Effective planning is accomplished by the documentation of a series of good decisions. Businesses engaging in strategic planning prepare for and cause future business success. A successful business will have managed multiple long-term transitions to accomplish goals. No short-term transition will ensure future business success unless it can enhance the completion of the long-term transition.
For example, successful companies engage in multiple activities to train and develop leaders for the future. This is strategic planning because developing these key leaders is too important to the future success of an organization to leave to chance. By linking leadership to business goals and utilizing assessment as a development tool, businesses can assure emerging leaders have the requisite skills to be successful. The planning is strategic because of its long-term effect.
Strategic planning serves a variety of purposes in organization, including to:
- Clearly define the purpose of the organization and to establish realistic goals and objectives consistent with that mission in a defined time frame within the organization's capacity for implementation;
- Communicate those goals and objectives to the organization's constituents;
- Develop a sense of ownership of the plan;
- Ensure the most effective use is made of the organization's resources by focusing the resources on the key priorities;
- Provide a base from which progress can be measured and establish a mechanism for informed change when needed; and
- Develop a sense that each owner's best and most reasoned efforts have important value in building a consensus about where an organization is going.
Long-term goals, such as those in a succession plan, require strategic planning. There must be a vision of how short-term changes enables the accomplishment of the long-term goal. The succession plan is realized through strategic planning.
