Strategic Management And Planning

Strategic Planning and Management Development

Throughout the business industry the people who are most associated with the business process has found strategic planning and management development "requires constant shifting back and forth between long-run and short-run thinking" (Dess and Miller, 5). Planning is a business process that involves one or more people (depending on the type business) whom decide where the business's objectives lie and how to initially accomplish them over a period of time. Strategic management development is a business process that also involves one or more people (again depending on the type of business). This particular process essentially allows the "application of the basic planning process at the highest levels of the organization" (Rue and Byars, 100). In applying strategic management development, the long-run direction of a business can be established, because developing strategy helps outline the management process.

"Planning enables a manager or an organization to actively affect rather than passively accept the future" (Rue and Byars, 95). A business with a direct sense of direction essentially commits to "making it happen," in turn making the business more capable of having an impact throughout the business industry during its future. It is extremely important for a business to have a direct sense of direction, because without it it "is much more likely to sit back, let things happen, and then react to those happenings in a crisis mode" (Rue and Byars, 95). A business that is consistently strategically planning will not sit back, let things happen, and then react to those happening in a crisis mode. This is because most businesses view their business's strategic planning process to be successful not as a single plan, but as a system consisting of management plans and decisions (Vaghefi and Huellmantel, 10) that constantly stays active.

One has to realize too formal planning is the first step into developing strategy throughout one's management process. In order for effective planning and strategy development to take place, the planning process has to essentially come first and continue to be a process throughout the strategy development stages as well as the strategic management process. Planning is a process that has to be continual in the sense that it is not realistic for someone being able to logically plan for everything that comes along. There is literally nothing that initially separates these two processes, because one cannot effectively be complete without the other. Although, "strategic plans address the most important decisions the organization must make; yet, they are the least systematized of all managerial decisions" (Vaghefi and Huellmantel, 10). By using the concept of planning first, then taking in account those plans, strategy development can effectively be applied to one's management process to see how short-term and long-term essential interactions (goals and objectives) within a business will be achieved.

One might still be thinking though, "Why does a business take the time to actually sit down and strategically plan?" To be more specific, an organization's management process cannot run smoothly without having effective strategic plans laid out for the business itself. A manager within an organization where plans are not recognized as effective will most often find themselves having to make reorganization a standard process. One of the overall reasons for businesses having to implement strategic planning is business has changed at a fast rate over the past several decades. This is due to the way rules and procedures for living and working effectively have changed, and in turn causing old paradigms to be ineffective (Kaufman, 34). In addition, businesses are at a point due to globalization and other new paradigms of business that one is at point now where the need to challenge oneself and get out of one's comfort zone is crucial in being a real force in the business industry of today. Businesses are finding that strategic planning involves challenging existing paradigms, and the need to learn and think strategically to add an understanding of what to do next (Kaufman, 34). By taking into account the needs for thinking and planning strategically, businesses have found formulating plans and strategically applying them through the management of a business will increase one's capability of preventing problems, making smart decisions, improving management/employee relationship, and most often help cope with change (Pearce and Robinson, 11). Another way of answering and initially describing why businesses plan is businesses want a "formal process of defining requirements for delivering high payoff results; for identifying what and how to get from our realities to future ones that add value to society at the Mega level. It is not rigid or lock-step, but rather a self-correcting set of defining requirements and relationships for stating What Is in terms of results, and moving ever closer to What Should Be results and payoffs" (Kaufman, 41).

Before businesses became as complex as they are now there was little need for a business to establish organizational structure, because they were relatively simple. In business of the Twenty-First Century, most businesses are being exposed to no longer having a competitive edge. This is due to many businesses having embraced the international market for new markets and profits. Furthermore, larger companies are not the only ones being affected. Business management throughout are being forced to relate to the newer aspects of the business industry. In addition, is causing strategic planning to be a necessity for organizational structure to take place for businesses to keep running effectively. In the book Beyond Workplace 2000, a very logical perspective is presented about what organizations and management are going to look like during the twenty-first century. High performance (competition) of organizations, employees having to be well-rounded, employees having to be apart of teams, and company's being forced to know what they do best so they can invest smart as well as quickly, are already present and will be continuing factors businesses are being faced with (Rue & Byars, 39).

As it was mentioned and discussed earlier, strategic planning process cannot be effective without implementation of a management process. On the other hand, before implementation of a strategy development (management process) it is highly recommended to have the understanding/knowledge of how the planning and management processes work as well as the actual components/complexities these two processes actually consist of. There are different approaches management can