Short Answer (strategic planning) - Coursework Example

Question1. Identifying strategic issues Strategic issues are unresolved problems that an organisation has to clarify since they have a significant impact on the direction and course of the organisation. This process helps an organisation identify and develop a list of events that have the potential of impacting its course and direction; highlight the issues and focus on what is truly indispensable; gives an organisation indication on how to tackle the issues and a sense of strategic planning. Question2.

Define a vision and its role It is a short, clear and credible picture of how an organisation sees itself once it has successfully implemented its strategies and attained its optimal potential. A vision plays a key role in strategic planning. It inspires action by pulling ideas, people and other resources that create energy that will cause change to happen. It further provides a practical guide for setting goals and making decisions. During stressful times, a vision helps groups to maintain focus and stick together.Question3. Formulating and adopting strategies and plansA strategy is a plan of action that an organisation chooses to give it direction and scope in order for it to attain its vision or goals.

Strategies deal with strategic issues by focusing on the need to come up with a new set of rules or revise an existing one; create a process that will develop a mission, vision, and goals and achieve them; produce services, products, projects and programs to be followed; offer controls for the current strategy delivery and develop future capabilities while working on relations with stakeholders. Main purpose of strategy formulation is to develop strategies that will successfully connect an organisation to its environment and help it offer solutions to the public.

Secondly, to offer a plan that an organisation will follow in response to strategic issues and help it reach its vision.Question4. Implementing strategies and planPlanning is the process of identifying and defining an organisation’s purpose, pursuit and methods of achieving them. Implementation is putting into action and following the identified strategies so as to realize the goals and objective. This leads an entity achieve a competitive advantage and better performance.Performance evaluation is reviewing the strategic implementation process visa vie the set indicators like budget, program, vision, mission Question 5(a).

Four reasons why strategies fail If an organisation does not allocate enough resources to execute its strategy successfully, the strategy is bound to fail irrespective of how delightful it is. These resources include time and people. Secondly, a strategy may fail because the conditions that were to be exploited change before the strategy is effective. Ignoring reality and assuming that no changes are occurring in your business environment. A third reason is an overload of information from too many policies and strategies intended to solve a specific problem.

Human resources tend to run away from this information overload since it causes fatigue. A change of power and the political environment may adversely affect implementation of strategies. The new power brokers loyally adhere to policies and programs that do not advocate for strategic plan.Question 5(b). Goal or benchmark approachIn this approach, public organisations and Ngo’s in partnership with all their stakeholders, unanimously agree on specific goals that they intend to attain. Once this is settled, each arm directs its efforts in a bid to achieve its part of the goals.

ReferencesBryson, J.M, (2011), Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organisations: A Guide to Strengthening and Sustaining Organisational Achievement. Fourth Edition Wiley Publishers: Jossy-Bass