A strategy is a long term plan on what to do to achieve a certain goal. When talking about the near future, people often use the word tactics.
Here are the top 5 benefits of strategic planning:
- It allows organizations to be proactive rather than reactive.
- It sets up a sense of direction.
- It increases operational efficiency.
- It helps to increase market share and profitability.
- It can make a business more durable.
Strategic objectives are statements that indicate what is critical or important in your organizational strategy. In other words, they're strategic goals you're trying to achieve in a certain period of time—typically 3-5 years. Your objectives link out to your measures and initiatives.
The idea with a good strategy document, is to have a explanation from which more detailed plans, and programmes of change, can be derived. Make it clear which coherent actions are consistent with the strategy. There should be an alignment of projects and investments. However these are NOT strategic plans.
An important step in operationalizing this strategic plan is to better define what is meant by programmes, what the benefits of programmes are, and to design appropriate processes and governance structures to put them in place.
A Strategy Discussion (sometimes referred to as a Strategy Meeting) is normally held following an Initial Assessment which indicates that a child has suffered or is likely to suffer Significant Harm. The purpose of a Strategy Meeting is to determine whether there are grounds for a Section 46 Enquiry.
Strategic planning is the process of documenting and establishing a direction of your small business—by assessing both where you are and where you're going. The strategic plan gives you a place to record your mission, vision, and values, as well as your long-term goals and the action plans you'll use to reach them.
Strategy is defined as, “a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim.” Business strategies help give direction to the entire organisation and prevent its individuals from losing sight of the end goals.
Strategy defines your long-term goals and how you're planning to achieve them. In other words, your strategy gives you the path you need toward achieving your organization's mission. Tactics are much more concrete and are often oriented toward smaller steps and a shorter time frame along the way.
The five stages of the process are goal-setting, analysis, strategy formation, strategy implementation and strategy monitoring.
Strategy generally involves setting goals and priorities, determining actions to achieve the goals, and mobilizing resources to execute the actions. A strategy describes how the ends (goals) will be achieved by the means (resources). It involves activities such as strategic planning and strategic thinking.
The purpose of Strategic Thinking is to create a strategy that is a coherent, unifying, integrative framework for decisions especially about direction of the business and resource utilization. To do it, Strategic Thinking uses internal and external data, qualitative synthesis of opinions and perceptions.
The four phases of strategic management are formulation, implementation, evaluation and modification.
Strategy is at the foundation of every decision that has to be made within an organization. These three levels are: Corporate-level strategy, Business-level strategy and Functional-level strategy. Together, these three levels of strategy can be illustrated in a so called 'Strategy Pyramid' (Figure 1).
About the five strategies
- Engaging and empowering people.
- Strengthening governance and accountability.
- Reorienting the model of care.
- Coordinating services.
- Creating an enabling environment.
So, for example, your marketing strategies would look at price, distribution, product, packaging, and promotion. There might be a specific strategy for each. HR management will have a set of strategies too. These could include recruitment, retrenchment, remuneration strategy, or training strategy.
A good strategy provides a clear roadmap, consisting of a set of guiding principles or rules, that defines the actions people in the business should take (and not take) and the things they should prioritize (and not prioritize) to achieve desired goals.
The three levels of strategy are:
- Corporate level strategy: This level answers the foundational question of what you want to achieve.
- Business unit level strategy: This level focuses on how you're going to compete.
- Market level strategy: This strategy level focuses on how you're going to grow.
