BUM's Strategic Planning And Critical Thinking Approach - Eugene G. Spiegle

BUM's Strategic Planning And Critical Thinking Approach (eBook)

Eugene G. Spiegle (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
118 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-6257-4 (ISBN)

After a decade of shrinking to raise productivity and increase efficiency, companies seek ways to extract more profits from 'streamlined' operations. The result is a return to strategic planning to support the issues of rising above the day-to-day operation of business to discover future markets and competitors.

Mr. Eugene G. Spiegle founded The Pulse Factor, a consulting organization working with companies worldwide to improve corporate cultures, leadership, and management techniques. As a motivational speaker and management consultant, he has found worldwide recognition and over fifty years of experience in management and leadership from both line and staff positions. Prior to founding The Pulse Factor, Mr. Spiegle performed positions from President of a firm specializing in automated systems to Vice-President of engineering of a Fortune 500 company. He holds degrees in psychology and engineering with an advanced degree in psychology. Mr. Spiegle held a full professorship at Rutgers University in the Department of Supply Chain Management. You can follow Gene's blog at https://bumbooks.blog.

Major corporations in the technology, pharmaceutical, and auto manufacturing industries focus on their revenue and profit; marketing strategies; and creative ways to develop, manufacture, and market new products. Organizations are expanding and improving existing businesses to create tomorrow's markets. To that point, many companies are creating strategic-planning teams dedicated to developing those plans needed to maintain their edge and profitability in their current marketplace. New concepts and methods in supply chain management, quality improvement, problem-solving, and organizational realignment accompany this new thrust in strategic planning. In the past, it was generally left to an organization's senior-level management to develop strategic planning.

CHAPTER 1

STRATEGIC PLANNING:

WHAT IS IT?

An Overview

Strategic planning first provides direction to the organization, followed by plans for the day-to-day activities. It must examine an organization’s values, current status, and environment, ensure the factualness of such findings then relate those findings to the organization’s future plans and desired position in the marketplace.

Future plans are usually expressed in three, five, and ten-year time periods, although short-term plans (and alternate emergency plans) may be part of the development process. A key at this point is to ensure that no matter what length of time, long-range plans with significant measurability and verifiability have been put in place to maintain course control or know in advance when to shift and perform course correction.

Simplistically stated, strategic planning is a management tool. As with any management tool, strategic planning is used for the purpose of helping an organization to do a better job and maintain its focus, energy, and resources, ensuring everyone and everything is working toward the same agreed goals (results).

Note - - Strategic planning and critical thinking are to be

used by an organization at all levels, not just at the senior

level. Every functional department should have a strategic

plan tied in concert with the organization’s master plan.

In today’s world, organizations have to understand what supply chain management is and the fact that global environments change regularly and for any number of reasons; therefore, strategic planning is a critical discipline to produce fundamental decisions and actions supporting changes which in turn shape and guide what an organization is, what it does, and why it does it, while maintaining a careful eye on the future (its focus) and agreed results (goals).

Key to remember – if one issue, task, or problem occurs, there is no question it can and usually does adversely affect multiple functional areas within the organization as well as exterior vendors and suppliers. That being said, an organization has to be ready to modify its planning strategies at once and look for the cause and effect of those changes.

The process is strategic because it involves preparing the best way of responding to the circumstances of an organization, its environment, and its changes, whether or not circumstances are known in advance or not. As Dingus Magee puts it,” No one knows what tomorrow will be like or what will happen; therefore, strong measurability and verifiability have to be put in place to monitor the strategic plan(s) at all levels.”

The process is about planning because it involves intentionally setting goals and developing an approach to achieving those goals.

The disciplined process calls for a certain order and pattern to keep it focused and productive. The process raises a sequence of questions that helps planners examine experience, test assumptions, gather and incorporate information about the present, and anticipate the environment in which the organization will be working in the future.

The process is about fundamental decisions and actions because choices must be made in order to answer questions. The plan is ultimately no more, and no less, than a set of decisions about what to do, why to do it, and how to do it. All strategic plans must be accompanied by “Measurability and Verifiability” to ensure the correctness of action and the ability to monitor and track plans for agreed results.

Because it is impossible to do everything that needs to be done in this world, strategic planning implies that some organizational decisions and actions are more important than others and that much of the strategy lies in making the tough decisions about what is most important to achieving organizational success.

Strategic Planning Versus

Long-Range Planning

Although some people use these terms interchangeably, strategic and longrange planning differ in their emphasis on the “assumed” environment.

Long-range planning is generally considered to mean the development of a plan for accomplishing a goal or set of goals over a period of time (several years), with the assumption that current knowledge about future conditions is sufficiently reliable to ensure the plan’s reliability over the duration of its implementation.

Strategic planning assumes an organization must respond to a dynamic changing environment. Strategic planning stresses the importance of making decisions that will ensure the organization’s ability to respond to changes in the environment successfully. Strategic thinking is only useful if it supports strategic planning and leads to strategic management, the basis for an effective organization. Strategic thinking means asking, “Are we doing the right thing?” More precisely, it means making that assessment using three key requirements of strategic thinking.

1. A definite purpose in mind.

2. An understanding of the environment, particularly of the forces which affect or impede the fulfillment of that purpose.

3. Creativity in developing effective responses to those forces. Measurability and Verifiability are critical.

Strategic management is applying strategic thinking to the job of leading an organization. Strategic management must continually ask the question, “Are we doing the right thing?” It entails attention to the “total picture” and willingness to adapt to changing circumstances consisting of the following three elements.

1. Formulate the organization’s future mission in light of changing external factors such as regulations, competition, technology, customer focus, and changing times.

2. Development of a competitive strategy to achieve the mission.

3. Create an organizational structure that will deploy resources to carry out its competitive strategy successfully.

Strategic management is adaptive and keeps an organization relevant. In these dynamic times, it is more likely to succeed than the old traditional approach of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

When involved in Strategic Thinking, the following picture will help answer some of the questions asked by functional department staff, vendors, and customers in focus groups.

What Strategic Planning is not.

Strategic planning is about fundamental decisions and actions but does not attempt to make future decisions. Strategic planning involves anticipating the future environment, but the decisions are made in the present. This clearly states that an organization must stay aware of changes in order to make the best decisions it can at any given point in time. This means the organization must manage with the same strength as it does for strategic planning. It is time to point out the importance of “measurability and verifiability” to recognize that change is happening and that the plan must be modified.

Strategic planning is also called an organizational and management tool; however, it is not a substitute for the exercise of judgment by leadership. Ultimately, the leaders of any organization need to ask and answer, “What are the most important issues to respond to?” and “How shall we respond?”

Data analysis and decision-making tools used for strategic planning do not make the organization successful or provide all of the answers needed to make qualified strategic decisions; they can, however, support the organization, reasoning skills, and information needed for management and staff when developing strategic planning and decision making at all organizational levels.

Strategic planning, though described as disciplined, does not typically flow smoothly from one step to the next. It is a creative process, and new insight arrived at today might alter yesterday’s decision. Inevitably the process moves forward and back several times before arriving at the final set of decisions. Therefore, no one should be surprised if the process feels less like a comfortable trip on a well-paved road, well-paved like a ride on a roller coaster. It is well to remember that even roller coaster cars arrive at their destination as long as they stay on track.

What is a strategy, and how do we develop one? In strategic planning, it is critical to consider how your organization will accomplish its goals formally. The answer to this question is a strategy. There are a variety of formal definitions for strategies, but everyone fundamentally will agree that a strategy is the answer to the question, “How?”

Strategies are a set of actions (can be steps and or processes) that enable an organization to achieve agreed results. Another definition is comparing an organization’s strengths with the changing environment to get an idea of how best to complete or serve customers and their needs.

Three categories of strategies can be stated as:

1. Organizational strategy outlines the planned path for organizational development. (Earned income, selection of business, mergers, etc.)

2. Programmatic strategy addresses developing, managing, and delivering programs. (Specific marketing plan, etc.)

3. Functional strategies speak to managing the administration, support staff, systems, and process...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	4.6.2024
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management ► Unternehmensführung / Management
ISBN-13	979-8-3509-6257-4 / 9798350962574

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