15 years ago
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What is the Business
A commercial or industrial enterprise and the people who constitute it; "he bought his brother's business"; "a small mom-and-pop business"; "a ...
commercial enterprise: the activity of providing goods and services involving financial and commercial and industrial aspects; "computers are now widely used in business"
occupation: the principal activity in your life that you do to earn money; "he's not in my line of business"
a rightful concern or responsibility; "it's none of your business"; "mind your own business"
an immediate objective; "gossip was the main business of the evening"
the volume of commercial activity; "business is good today"; "show me where the business was today"
business concerns collectively; "Government and business could not agree"
clientele: customers collectively; "they have an upper class clientele"
incidental activity performed by an actor for dramatic effect; "his business with the cane was hilarious"
Current thought on mission statements is based largely on guidelines set forth in the mid-1970s by Peter Drucker, who is often called "the father of modern management" for his pioneering studies at General Motors Corporation and for his 22 books and hundred of articles. Harvard business review has called Drucker " the preeminent management thinker of our time."
Drucker says that asking the question "What is our Business?" is synonymous with asking the question "What is the mission?" An enduring statement of purpose that distinguishes one organization from there similar enterprised the mission statement is declaration of an organization's "reason for being". it answers that pivotal establishing objective and formulation strategics.
Some times called a creed statement, a statment of purpose, a statement of philosophy, a statement of beliefs, a statement of business principle, or stat ment "defining our business, a mission statment reveals what an oranization wants to be and whome it wants to sserve.
All organzion have a reason for being, even if strategists have no consciously transformed this reason into writing.
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What Do We Want to Become?
it is especially important for managers and executives in any organization to agree upon the basic vision that the firm strives to achieves to achieve in the long term. A vision statement should answer the basic question, "What do we want to become?" A clear vision provide the foundation for developing a comprehensive mission statement. Many organizations have both a vision and mission statement, but the vision statement should be established first and foremost. The vision statement should be short, preferably one sentence, and as many managers as possible should have input onto developing the statement.
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What is Strategic Management
Strategic management can be used to determine mission, vision, values, goals, objectives, roles and responsibilities, timelines, etc.
Once there were two company presidents who competed in the same industry. These two presidents decided to go on a comping trip to discuss a possible merger. They hiked deep into the woods. Suddenly, they came upon a grizzly bear that rose up on its hind legs and snarled. instanantly, the first president took of his knapsack and got out a pair of jogging shoes. The second president said, "Hey, you can't outrun that bear." The first responded, "May be I can't outrun that bear, but I surely can outrun you!" This story captures the nation of strategic management, which is to achive and maintain competitve advantage.
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What is strategic planning ?
Strategic planning is a management tool, period. As with any management tool, it is used for one purpose only: to help an organization do a better job - to focus its energy, to ensure that members of the organization are working toward the same goals, to assess and adjust the organization's direction in response to a changing environment. In short, strategic planning is a disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, what it does, and why it does it, with a focus on the future. (Adapted from Bryson's Strategic Planning in Public and Nonprofit Organizations).
A word by word dissection of this definition provides the key elements that underlie the meaning and success of a strategic planning process: The process is strategic because it involves preparing the best way to respond to the circumstances of the organization's environment, whether or not its circumstances are known in advance; nonprofits often must respond to dynamic and even hostile environments. Being strategic, then, means being clearr bout the organization's objectives, being aware of the organization's resources, and incorporating both into being consciously responsive to a dynamic environment. The process is about planning because it involves intentionally setting goals (i.e., choosing a desired future) and developing an approach to achieving those goals. The process is disciplined in that it calls for a certain order and pattern to keep it focused and productive. The process raises a sequence of questions that helps planners examine experience, test assumptions, gather and incorporate information about the present, and anticipate the environment in which the organization will be working in the future.
Finally, the process is about fundamental decisions and actions because choices must be made in order to answer the sequence of questions mentioned above. The plan is ultimately no more, and no less, than a set of decisions about what to do, why to do it, and how to do it. Because it is impossible to do everything that needs to be done in this world, strategic planning implies that some organizational decisions and actions are more important than others - and that much of the strategy lies in making the tough decisions about what is most important to achieving organizational success.
The strategic planning can be complex, challenging, and even messy, but it is always defined by the basic ideas outlined above - and you can always return to these basics for insight into your own strategic planning process.
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What is the difference between strategic planning and long-range planning?
Although many use these terms interchangeably, strategic planning and long-range planning differ in their emphasis on the "assumed" environment. Long-range planning is generally considered to mean the development of a plan for accomplishing a goal or set of goals over a period of several years, with the assumption that current knowledge about future conditions is sufficiently reliable to ensure the plan's reliability over the duration of its implementation. In the late fifties and early sixties, for example, the US. economy was relatively stable and somewhat predictable, and, therefore, long-range planning was both fashionable and useful. On the other hand, strategic planning assumes that an organization must be responsive to a dynamic, changing environment (not the more stable environment assumed for long-range planning).
Certainly a common assumption has emerged in the nonprofit sector that the environment is indeed changeable, often in unpredictable ways. Strategic planning, then, stresses the importance of making decisions that will ensure the organization's ability to successfully respond to changes in the environment.
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What is strategic thinking and strategic management?
Strategic planning is only useful if it supports strategic thinking and leads to strategic management - the basis for an effective organization. Strategic thinking means asking, "Are we doing the right thing?" Perhaps, more precisely, it means making that assessment using three key requirements about strategic thinking: a definite purpose be in mind; an understanding of the environment, particularly of the forces that affect or impede the fulfillment of that purpose; and creativity in developing effective responses to those forces. It follows, then, that strategic management is the application of strategic thinking to the job of leading an organization.
Dr. Jagdish Sheth, a respected authority on marketing and strategic planning, provides the following framework for understanding strategic management: continually asking the question, "Are we doing the right thing?" It entails attention to the "big picture" and the willingness to adapt to changing circumstances, and consists of the following three elements: formulation of the organization's future mission in light of changing external factors such as regulation, competition, technology, and customers development of a competitive strategy to achieve the mission creation of an organizational structure which will deploy resources to successfully carry out its competitive strategy. Strategic management is adaptive and keeps an organization relevant. In these dynamic times it is more likely to succeed than the traditional approach of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
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What is SWOT Analysis?
SWOT analysis is a methodology of examining potential strategies derived from the synthesis of organizational strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT). The partnering of the different elements and the extensive data collected as a result of the analysis can serve as a spark for roundtable discussions and refinement of current strategies or generation of new strategies.
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