management.
Flexibility
Flexibility is another important feature of strategic planning because in today’s world where technology and consumer taste change so fast the objectives and strategies will need to change as well. The strategic plan should be able to adapt to new circumstances so that company can continue achieving its goals. In simple words strategic plans are always evolving implying that they don’t stay the same forever rather they should be regularly updated and improved based on new information, situations, and experiences.
Long Term Process
Strategic planning is made keeping in mind the long term goals and objectives of the company even if it involves sacrificing short term gains or benefits because the idea of the strategic plan is to create such a framework or environment which fosters long term growth and development of the company. Hence one can say that strategic planning is a long term process and not a short term process.
As one can see from the above that strategic planning has some unique features and that is the reason why companies across the world emphasized ensuring that the best minds of the company involved in the formulation as well as the implementation of strategic planning in the organization so that company can achieve its goals and have success in the long term.