Purpose of Strategic Planning
The purpose of strategic planning is to assist an organization in establishing priorities and to better serve the needs of its constituency. A strategic plan must be flexible and practical and yet serve as a guide to implementing programs, evaluating how these programs are doing, and making adjustments when necessary.
An effective strategic plan must reflect the thoughts, feelings, ideas, and wants of the developers and the organization’s purpose, vision, mission and regulations into an integrated document. Devel- oping a plan requires extensive probing, discussion and examination of the views of the leaders who are responsible for the plan’s preparation. More often than not, however, the development of the plan is less complicated than the implementation of the plan.
Implementation, in essence, pulls a plan apart and diffuses it throughout an organization. Every unit within the organization which is involved must then accept the plan, agree to its direction, and implement specific actions. In order to effectively and efficiently implement a plan, everyone involved in the implementation of the plan must function as a whole or the plan is destined for failure.