Talk:Strategic planning

Refocus

I have tried to refocus this article on generic strategic planning. To do this I have/will moved some material to more specific articles like strategic management, marketing strategies, and military strategy. mydogategodshat 17:31, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

As a undergrad business student, this article is decent. From an English perspective though, it is riddled with problems. I've got an exam in a few hours, but it wouuld be good if the English was brought up to the level of other articles in Wikipedia.

Good work!??

Excellent article. Very well-referenced, well-written, and a good hub for a lot of other important topics. Good work. Deco 21:00, 6 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the objectives page should redirect to this article. I was looking for an article on General Instructional Objectives and was suprised by the article I was redirected to. drichardson

Resolved

– Objective now has a disambiguation page.

well i really don't see any problem with the english used for the article, for me they are simple and easy to understand-the only down-side being the fact that there too many links, and these serve as a distraction of a sort for an info hungary professional like me. yomi martyns

I am sorry but I think this article needs a complete re-write. TRU 04:05, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

"A good example of this is Enron"

Resolved

– reference to Enron gone

To make the mission statement effective it needs to be aligned with the prevailing culture in that organization. Mission and Values go hand in hand. A lofty mission statement means nothing if it is not in congruence with the values practiced by the organization. A good example of this is Enron.

OK, great. But what makes Enron a good example? You can't always expect people to know what you mean. I mean, yes, we all know about the Enron scandal (although it wouldn't hurt to put a little more detail about that, either), but what exactly was Enron's incongruence between its mission statement and its values? - furrykef (Talk at me) 23:27, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mission statements and vision statements

Sloppy use of terms:

"We will be one amongst the top three transporters of goods and people in North America by 2010"

Are you claiming that this a vision or a goal, or both? Or an objective?

It doesn't at all sound like a vision statement that would paint a vivid and clear picture, nor inspir e or be remembered. It sounds most like a goal.

It is common for goals and/or objectives to be defined using SMART criteria, not visions.

Very poor.

Providing some examples would help.

ASP Puff Deleted

I deleted what follows from "Where to learn more" since it seems to be low-value publicity:ghjgh

Founded in 1999, ASP is the only not-for-profit professional association dedicated to advancing thought and practice in strategy development and deployment for business, non-profit and government organizations. ASP provides opportunities to explore cutting-edge strategy principles and practices that enhance organizational success and advance members' and organizations' knowledge, capability, capacity for innovation, and professionalism.

Our diverse membership reflects a broad range of industries. Members include:

Organizational Leaders: business, government and non-profit leaders responsible for strategy design and execution, from CEO through those leading a division, department, or team that has a critical strategy component;

Strategy Practitioners/Consultants: internal and external practitioners/consultants who provide content and process expertise for setting and implementing strategic direction; and

Academics: professors, authors and students who create and transfer new knowledge to enhance the effectiveness of strategy and further the profession --ARAJ 13:55, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Strategic Planning vs Vision Statement

This Strategic Planning wiki is well written and I find it very informatative. However, the Redirect from "Vision Statement" to this wiki is inappropriate for those interested in software development methodologies that feature the "Vision Statement" or "Vision Document" as a starting point in the software development process. Noteably, the Rational Unified Processemphasizes this document as a focal point during its Requirements work program. I propose that the "Vision Statement" Redirect to this page be eliminated and replaced with either a page that identifies the "Vision Statement" in different contexts, "Visions Statement (Software Development), "Vision Statement (Strategic Planning)", etc. or simply a wiki about a "Vision Statement" in the context of software development. In the coming weeks I will work on an appropriate wiki that defines a generalized "Vision Statement" for software development. I welcome a discussion on this issue. YORD-the-unknown 02:24, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I do not agree that this section is well-written. It reads like a lecture given at a seminar. For example, "Which comes first? The mission statement or the vision statement? That depends." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.178.249.171 (talk) 09:57, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The definition is incorrect

Resolved

Strategic planning is setting an appropriate course and direction for an enterprise which focuses resources, usually on optimizing survival, growth and (where appropriate) profit. It is a mistake to think of strategy as simply a set of objectives. All true strategic planning revolves around answering these three questions:

(1) What do we do? (3) How do we do this better than anyone else? (or alternately, How do we beat the competition?)

Good strategic planning always involves setting and implementing objectives, but you can do a lot of objective setting and implementation without being strategic.

RobertBradford 15:20, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Put in a definition you believe in and cite the source. DCDuring 11:18, 11 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

i do no like the aritcle... normally i rely mainly on wiki for easy to understand information but i was really disapointed witht this one. i did not really get the information that i needed... the article needs some improvement... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.120.20.160 (talk) 16:20, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

- I also believe the definition of strategic planning is not correct. How about the following definition?

Strategic planning is the process of constucting an informed plan to reach a future outcome. A plan that is represented by various goals, initiatives, action plans, as well as prioritization of resources, with the intent being to navigate to one or more defined outcomes. A strategic plan is built upon the concept of effecting and directing processes, as opposed to reactive (including opportunitistic methods), or non-reactive (keep doing what we have always done) approaches.

The first three questions are off target. "What do we do?" "For whom do we do it?" "How do we excel?" They are better fit for a mission statement, not strategy. The compelling questions in defining strategy is 1. where are we going and 2. how do we get there? Maybe third question could be 3. what is the environment we may expect to encounter along the way? ~~Tswelch

Methodologies

I have an understanding of the word ending "ologies" to mean "The study of "the word/root" that precedes it. Thus methodologies would be the study of methods. I know that the degree Musicologist or musicology means the study of music. Then wpouldn't the methodologies of Strategic planning be the study of the methods of Situation, Target, Path, Draw, et al? Bob Hemus [added 06 November 2006]

Help Specify StratML

See http://xml.gov/stratml/index.htm & http://www.aiim.org/standards/article.aspx?ID=34121

The following, original link is relatively obsolete: https://collab.core.gov/CommunityBrowser.aspx?id=6232

Owen Ambur 14:57, 15 December 2006 (UTC)Owen Ambur[reply]

Strategic planning - not constrained to business

I wanted to cross reference strategic planning in another article, where the planning entity refers to individual(s), not business. The current entry reflects 'process' relating specifically to a business entities.

Strategic planning (i.e. process) has as much value for an individual as a business.

I would propose either the following:

(1) Re-title this work to Business Strategic Planning, or

(2) Rework/generalize content to reflect the concept from any entity perspective (i.e. inclusive of business, individuals).

--Sagetele1 13:01, 14 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. Be bold and edit the article or change the title. Libcub (talk) 02:07, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Strategic Planning is executed in many institutions. Not only for businesses, but also for schools and organizations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.124.14.61 (talk) 12:31, 22 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Bias and cleanup

Hi! I added the bias and cleanup tags today because to an outsider, a lot of the material reads like it is from a commercial product about how to do a strategic plan, more than a non-biased explanation. If people could read up on what wikipedia is not and on making articles not reflect a point of view, that would be wonderful! -- Whereizben - Chat with me - My Contributions 17:57, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Whereizben - it's going to be difficult to have any discussion of planning methods that doesn't have bias. Perhaps an outline of the main concepts from the reference works would be a more useful approach? RobertBradford 20:30, 4 April 2007 (UTC)RobertBradford[reply]

Robert, like I said I don't know much about it, but since it does have bias, that is not acceptable for wikipedia. I think you are saying that we could remove a significant portion of the article and replace it with a more general outlining of accepted information, correct? I am not sure if that is even far enough, since the purpose of the entry is not to tell how to do strategic planning, but rather simply explain what it is. I do realize that this would significantly shorten the article, but it should only be encyclopedic information in the article, not a random collection of thoughts on strategic planning. Either way, please just let me know what you, and others think. And please just use a : to indent your replies to make them easier to read. Thanks! -- Whereizben - Chat with me - My Contributions 12:59, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps the strategic planning entry should contain a simpler definition, and note that there are multiple "strategic planning process" options, enumerating any that can be named. There are certainly people who come to Wikipedia hoping to find such information, but I gather you might prefer the "strategic planning" entry simply give a definition. One of the problems here is that everyone thinks they are experts on strategic planning, and that their favored model is the best. To my knowledge, there are only a handful of models in use at more than a handful of companies, and all of those are published in popular books on the subject. Would it be acceptable to have separate articles on each of these models, when each model tends to be closely related to a commercial enterprise (such as BCG, Kaplan or SSP)? RobertBradford 13:22, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Robert, I think it might be appropriate to give a simple definition and then sections that highlight each of the major different "definitions", which would clean out a lot of the POV stuff in the article and make it more reliable and fact based. If you think you could do this, please go for it - if you do so, you might put a link in your edit summary to this discussion so that people don't think that you are just randomly making big changes! Sorry for the delay in my response, btw! -- Whereizben - Chat with me - My Contributions 12:38, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The purpose of Mission and Vision

If one considers that organisations comprise people who want meaning and purpose in their lives then they need a vision that is important or inspiring.

Having inspired your people you need to work out how they can bring the vision about or mover closer to fulfilling it hence Mission

All this strategic stuff is about moving from the known to the unkown with conviction and some evidens that it doa'ble.

Petersofia [added 21 April 2007]

The Essence of Strategy

It is a bit frustrating that there is very little contemporary work written about the real meaning of Strategy. The following is sometimes used to describe The Essence of Strategy and is derived from: Warden, John A. (2001). Winning In FastTime. Geo Press. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

The Essence of Strategy
The idea that strategy can be boiled down to four essential ideas seems too simple-strategy is hard isn't it. Not really, at their core, sound strategies have four components:
WHERE: Where do you want to be at some future point in time? That future state, when expressed in clear, compelling, desirable and measurement statements, is a very powerful force to align organizations and enterprises toward strategic success. A desirable, measurable future picture is a beacon for success.
WHAT: What are you going to apply your resources against? We live and work in a world of complex systems with literally 1000's of nodes and leverage points for change and no one has unlimited resources. What are those leverage points, sometimes called Centers of Gravity, that will allow the organization apply limited resources to realize its future?
HOW: How will we execute our strategy? This is not your individual tactical actions, but how your organization or enterprise will structure itself and manage actions against the WHAT to achieve the WHERE. How will you leverage the "Time Value of Action" precept to improve your overall probability of success within your resource constraints.
EXIT: How will we deal with strategic mistakes, failure and successes? Not every strategic endeavor will go as planned, and historically everything ends, sometimes sooner than we hope. When fortunes, investments, livelihoods, reputations, survival, etc. are at stake, things get emotional. Emotion leads to less than rationale strategic actions. Good strategists know this and good strategies leverage this by planning for these potential strategic mistakes, failures or successes at the beginning, not when they occur. When the WHERE, WHAT and HOW fail you, EXIT.

Although the above would need to be rewritten, it would be useful to boil down the Wikipedia Strategy article to something basic like the above.

--Mike Cline 19:04, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Mike - My own 1999 book, Bradford, RobertBradford (2000). Simplified Strategic Planning. Chandler House Press. ISBN 978-1886284463. {{cite book}}: Check |authorlink= value (help); External link in |authorlink= (help)Simplified Strategic Planning, devotes almost a whole chapter to the definition of Strategy. If there is interest, I can put a bit of the definition section on my website with a link. I also really like Ben Tregoe's discussion of Top Management Strategy. Touchstone Books. 1983. ISBN 978-0671254025.. RobertBradford 20:48, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Robert. Thanks. I would appreaciate seeing your definition of Strategy. In my own view, Strategy is still ill-defined in WP. Where as a Strategy, any strategy, is something that should meet an acceptable definition of Strategy, strategic planning, strategic management and related topics are merely methodologies to create and execute Strategies. These creation and execution methodologies are varied and many, but not all subscribe to a common definition of Strategy.--Mike Cline 13:51, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Severe irony

Resolved

From the article:

Features of an effective vision statement may include:

Clarity and lack of ambiguity
Paint a vivid and clear picture, not ambiguous
Describing a bright future (hope)
Memorable and engaging expression
Realistic aspirations, achievable
Alignment with organizational values and culture, Rational
Time bound if it talks of achieving any goal or objective

One of the biggest problems with corporate vision statements is when they can't manage to get all the points to share a single part of speech, and this list suffers from the same problem... We have: Noun, imperative verb, gerund verb, noun, noun and adjective, noun and adjective, adjective.

Maybe it should be cleaned up? --Kuronekoyama 13:22, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

COMMENT - More on measuring the degree of success of objectives would be useful. This is where we would like to be, this is where we are, this is how we will get there...what are the criteria by which we will know we have moved? Jeff Stanborough flying@bigpond.com

Very good class at ASU in Phoenix/Tempe, AZ

Not sure if this would help anyone, or if this is even a good thing to post ina wiki discussion page, but if you are really into strategic planning, GRA194 at ASU in Tempe is a wonderful class and we cover each of these topics in quite a bit of detail. If this is not the place for this kind of comment, please remove it with my apologies. I just thought this might help someone out who lives in the Southwest area and is looking for a great class. 68.3.214.66 (talk) 03:24, 26 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Contrast to "strategic management"

There is the article strategic management and the Category:Strategic management. What is the relationship of "strategic planning" and "strategic management"? Are they synonymous? Or is strategic planning a part of strategic management? Thanks. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:55, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Encyclopedia article?

This article has some good stuff in it if it were the kick-off to a college class. But it doesn't seem at all like an encyclopedia article. For instance, it recommends action, which is POV. I suspect making it encyclopedic would clear out the majority of what's there. Maybe it's better suited as the start of a strategic planning Wikibook or Wikiversity course? Cretog8 (talk) 18:27, 6 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am going to take the opportunity to weigh-in on this discussion as the risk of unleashing the WP:COI gods. I agree with Cretog8 on this one. This article is not-encyclopedic and does a very poor job of explaining the concept of Strategic Planning. The only sentence in the article worthy of keeping is the 1st sentence:

Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy, including its capital and people.

Even that sentence might be considered flawed by some definitions of what Strategy actually is versus how the term is routinely misused.

The remainder of the article is a hodgepodge of stuff aimed at promoting one methodology over another. There is no single Strategic Planning Process, but a great many, all promoted by various consultants, associations and academics who make their livings selling or teaching a particular methodology. The article might highlight these different methodologies (well cited of course), but should not lay out their processes in detail nor make comparative judgments about their effectiveness. Any Strategic Planning Process that has legitimacy and notability ought to be mentioned in the article, but no one methodology should receive more coverage than another. In other words, the perfect article would explain in detail what Strategic Planning is, but give fair, but limited coverage to all the various methodologies (processes employed) to accomplish strategic planning. After reading the article, an uninitiated person would understand in gross terms was Strategic Planning was about, but wouldn’t have a lot of details about any one process used to carry it out. On the other hand, they would have enough information on a whole range of strategic planning methodologies sufficient to conduct further research.

This will be a very difficult task to accomplish because of WP:COI. The most likely editors to make this article better are day-to-day practitioners of strategic planning—the academics, the consultants and corporate strategy wonks. As such, WP:COI will assume bias before the fact and discount their edits without regard to substance.--Mike Cline (talk) 20:47, 6 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. I think either of you should take a shot at it. I interpret WP:COI to mean that we watch out for NPOV, not that certain categories of people will _by default_ push their agenda. Libcub (talk) 02:15, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Strategic management is a management process, strategic planning is phase 1 of this process. Phase 2: Strategic Implementation.

Phase 3: Strategic Evaluation & Control. Post by": Mfana Khuzwayo 11.01.2010. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.213.126.12 (talk) 21:31, 11 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Moved to Wikibooks

I'm moving the Business Strategy articles to [Wikibooks], where the content is more suitable. This is to maintain the existing content but to allow for more encyclopedic rewriting of the articles. TheUnixGeek (talk)

Re: Merge with Strategic Technology Planning

I'm not clear about what is surely about to become a separate university study: the fine rules about linking and writing WP articles. But as a practitioner of Strategic Planning I have severe doubts about the validity of "merging" Strategic Technology Planning with this article. Linking to it makes sense but the two are so different that they need different articles.

SP (as opposed to STP) is of course the top level discipline. I thoroughly agree with the comments above making the point that much SP jargon is consultant- and methodology- specific and really is not essential to SP. Because of this loose whorl of terms and definitions (each understood by its author to be "right") it is hard to define SP and stay out of this marsh. Nonetheless, people come here looking for anything better than what they've seen out there and this article does a better job than most in spite of the fine flaws.

The comment suggesting that the idea that SP is action-oriented is a POV is amusing. SP is a business-originated approach to focusing action. True the approach has been adapted to other realms but to suggest that SP is about anything other than action needs defending, not vice versa.

A Strategic Technology Plan obviously derives its methods and goals from SP but "merging" it presumably is a euphemism for subsuming it--including a paragraph or two. But it is such a distinct animal--as different from SP as technology changes are from business changes--that it could benefit from a separate article...given a good author.

--174.7.33.239 (talk) 00:09, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]