Question

respond:

Strategic planning should be formal or semi-informal, depending on the size and nature of the organization. The larger and more complex the business is should correlate with the formality of the strategic plan. I’m a veteran and have experienced how the military has a very formal strategic plan and account and plan for every conceivable situation. I also own and run a small business in the financial services industry and have a semi-formal strategic plan. The extent of my strategic plan is more of contingency planning for catastrophic events and knowing where my business stands and a rough goal of the next 1, 3, and 5 years. I say semi-formal because when I worked for a very large financial services firm we had individual plans that rolled up to larger plans and continued until the company strategic plan was spelled out with metrics broken down as far as they could be so that every behavior was viewed and analyzed. With my small business I don't believe that the resources needed to drill down the plan to that level are necessary. I view my business and success as a careful balance between need and greed.

The positive side of a formal strategic plan is that there would be no surprises, and every situation would have a documented response and course of action. The con side of this would be that a plan could be so rigid that opportunities could be missed, or in another thought the scenario may be handled perfectly well with the planned response, but another answer to the situation may be better but not viewed because of the formal plan that is in place.

The positive side of an informal side is that every situation is viewed individually, and a response would be tailored at the time. A con would be that there could be missed opportunities because the problem or opportunity would have to first be identified, but then time would have to put into the response, and unfortunately time is not always a luxury that we have.   

I would have to put my number at a six given that I believe a larger company would be a 10, but a small company would be somewhere around a 3, so I am going to split my answer on an average. As I stated earlier I have been in the military, and they definitely are, and rightfully so are a ten. I’ve also worked for three Fortune 100 companies and all of them had solid strategic plans and they too are 10’s. However, my small business is a much lower number, but I need to have a general idea of the current and future state of my business. I’ve made several changes to my business model over the years and the landscape of my industry is continuously changing so its not like I haven’t had strategic planning sessions, but when its only me leading the way with a few employees we can shift fairly quickly when needed.     

Strategic planning, to me, is when leaders of an organization systematically view the state of the current organization and formulate a goal of where to take the organization. Once armed with the current and future state a quality strategic plan includes the road map to get there. I also believe that strategic plans should include responses to certain external and internal events.

Answer 1

I agree with the article. It aptly describes the setup of strategic planning and the stark differences between large companies and small businesses. the focus of the big companies is always on future and creating smalls goals which ultimately converse into the success of a strategic plan taking the company towards success, the main focus of the small business is to prevent any untoward accident and in case it happens, minimizing its impact to the lowest.

This difference separates the outlook and business operations of both the companies and why strategic planning takes a more formal form in the big companies compared to its informal or semi-formal set up in the small business.