OVERVIEW OF STRATEGIC PLAN (SP)

STRATEGY
• Mintzberg and Quinn (1996:3) define a strategy as the pattern or plan that
integrates an organization’s major goals, policies, and action sequences into
a cohesive whole.
• According to them a well-formulated strategy helps to marshal and allocate
an organization’s resources into a unique and viable posture based on its
relative internal competencies and shortcomings, anticipated changes in the
environment and contingent moves by intelligent opponents.
• Strategy is “position” – selling particular products in particular markets.
Strategy is “perspective” – an organization’s fundamental way of doing
things. Strategy is “ploy” – a specific maneuver intended to outwit a
competitor.
• The five P’s (plan, pattern, position, perspective, and ploy) serve as a key
aspect of Mintzberg et al.’s framework for analyzing different schools of
thought about strategy.
PLANNING
• Sensible working arrangement
• Knowing what to do, how to do it, when to do it, who to do it, who to do it for
and where to do it.
STRATEGIC PLANNING
Strategic planning therefore is a management tool. 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
• Strategic Plan is creating a vision of the future and managing towards that
expectancy.
• It answers the three big questions:
– Where are we today?
– Where do we want to be in the future?
– What should we be focused on today, in order to make it more likely
we will be where we want to be in the future?
SP is not about predicting the future, reading crystal balls, or calling some psychic
hotline.
SP is asking the people who’s action will create the future what they want that
future to be.
– Where do you think you’ll be?
– Not where you forecast you’ll be.
– Where do you want to be?
IMPORTANCE OF SP
• Improve the Organization’s or hospital’s performance

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 • Determine the Organization’s or hospital’s future direction
• Optimize resource allocation
• Meet the Organization’s or hospital’s vision and mission statement
• Maximize its chances for success

VISION
Vision comes first when doing a Strategic Plan.
 What is a vision?
 A picture of a reality at its most optimal i.e. a reality that
through our work we help in some way, however small, to
bring out.
 A picture that is vivid and imaginative: something we and, we
hope, others would anticipate eagerly as a positive and
qualitative contribution to the world or our corner of it, or
hospital
 Vision answers the question, what do you want to become?
CHARACTERISTICS OF GOOD VISION
 It fires imagination of individuals or the Organization
 It Triggers organizational values
 It makes an Individual or the Organization lives with feeling
 It makes the individual or the Organization Overflows with optimism
 Provides a clear picture (or image) of the Organization
 It indicates an obtainable future
 A vision is something that can stretch you to achieve.
 A strategic vision provides direction and inspiration for
organizational goal setting.
 It gives the Team and all staff, a focus for their activity
 It also gives the means by which to make decisions
 Without a vision, people become activity-focused; i.e. agenda rather
than objectives-driven.
 It must be apt (Being of striking appropriateness and pertinence )
and succinct (Briefly giving the gist of something)

EXAMPLES OF GOOD VISION

 EMS- Lifeline to your deadline?
 FEDEX- World on time
 DISNEY- Memory for life
 SNV- A world without hunger
 British Telecom-Connecting people the world over
 ACTIONAID- A world without hunger
 NESTLE- Good food, Good health
 OCIC- Enabling organizations to help themselves

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  MICROSOFT: A personal computer in every home running Microsoft
software
VISION KILLERS
 Tradition
 Fear of ridicule
 Stereotypes of people, conditions, roles and governing councils
 Complacency of some stakeholders
 Fatigued leaders
 Short-term thinking
 "Naysayers"
MISSION STATEMENT
• It is a collective agreement deliverables, perceived to provide a
greater chance of achieving the ideals.
• Reasons for existence or open declaration of its purpose.
• Mission breaks down the vision, describes the vision, describes its
target, what the organization does, what the organization values
are.
In developing a good Mission Statement bear in mind that:
• What is the problem or need your organization is trying to address?
• What makes your organization unique?
• Who are the beneficiaries of your work?
Mission must answer the following questions
• Why do we exist?
• What are our values?
• Who are our target group? (i.e. our stakeholders)
• How do we meet the needs of our target group? etc
CHARACTERISTICS OF A GOOD MISSION STATEMENT
• Mission Statement must not be too long. It must be short to enable
people to remember it to enhance its achievement.
• It must have a manifestable end point.
• It states a clear mid-term target.
EXAMPLES OF A GOOD MISSION STATEMENT
• "By providing quality education, we empower individuals to become
caring, competent, responsible citizens who value education as a
lifelong process.“
• "caring for the land and serving the people," (Forest Service)
• The YMCA of San Francisco, based in Judeo-Christian heritage
[values], seeks to enhance the lives of all people [purpose] through
programs designed to develop spirit, mind and body [business].
• "To promote child health and development through a comprehensive
family and community initiative."
• "To create a thriving African American community through
development of jobs, education, housing, and cultural pride.

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 • "To develop a safe and healthy neighborhood through collaborative
planning, community action, and policy advocacy."
WHAT ARE VALUES
• Values are like “internal programming” that help us determine “right” from
“wrong”, “good” from “bad” etc
• They lie at the heart of almost all organizational actions and decisions
• For example if our values are transparency and we have not been
completely open in a given situation, it will make us feel uncomfortable and
undermine the process and outcome we are pursuing
• Organizational values help define acceptable behaviour for its members.
• It acts as the glue that holds a group together and provides for a group
identity or organizational culture.
• Talbot {2003} states that values are qualities that command respect and
that generate principles to guide us in our thinking and our actions.

CORPORATE OBJECTIVE
• These are broad statements of what the Organization wants to achieve e.g. in
the next 5 Years. It emanates from the mission or supports the vision and
mission of the Organization.
• Objectives are essential for organizational success because they state
direction and provide a basis for planning, organizing, motivating and
controlling activities.
• It focuses on outcomes or results and it is qualitative in nature.
• It also guides the Organization on her actions.

BASIC GUIDELINES TO EVOLVE CORPORATE OBJECTIVES

• It must be derived from the mission
• Should not be too many
• It should take high priority stakeholders into account and try to address the
following:
– Financial/Profit motive of the Organization
– Marketing/Sales of the Service/Product
– Products/Services
– Operations
– The Human resource (or employees),
– Community/Corporate social responsibilities,
• They are broad statements of what is to be achieved and improvement to be
made over time. (It must not be subjected to “SMART” at this level) but must
be qualitative in nature
• When stating your corporate objective Note the following:
– Prioritize your objectives by arranging them hierarchically or in order of
importance to you to help achieve your mission and eventually the
vision

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 – Balance your objectives so that you don’t become one sided
– Limit your Objectives, you may lose focus if they are too many
ENVIRONMENTAL SCANNING
• This is done to establish the internal strengths and weaknesses of the
Organisation as well as the external factors that bring both opportunities and
threats.
• Environmental Scanning involves sorting to determine what is important.
• It also include analysing and Interpreting relationships and events
TOOLS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SCANNING
• These are tools used to generate data in order to determine factors that
affect the performance of the Organization both positively and negatively.
• These tools include:
• Stakeholder Analysis
• SWOT Analysis
• PEST/PESTLES
STAKEHOLDERS ANALYSIS
• Stakeholders are people who benefit from or oppose the services of an
Organization. It is good to know them because it helps to manage their needs
• This tool is used to identify all the potential Stakeholders of the Organization
and also ranking them so as to determine how the Organization will be affect
the Organization
Name of Expectation from What happens if you Degree of
Stakeholder you don’t deliver to meet Importance of the
their expectation Expectation
1=Low, 3=High
Suppliers 1. Prompt Refusal to supply 3
Payment Wrong quantity or wrong 3
2. Clarity of Orders item supplied

SWOT ANALYSIS
SWOT Analysis is a tool for auditing an organization and its environment. It is the
first stage of planning and helps to focus on key issues. Once key issues have been
identified, they feed into the unit’s goals and objectives/strategic directions. It
accomplishes this by assessing an organizations strengths (what an organization
can do) and weaknesses (what an organization cannot do) in addition to
opportunities (potential favourable conditions for an organization) and threats
(potential unfavourable conditions for an organization). SWOT analysis is an
important step in planning and its value is often underestimated despite the
simplicity in creation. The role of SWOT analysis is to take the information from the
environmental analysis and separate it into internal issues (strengths and

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weaknesses) and external issues (opportunities and threats). Once this is
completed, SWOT analysis determines if the information indicates something that
will assist the organization in accomplishing its objectives (a strength or
opportunity), or if it indicates an obstacle that must be overcome or minimized to
achieve desired results (weakness or threat)

Elements of SWOT Analysis:

Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors. Opportunities and threats are external factors.

Strengths—internal to the unit; are a unit's resources and capabilities that can be used as a basis
for developing a competitive advantage; strengths should be realistic and not modest.
A well-developed listing of strengths should be able to answer a couple of questions.

o What are the unit's advantages?

o What does the unit do well?

Weaknesses—internal force that could serve as a barrier to maintain or achieve a competitive

advantage; a limitation, fault or defect of the unit; weaknesses should be truthful so that they
may be overcome as quickly as possible.
A well-developed listing of weaknesses should be able to answer a few questions (PMI, 1999).

o What can be improved?

o What is done poorly?
o What should be avoided?

Opportunities—any favorable situation present now or in the future in the external environment.

Threats—External force that could inhibit the maintenance or attainment of a competitive

advantage; any unfavorable situation in the external environment that is potentially damaging
now or in the future.

Benefits of a SWOT Analysis:

• Scaleable
• Simplicity
• Low Cost
• Flexibility
• Collaborative
• Quickness
• Integrateable

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 • Develops boundary-spanning skills and promotes creative, integrative
thinking and dialogue.
• Allows timely, informed actions to overcome weaknesses and minimize
threats
• Prepares the organization to focus on identifying strategic issues.

KEY ISSUES
Key issues draw out and define key strategic issues. A clear definition of the key
issues is important for building the foundation for measuring the success of the
plan.
Basically there are two categories of strategic issues.
• Those that affect growth lead to offensive strategies and results from
leveraging strengths to perceived opportunities
• Those that focuses on survival and leads to defensive strategies from the
Organizations weaknesses and external threats
Key issues must meet the following criteria:
• It is critical to the Organization; the decision needs to be made and
implemented for the organization to achieve its desired purpose
• It cuts across two or more major functions.
• It reflects the values and philosophies of the Organization’s key stakeholders.
• It drives policies and provides direction to specific operating decisions.
STRATEGY FORMULATION
There are different ways of Strategy formulation. This includes using the Scenario
Planning, brainstorming etc. It can also use the SWOT grid which gives 4 kinds of
scenarios, thus, Strength –Opportunity (SO), Strength-Threat (ST), Weakness-
Opportunity (WO), and Weakness- Threat (WT) strategies.
• SO is called Strategy of Strength (The best –case scenario: The Organization
has the ability to leverage the opportunities)
• WO is called Strategy of Caution
• ST is called Strategy of Caution
• WT is called Strategy of survival (The worst-case scenario: The environment
is hostile to the Organization)
OUTPUTS
In this step of the Strategic Planning, the mechanisms for monitoring and evaluating
are put in place. To be able to monitor results throughout the process and at the
conclusion, the Organization must develop SMART objectives.
It also include milestones that indicate critical points along the implementation
path.
ACTIVITIES
These are things that need to be done to produce outputs. These must be clearly
defined in the implementation plan. They should provide for the most direct, cost
and time effective means of achieving the plan.
INPUTS

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These are resources needed to satisfactorily implement the strategy. A good
strategic Plan should also include a list of the resources required for each activity
and from where to obtain these resources.