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Strategies in Planning

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Sharyn A. Quelitano
BSIE III-2
Topic: Strategies in Planning

I. Introduction: Strategic planning is an organization 's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy. In order to determine the direction of the organization, it is necessary to understand its current position and the possible avenues through which it can pursue a particular course of action. Generally, strategic planning deals with at least one of three key questions: "What do we do?", "For whom do we do it?", "How do we excel?" In many organizations, this is viewed as a process for determining where an organization is going over the next year or—more typically—3 to 5 years (long term), …show more content…

The goal of strategic planning mechanisms like formal planning is to increase specificity in business operation, especially when long-term and high-stake activities are involved.
One of the core goals when drafting a strategic plan is to develop it in a way that is easily translatable into action plans. Most strategic plans address high level initiatives and over-arching goals, but don 't get articulated (translated) into day-to-day projects and tasks that will be required to achieve the plan. Terminology or word choice, as well as the level a plan is written, are both examples of easy ways to fail at translating your strategic plan in a way that makes sense and is executable to others. Often, plans are filled with conceptual terms which don 't tie into day-to-day realities for the staff expected to carry out the plan.
The following terms have been used in strategic planning: desired end states, plans, policies, goals, objectives, strategies, tactics and actions. Definitions vary, overlap and fail to achieve clarity. The most common of these concepts are specific, time bound statements of intended future results and general and continuing statements of intended future results, which most models refer to as either goals or objectives (sometimes interchangeably). One approach recommends having short-term goals, medium-term goals, and long-term goals. In this model, one can expect to attain short-term goals fairly easily: they stand just slightly above one 's reach.

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