Long Term Strategic Plans in an Organization - Essay Example

INTRODUCTION
This essay focuses on the analysis of what causes the companies to compromise on their strategic plans.
ENVIRONMENTAL AUDIT
When a company formulates the strategy, first an internal and external environmental analysis has to be carried out. When we are planning for the future first the organization should have awareness about the internal and external environmental factors that can impact the organization. “When the environmental audit is undertaken, the objective is to develop a finite list of opportunities, threats, strengths, and weaknesses. Here the word finite list is emphasized because the job of the manager is t not to make an exhaustive list of all the factors that may affect the organization. But the focus should be on key environmental variables that could influence business”1. The importance of the environmental analysis is mostly realized by organizations but the depth of the analysis is often compromised. For example in Toyota corporation, there is a management concept “to go to the roots”. The meaning of this concept is that, when we are collecting information for analysis, the information should be collected from the source or in other words from the origin. When an external environmental analysis is done with the information collected from the sources and decisions are made based on such in-depth data, the applicability and durability of strategic plans are considerably increased.

The information from the external environment should be used to tune up the internal environment to meet the challenges and make good of the opportunities. When an organization needs to possess a competitive advantage its focus should be internalized rather than externalized. The ability of a business concern to focus on its strengths and potential areas of improvement will lead to the formulation of workable plans. Hence, the conflict between where we are and where we want to go does not arise. Wastage of time and money on formulating strategies that have to be later sacrificed to carry out day-to-day operations can be avoided.

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
When we argue that often operational priorities derail our strategic plans, it denotes that the culture in an organization is not oriented towards the strategic plans made. As mentioned by Kennedy2, “Change in an organization strips relationships and leaves employees confused, insecure and often angry. Unless something can be done to provide support for transitions from old to new, the force of culture can neutralize and emasculate strategy changes. The external environment is ever dynamic and the strategy formulated should be flexible to accommodate the changes. when the strategists bring this concept into the strategy formulation right from the nascent stage then the situation of the trade-off of strategies can be avoided. When we want o to achieve something in the future our attitude, personality, values, and other psychographic factors would be matching with what we want o achieve. In the same way when an organization, comprising of people so different wants to achieve something with the help from all these different people then awareness of the prevalent culture is essential. When different people work together to contribute towards the success of the organization, then the pattern in dealing with problems and the behavior of the employees should be assessed. This pattern of behavior is often called the organizational culture. The culture in the business entity has to be understood, emphasized, and highlighted when the strategy is made. A strategy made without an understanding of the culture will often create plans, which are not accommodative to the working style of the entity and hence, will bring down the practical usability of the strategic plans. Hence, as stated by Jack Duncan3, “triangulation is an effective technique for studying an organization’s culture. Triangulation includes the combined use of obtrusive observation, self-administered questionnaires, and personal interviews to determine the nature of the firm’s culture”.

CONCLUSION
When environmental changes derail our strategic plan contingency planning is essential. Linneman Anand Chandran4 in their study has mentioned that “to increase the adaptability of the strategic plans, early warning signals have to be detected. When a contingency may occur and what will be the impact on the strategic plan should be evaluated and the firm should be prepared to tackle the unfavorable developments”. Alternative contingency plans should always be readily available for the team so that the broader strategic goals are achieved. The development of advance action plans in case of foreseeable contingencies can give an advantage to the organization by creating lead time.
“When the strategies are created with the knowledge of growing environmental complexity and the decreasing time span for which planning can be done with any degree of certainty, the plans are more effective”5. Thus an orientation of an organization towards its environment, its culture and the readiness of the firm to handle new developments will decide the applicability of its strategic plans in its operations.