5 Major Phases In Strategic Planning And Management
The processes that define or characterize business growth/expansion and its overall success are complex and dynamic. They are resource intensive endeavors that are steered by a skilled and dedicated workforce. And hence you require detailed planning, informed decision-making, and expert implementation in order to make a fledgling organization regain its upright economic posture. The most proactive business improvement and transformation process involves a strategic management process, which entails in-depth financial analysis and evaluation of existing business practices and performances before executing radical changes to the prevailing business structure or model. Theoretically, strategic planning and management occurs in a series of transformative phases or steps. The ultimate goal is to actualize a series of performance goals and objectives after a highly coordinated improvement process aimed at enhancing efficiency and optimizing productivity. There are five major steps that define this entire change-oriented undertaking and they are all discussed in brief below.
Process Initiation
This stage is initiated by unsatisfactory business results, which act as the wakeup call to implement some changes in the organizational structure and business model. This is where the journey starts with a select team specially selected or even hired professionals all tasked with the fulfillment of the change agenda. You can combine an experienced company management team with a professional team hired from any reputed firm that provides accounting services in Mentor. The team starts by planning the project in the most basic form before scouring all the necessary business documents to identify all areas that require overhauling.
Current Position Assessment
The next step involves an in-depth company evaluation. You need to conduct various assessments to gauge exactly where the company stands in terms of its competitive advantage, workforce motivation, customer insights, and industry competence. The team identifies specific strategic management plans and issues to address and then uses various tools and approaches to assess the company’s strengths and weaknesses. You can conduct PESTLE (political, economic, social, technological, legal/regulatory, and ecological/environmental) analysis to evaluate the company’s standing in relation to the inherent macro-environmental issues. And/or SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis to gauge the organization’s internal and external metrics and their implications on its industry performance.
Strategy Formulation And Development
The third step is more definitive because you have to determine the company’s mission, vision, and business values and beliefs. The identified or set business vision will be used to guide the business and to track its performance after a set period of time. Long-term objectives are also highlighted for future success monitoring. All these strategic goals will be derived or based on the identified competitive advantages and then tailored to reflect an established set of company-wide strategies. This phase ends with a shorter financial objective.
Actual Implementation
The actual execution of the strategic plan starts with the setting of organizational priorities based on the SWOT and PESTLE analyses. Short and medium term SMART goals are then set and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) selected to track progress. An annual budget is created to sustain the strategic plan and specific departments and individual team members are allocated various goals.
Performance Management
The final phase involves change control and the monitoring of feedback. A calendar is established and used for periodic progress reviews and a contextual communication strategy is adopted by the whole company. Whole departments are trained and adapted to the new operational strategy and progress reviews are modified in line with the new business and stakeholder operations and performances.