p.1 To be successful, a strategic planning process should provide the criteria for making day-to-day
organizational decisions and should provide a template against which all such decisions can be evaluated.
p.3 Planning is the process of establishing objectives and choosing the most suitable means for achieving
these objectives prior to taking action. As Russell Ackoff, professor at the Wharton Business School and a noted strategic
planning consultant, notes, "Planning... is anticipatory decision-making. It is a process of deciding... before action is
required" (Ackoff, 1981).
In contrast, we define strategic planning as "the process by which the guiding members of an organization
envision its future and develop the necessary procedures and operations to achieve that future."
p.4 Strategic planning needs to answer three basic questions for an organization (Gup, 1979). The first
of these, "Where are you going?"... The second question is "What is the environment?"... The final question that strategic
planning must answer is "How do you get there?"
p.12 The environmental monitoring process should be continual, so that appropriate information about what
is happening or about to happen in the various environments is always available. Strategic planning provides an opportune
time for a major use of this data. Learning not only to collect relevant information, but to organize, interpret,
and use this information is critical to strategic success.
p.22-23 As the organization conceptualizes its future, it must identify the specific means of measuring
its progress toward that future, setting critical success indicators (CSIs)... The CSIs are typically
a mix of hard financial figures - such as sales, margins, and return on investment (ROI) - and soft indices of success - such
as employee morale and opinions of customers about service. Other measures... can be included as long as they are clear, quantifiable,
and trackable... Priorities need to be set for these CSIs to make certain that the most important indices of being on track
[towards accomplishment of the desired goals] have been established and will be closely monitored over time.
p.24 although no one can fully predict the future, it is possible to anticipate significant aspects
of the future... the organization takes responsibility for its own future rather than assigning that responsibility
to unseen external forces.
p.25-26 The performance audit is a focused effort that involves the simultaneous study of the organization's
internal strengths and weaknesses and of the external opportunities and threats that may positively or negatively
effect the organization in its efforts to achieve a desired future... The performance audit must also include information
about the forces outside the organization that may impact success in reaching its goals
p.51 Envisioning is the process by which individuals or groups develop a vision or dream of a future state
for themselves or their organizations that is clear and powerful enough to arouse and sustain the actions necessary for that
dream or vision to become a reality.
p.120 All organizations have a vital need to track what is occurring, or is about to occur, in their
environments... organizations that do not anticipate and attempt to mange these rapidly increasing changes
face precarious futures. Only by monitoring an organization's environments can the organization track and understand
these changes... Strategic planning requires that an organization take time out to seriously examine how it monitors
the environments that directly impact its future and how it processes the information obtained... The data produced
in the organization's ongoing monitoring process should continually provide information to the planning team and to the entire
organization about what is happening and what is likely to happen that might affect the organization's current operations,
its planning process, and its future.
