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The Benefits and Limitations of Strategic Planning for Organizations

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The Benefits and Limitations of Strategic Planning for Organizations

"It was August of 1914 and Germany had committed virtually its entire army to the invasion of Belgium and France. Few German troops remained to defend East Prussia against the invasion of two huge Russian armies. Despite the numerical inferiority, Colonel Hoffmann, chief of the German Eighth Army staff, created an audacious strategy to surround and annihilate one of the Russian armies. He began to plan a detailed attack. At the same time, on a train traveling east, General Ludendorff, the incoming chief of staff of the reinforced German forces in East Prussia, identified the same opportunity and created exactly the same strategy. …show more content…

Such a change may be a new competitor that has entered the same market an unpredictable change such as a natural disaster. The nature of today's business climate is that it is no longer enough to depend upon predictions or forecasts when planning the long-term future of an organization as circumstances may change over a relatively short period of time, making an inflexible long-term business plan unworkable and unproductive. Strategic planning enables an organization to determine it's long-term goals and also identify the best approach for realizing those goals.

Strategic planning can benefit organizations at all different times in their life cycle. For example, at the beginning of an organization's lifecycle, when it is still at the start-up stage, a detailed strategic plan may help it to gain investment. This is because if the firm were to show that it has planned, firstly where it wants to go i.e. target markets, and then also how it plans to get there, it may prove to be more appealing to a prospective investor. Similarly if the company is at the mid-point of its life cycle, in that it is up and running and progressing, then strategic planning can allow an organization to inform stakeholders, especially employees, exactly where it is planning to go and how it intends to get there. Most people perform better (in quality and quantity) if they know what is

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