The Role of Strategic Planning in Effecting Change: The Relationship Between Strategic

Planning and the Budgetary Process

Part 1: What is Strategic Planning?Presented By:

W. M. KapambweMEd Postgraduate Student: 2003-2004

UNZA Education Administration and Policy

Studies (EAP 5402: Planning and Management of Change in Education.

Presentation Outline: What is Strategic Presentation Outline: What is Strategic PlanningPlanning

• IntroductionIntroduction• What is Strategic Planning?What is Strategic Planning?• Three Major Activities Involved in Strategic Planning. Three Major Activities Involved in Strategic Planning. • Strategic Analysis.Strategic Analysis.• Setting Strategic Direction. Setting Strategic Direction. • Action Planning.Action Planning.• Strategic Planning as a Challenge to the Status Quo.Strategic Planning as a Challenge to the Status Quo.• Uses of Strategic Planning. Uses of Strategic Planning. • Strategic Planning as a Way of Implementing Policy.Strategic Planning as a Way of Implementing Policy.• Strategic Planning as Planning About the Future Strategic Planning as Planning About the Future

Impact and Consequences of Today’s Decisions.Impact and Consequences of Today’s Decisions.• What Strategic Planning is Not.What Strategic Planning is Not.

INTRODUCTION

• In order to discuss the role of Strategic Planning in Effecting Change and the relationship between strategic planning and the budgetary process, we need to understand three issues:

(i) What Strategic Plannig is.

(ii) The role of stra tegic planning in effecting change.

(iii) The realationship between strategic planning and the budgetary process.

WHAT IS STRATEGIC PLANNING

• According to Bryson (1994-95) Strategic Planning is a management tool.

• SP is used to help an organisation do a better job-to focus its energy, to ensure that members of the organisation are working towars the same goals, to assess and adjust the organisation’s direction in response to a changing environment.

• SP is a disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organisation is, what it does, and why it does it, with a focus on the future.

WHAT IS STRATEGIC PLANNING

• SP determines where an organisation is going over the next year or more and how it is going to get there. The process involves the whole organisation and is focussed on a major function.

• In the past organisations referred to the phrase “long-range planning”. Modern planners use the phrase “strategic planning” to capture the strategic (comprehensive, thoughtful and well-placed) nature of strategic planning.

Three Major Activities Involved in Three Major Activities Involved in Strategic PlanningStrategic Planning

• SP includes three major activities: Strategic Analysis, Setting Direction and Action Planning.

Strategic AnalysisStrategic Analysis• Planners look at the various Strenghts, Weaknesses,

Opprtunities and Threats (SWOT) reagrding the organisation.

• Conducting a scan, review of the organisation’s environmnet e.g. Political, economic, and technical environment.

• Planners alos consider various driving forces in the environment e.g. Competetion and changing demographies.

• Strategic Analysis could be done after identifying or updating the mission statement, vision statement and value statement etc. Other do SA before reviewing the statements.

Setting Strategic DirectionSetting Strategic Direction• Planners should know the overall accomplishmsnts

(strategic goals) the organisation should achieve.• The Planners should also know what overall methods

(strategies) to use to achieve the accomplishmants.• Goals should be designed and worded as much as

possible to be Specific, Measurable, Acceptable, Realistic, Timely, Extend Capabilities and Rewarding. (SMARTER).

• Planners need to identify the organisation’s strategic “philosophy” in form of the mission, vision and value statements.

• Mission statements are are brief written descriptions of the purpose of the organisation.

Setting Strategic DirectionSetting Strategic Direction

• Vision statements are usually a compelling description of how the organisation will or should operate at some point in the future and of how customers or clients are benefitting from the organisation’s products and services.

• Value stateents list the overall priorities in how the organisation will operate. Value statements may focus on moral values.

Action PlanningAction Planning• Action Planning is carefully laying out how

the strategic planning often includes specifiying objectives, or specific results, with each strategic goal.

• Therefore, reaching a startegic goal typically involves accomplishing a set of objectives along the way: An objective is a goal on a smaller scale.

• Implementing a strategy typically involves implemanting a set of tactics along the way.

Action PlanningAction Planning• Action planning includes specifying responsibilities

and timelines with each objective, or who needs to do what and by when.

• Action Planning also includes methods to monitor and evaluate the plan, which includes knowing how the organisation will know whao has done what and by when.

• Annual plans are developed which include strategic goals, objectives, responsibilities and timelines for the following year. (annual plans are sometimes called operational plans or management plans).

Strategic Planning as a Challenge Strategic Planning as a Challenge to the Status Quoto the Status Quo

• Strategic planning is more that just a logical set of procedures.

• SP has the power to create dissatisfaction in the people- making them uneasy about WHAT and HOW WELL they are doing.

• SP is likely to upset old views and to raise new possibilities, and pose new questions.

• SP has the possibility of capturing the imagination and enthusiasm of participants.

Uses of Strategic PlanningUses of Strategic Planning• Strategic Planning can be used as :

• a way of changing and transforming the organisation.

• a philosophy, a way of thinking about the organisation and solving problems realting to an organisation’s activity.

• a staff development activity.• a way of bringing about community involvement

in a democratic form of an organisations’s governance.

Strategic Planning as a Way of Strategic Planning as a Way of Implementing PolicyImplementing Policy

• Strategic Planning can also be viewed as a way of implemenating policy.

• Strategic planning involves research and problem identification.

• Strategic planning is more that just a logical set of procedures. This is followed up with setting forth a strtegic vision and goals for further advancement of the organisation.

• The vision and goals are followed up with identifying strategic initiatives that flow from the goals.

Planning About the Future Impact and Planning About the Future Impact and Consequences of Today’s DecisionsConsequences of Today’s Decisions

• In SP it is conceived tha planning is less about future decisions than about the future impact and consequences of the today’s decisions.

• SP examines the necessities of today and tomorrow in the light of an organisation’s goals and capabilities.

• SP lets organisations update their goals and identify new capabilities they may need on board, tying strategic goals to a strategic management plan and goal setting.

What Strategic Planning is Not.What Strategic Planning is Not.• SP is about fundamental decisions and

actions, but it does not attempt to make future decisions (Steiner, 1979). SP involves antipating the future environment, but the decisions are made in the present.

• Although SP is a tool, it is not a substitute for the exercise for the exercise of judgement by leadership. SP tools support the intuitio, reasoning skills, and judgemnt that peple bring to their organisation. (“The hammer does not create a bookshelf).

What Strategic Planning is Not.What Strategic Planning is Not.• Although SP is described as disciplined, it

does not typically flow from step to the next. It is creative process, and the fresh insight arrived at today might very well alter decision made yesterday.

• Inevitably, the process moves forward and back several times before arriving at the final set of decisions.

• It is important that however rough the process might be, the destination of the SP is reached.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT !

“The Strategic Plan therefore aims to capture the mind and the heart of the organisation, giving direction, meaning and motivation to those involved in the organisation”