Strategic Management Process Paper
Walter Hammersley
University of Phoenix
MGT/498 Strategic Management
SC10BSM05
MAHMOUD ELSAYESS
November 18, 2010
Strategic planning is a leadership driven, vision based tool used to help an organization deal with long term planning. Successful strategic planning is dependent upon the strength and vision of the company’s leaders. It looks to them to provide the proper insight, innovative thinking and actions to meet the company’s goals. There are five main steps in the strategic planning process. These are: developing a strategic vision, setting objectives, creating a strategy, executing strategy and evaluating/correcting.
Developing a Strategic Vision:
When developing a strategic vision the company needs to look anywhere from 5 to 10 years down the road and then ask themselves how are we going to get there in the most efficient way. This usually involves creating a mission statement. In the past most mission statements consisted of one or two lines about the company’s goals. With the advancements in strategic planning companies are become more elaborate and detailed with how the craft their mission statements.
Setting Objectives:
Here the company takes the opportunity to brainstorm on what they want to achieve as a corporation, how long it will take them to reach these goals and most importantly how they are going to get there. It is important for the company to look into their past and be sure to expand on what they have previously done. In doing so they must also be sure to make their goals attainable while still challenging their employees.
Creating Strategy:
Creating strategy is a company’s chance to build a roadmap as to how they are going to reach their goals. During this phase it is important to not to just look at how they are going to attain success but to also build in back contingency plans for if they are not able to achieve certain benchmarks....