The Benefits Of Strategic Planning Business Essay

The Benefits Of Strategic Planning Business Essay Formal strategic planning is affected by the macro-environment and this is the highest level layer in the framework, this consists of a wide range of environmental factors that impact to some extent on almost all organisations. The PESTEL framework can be used to identify how future trends in the Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environment and Legal environments might affect an organisation. Pestel analysis provides the broad date from which key drivers to change can be identified. By using these key drivers organisations can envision scenarios for the future. Scenarios can be used to help organisations decide if change needs to happen depending on the different ways in which the business environment may change. It is important for managers to analyse these factors in the present and how they are likely to change in the future. By analysing these, managers will be able to draw out implications for the organisation. Pestel factors are sometimes linked together i.e. technological factors can impact on economic factors. It is necessary to identify the key drivers of change these are environmental factors that are likely to have a high impact on the success or failure of the strategy. Key drivers vary by industry i.e. Primark may be concerned by social changes that can change customer tastes and behaviours. The critical issues are the implications that are drawn from the understanding in guiding strategic decisions and choices. The next stage is drawn from the environmental analysis specifically strategic opportunities and threats for the organisation. Having the ability to identify these opportunities and threats is extremely valuable when thinking about strategic choices for the future. Opportunities and threats form one half of the SWOT analysis that shapes a companys formulation. The use of SWOT analysis can help summarise the key issues from the business environment and the strategic capability of an organisation that are most likely to impact on strategy development. Once the key issues have been identified an organisation can then assess if it is capable to deal with the changes taking place within the business environment. If the strategic capability is to be understood the business must remember that it is not absolute but relative to its competitors. SWOT analysis is only useful if it is comparative, that is it examines strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. SWOT analysis should help focus discussion on the future choices and to what extent an organisation is capable of supporting these strategies. SWOT analysis should not be used a substitute for more in-depth analysis. In responding strategically to the environment the goal is to reduce identified threats and take advantages of the best opportunities. Peter Drucker (1954), discussing the importance of business policy and strategic planning in his book The Practice of Management says we cannot be content with plans for a future that we can foresee. We must prepare for all possible and a good many impossible contingencies. We must have a workable solution for anything that may come up. By taking advantage of the strategic gap (which is an opportunity in the competitive environment that has not been fully exploited by competitors) organisations can manage threats and opportunities. Core competencies are a set of linked business processes that deliver superior value to the customer, when these are combined they create strategic value and can lead to competitive advantage. By using Porters five forces analysis which is a framework for organisations to analyse industry and business strategy, they can draw upon the five forces that determine the competitive intensity and therefore attractiveness of a market. Three of Porters five forces refer to competition from external sources and the other two are internal threats. This analysis is just one part of the complete Porter strategic model the others include the value chain (VC) and the generic strategies. According to Porter (2008) the job of a strategist is too understand and cope with competition; however managers define competition too narrowly as if it has occurred only among today direct competitors. Competition goes beyond profits to include competitive forces such as customers, suppliers, potential entrants and substitute products; the extended rivalry that results from all five forces defines an industrys structure and shapes the nature of competition within an industry. For example Apple are good at technology and innovation therefore they can take the opportunities that give them competitive advantage and makes them leaders compared to Samsung or Nokia. Porters says there are 5 forces that shape the competition: Threat of new entrants Bargaining power of customers powerful customers usually bargain for better services which involve cost and investment Bargaining power of suppliers may determine the cost of raw materials and other inputs effecting profitability Rivalry among competitors competition influences the pricing and other costs like advertising etc. Threats from substitutes where-ever substantial investments in RD is taking place, the threat of substitutes is large. It also affects profitability. Competitive advantage is the heart of strategy and for the strategy to succeed the organisation should have relevant competitive advantage. We can see an example of this with Toshiba who operate in electrical goods, through a flexible manufacturing system it manufactures different products / varieties of some products on the same assembly lines. At Ohme it assembles nine varieties of computers on the same line and on the adjacent line it assembles 20 varieties of lap top computers. It is able to switch from one product / variety to another instantly at low cost and makes profits on low volume runs too. This flexibility of Toshiba to respond quickly and easily to the fast changing market demand is definitely one of its competitive advantages. Whereas its competitors make profits only through long volume runs of a particular model. However, there are a lot of companies who are choosing not to invest due to the recession; however Lidl and Aldi are taking advantage of supplying cheaper products giving them competitive advantage over say Waitrose. Benefits of Strategic Planning Effective strategic planning can positively improve the performance of an organisation and give them the ability to serve more clients, access additional resources or enhance the quality of service/product. It can also offer solutions to major organisational issues or challenges and gives stakeholders of the organisation an opportunity to develop harmonic solutions to long-term issues/challenges that have been affecting the organisation. Furthermore it allows for forward thinking, allowing an organisation the opportunity to pause and revisit the mission and create long-term vision. It allows clear future direction allowing stakeholders to look to the future, plan and respond to changes. Evaluation One of the major drawbacks of formal strategic planning is the uncertain dynamic environment, things change constantly and everything becomes shorter. The recession at the present time is making everything unpredictable and this is not good for strategic planning. According to Mintzberg (1994) strategic planning should be used to devise and implement the competitiveness of each business unit. Scientific management was pioneered by Fredrick Taylor (1856-1915) and involved separating thinking from doing and thus creating a new function staffed by specialists. Planning systems were expected to produce the best strategies as well as step by step instructions on how to achieve this, but this never worked well. According to Mintzberg strategic planning is not strategic thinking, the most successful strategies are visions, not plans. When an organisation can differentiate between planning and strategic thinking they can then get back to what the strategy making process should be. Once a manger has the ability to learn from all sources around him, including personal experiences and market research and can integrate this into a vision of the direction that the business can then pursue. Mintzberg suggests that strategic planning is a misconception and rests upon three unsound arguments: that prediction is possible, thats strategists can be detached from the subjects of their strategies, and that the strategy-making process can be formalised. Strategic thinkers can apply lessons learned from Mintzberg (1994) three inherent fallacies of traditional planning: The Fallacy of Prediction is the assumption that we can actually control events through a formalised process that involves people engaged in creative or even routine work and can manage to stay on the predicted course. You need more than hard facts you need the personal touch. People are not objective, they are complex. The Fallacy of Detachment is the assumption we can separate the planning from the doing, if the system does the thinking, then strategies must be detached from the tactics. Formulation from implementation, thinkers from doers. One objective is to make sure senior managers receive relevant information without having to immense themselves in the details. One fact is innovation has never been institutionalised and systems have never been able to reproduce the synthesis created by the entrepreneur or the ordinary strategist and probably never will. The Fallacy of Formulisation suggests that systems could certainly process more information, at least hard information. However they could never internalise it, comprehend it, and put it all together. Such control is more a dream that a reality. Reality tells us that anomalies, the fickle behaviour of humans and the limitations of analysis play a huge factor in the organisational outcomes and to disregard them is risky and could lead to incomplete planning. What are the limitations of strategic planning when things are changing rapidly? The limitations of formal strategic planning can be seen if the future is uncertain and the expectations divert from the plan. There could also be internal resistance to formal strategic planning due to factors including: Information flows, decision making and power relationships could be unsettled Current operating problems may drive out long-term planning efforts There are risks and fears of failure New demands will be placed on managers and staff Conflicts with the organisation are exposed Planning is expensive in time and money Planning is difficult and hard work The completed plan limits choices and activities for the organisation in the future CONCLUSIONS The question posed seems to be is strategic planning worthwhile. The answer to this lies within the organisation and is dependent upon size. It seems that the ability to learn and implement strategies contributes to the business performance of small or medium sized companies in a dynamic industry. Leadership is important and organisations today have to deal with dynamic and uncertain environments. To ensure success organisations must be strategically aware. They must understand how changes in their competitive environment are unfolding. They should constantly be on the lookout for new opportunities to exploit their strategic abilities, build on awareness and understanding of current strategies and successes. Organisations must be able to respond quickly in response to opportunities and threats. Organisations must compete effectively and out-perform their rivals in a dynamic environment; they must find suitable ways for creating and adding value for their customers. Overall they must be flexible. Organisations could think about changing their strategy to an emergent strategy which would allow them to adapt to new ideas and according to change. Emergent strategy implies that an organisation is learning what works in practice. An example of this is Groupon who provide daily deals in large cities and in return Groupon get a percentage of the deal usually 50% from the company providing the deal. The company is on track to make $500M in revenue this year and has raised its last round at a $1.35B valuation. Groupon is an example of an emergent strategy which has transformed several times. Organisations could think about downsizing production before closure as companies are killed due to an uncertain dynamic environment. In an article labelled The Real Value of Strategic Planning one manager said our planning process is like a primitive tribal ritual there is a lot of dancing, waving of feathers and beating of drums. No one is exactly sure why we do it, but there is an almost mystical hope that something good will come out of it. Another said, Its like the old Communist system: We pretend to make strategy and they pretend to follow it. Henry Mintzberg has gone so far as to label the phrase strategic planning an oxymoron. He notes that real strategy is made informally in hallway conversations, in working groups, and in quiet moments of reflection on long plane flights and rarely in the panelled conference rooms where formal planning meetings are held.

Bad Samarians

Ha-Joon Chang is a Cambridge heterodox economist, who specializes in development economics and the abject poverty of the Third World countries. Trained at the University of Cambridge, he has served as a consultant to the World Bank, the European Investment Bank, and various United Nations agencies. Since 1992 he has also served on the editorial board of the Cambridge Journal of Economics, he is the author and contributor of many researches in economics.The objective of this essay – to review his views described in his controversial new book â€Å"Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism,† and to compare it with the more traditional views where it possible. Bad Samaritans Mostly in his book Ha-Joon Chang appeals to his opponents, orthodox economists, and generalists in particular. Ha-Joon Chang has wide personal experience because he was born in the country that was one of the poorest on Earth that time. The new book starts with the des cription of economic downturn in Korea after the Korean War.It is hard to believe, but the famous Samsung Company that time was subsidized by sugar refining and textile enterprises. Another big company, Pohang Iron and Steel Co. , or POSCO, which now is the third largest steel company in the world, was state-owned and couldn’t get the support from the World Bank. Analyzing the development of other economics in the 1960s, the author notices that Japanese government refused to follow the politics of free trade that time and this decision had a positive impact on Japanese car manufacturing industry.In other case modern famous Japanese companies could be the filials of Western companies, and nothing more. This thonking leads the reader to the concept of what Ha-Joon Chang calls the â€Å"Bad Samaritans. † As the author described, â€Å"people in the rich countries who preach free markets and free trade to the poor countries in order to capture larger shares of the latterà ¢â‚¬â„¢s markets and preempt the emergence of possible competitors. They are saying ‘do as we say, not as we did’ and act as Bad Samaritans, taking advantage of others who are in trouble.† Chang divides â€Å"Bad Samaritans† into two groups: first are the leaders working in the â€Å"unholy trinity† of global financial organizations: World Bank, World Trade Organization and International Monetary Fund, and second are the ideologues – â€Å"those who believe in Bad Samaritan policies because they think those policies are ‘right,’ not because they personally benefit from them much, if at all. † The common feature of both groups is the adherence to a doctrine called â€Å"neoliberalism†, which is dominating in the global economy from 1970s till nowadays.The worst in this doctrine, according the opinion of the author, is the fact that those countries that propagate this doctrine all over the world reject its implementati on in their own economical systems. The key characteristics of neoliberalistic economics were called â€Å"Golden Straitjacket,† which is the only root to economic success according its advocates, like â€Å"unholy trinity†. They actively implement this economic policy in poor and developing countries.As it known from the Nobel-awarded researchers of orthodox economists, the Golden Straitjacket policy struggle for trade liberalization, reducing corruption and state bureaucracy, privatization of state-owned enterprises and pensions, balancing the national budget, intellectual rights protection and other trends and policies which are intended to guarantee the stable economic growth. In real life the implementation of these policies in developing countries leads to creation of economical dependence from global financial organizations.At the same time the most developed countries don’t implement the Golden Straitjacket policy. Ha-Joon Chang writes: â€Å"Practicall y all of today’s developed countries, including Britain and the US, the supposed homes of the free market and free trade, have become rich on the basis of policy recipes that go against neo-liberal economics. † Rich countries protect their manufacturer from the foreign investments and use subsidies and protections to protect their industries. The WTO sanctions are considered by rich countries as the lesser evil.Chang enumerates prominent men from different countries whose economic solutions became the basis of their countries flourishing. All of them struggled for the development of the national production and used protectionists’ politics. Chang notices out that nowadays the most developed countries do the same, especially the USA. He claims the Third World War has already begun and the USA tries to maintain its position as global hegemon. There are already conquered sides in this war, and one of them is the African countries. As the result of neoliberalism poli cy,The living standards in Africa are falling within the recent thirty years, because IMF and World Bank run most of African economies virtually. All the features of neoliberalizm described above were implemented in African countries. As the result the struggle with corruption ruined the system of communities existed before, the struggle with bureaucracy left courtiers without the perfect executive power branch, the intellectual property protection prevented the development of sciences, and pension privatization left the elder people to the poverty.Chang criticizes the struggle with the corruption because, according his words, â€Å"Most of today’s rich countries successfully industrialized despite the fact that their own public life was spectacularly corrupt. † Another object of sharp critics of the author is the concept of cultural influence on the economical performance of the country. The popular idea tells that the culture if the country defined the business metho ds of its people and thus their economic success. First this idea is an intolerant and chauvinists’ one, second, cultural differenced fail be the main explanation for economic success.He claims that the culture of the country is the result of economical development and not the cause. Using the chapters describing the mechanisms of economical development in different countries Chang proves that cultural explanation is just the screen to mask the real reason: the richest countries are afraid of competitors from below and do their best to annihilate the possible competition in the moment of origin. Generally, Chang writes, the policy of protectionism is absolutely normal, because it exists for ages. The problem is in hypocrisy surrounding â€Å"free trade†.According to Chang, â€Å"Belief in the virtue of free trade is so central to the neo-liberal orthodoxy that it is effectively what defines a neo-liberal economist. You may question (if not totally reject) any other el ement of the neo-liberal agenda—open capital markets, strong patents, or even privatization—and still stay in the neo-liberal church. However, once you object to free trade, you are effectively inviting ex-communication. † Analyzing the existing situation on the global market, Chang concludes that the golden straitjacket fits the healthy countries only.This policy allows production distribution between countries, and poor countries are forces to specialize in the sector s that â€Å"offer low productivity growth and thus low growth in living standards. This is why so few countries have succeeded with free trade, while most successful countries have used infant industry protection to one degree or another. † Thus, the free trade, according the Chang, is a fiction and the tool for rich countries and â€Å"unholy trinity† for redistribution of wealth. ConclusionThe views of Ha-Joon Chang to the development of global economy nowadays are contradictory a nd don’t correspond to the mainstream in the economical science. However there are many writers and scientists with the same mind who share Chang’s ideas that the ideology of free trade and its implementation are two different things, and the first of them can be used as the powerful tool of economical influence. Reference Ha-Joon Chang. 2007. Bad Samaritans:The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism. Bloomsbury Press

My Autobiography Essay

I was born on a warm, sunny day in March 31, 1999 at Brgy. Sagpatan, Dingras, Ilocos Norte. I still live in Brgy. Sagpatan, Dingras, Ilocos Norte, and I go to school at Lt. Edgar Foz Memorial National High School/Dingras National High School (San Marcos Campus) as a graduating student. I live with my father, Francisco J. Serrano which is working at Hyosung Corporation as a Foreman; my mother, Eduardina G. Serrano, a former OFW at Hong Kong; my 2 brothers, Francis Dan G. Serrano which is studying at Marcos Agro-Industrial School with his course Automotive Servicing NCII and Frederick G. Serrano my younger brother which is studying at Sagpatan Elementary School as a Grade V pupil; my sister Franz Diane, the youngest of us, which is studying at Sagpatan Elementary School as a Grade III pupil; and grandmother Alejandra Serrano. I graduated primary level at Sagpatan Elementary School as a salutatorian and now I am in secondary level and I want to graduate with honor. If I graduate seconda ry I want to continue my study at Mariano Marcos State University (College of Education) with the course BS in Secondary Education Major in Trigonometry and Minor in Geometry.

Booker T. Washington s Achievements - 1440 Words

Booker T. Washington was a very well respected man who also had many people that questioned his knowledge and beliefs. One of the most prominent men that questioned Washington was W.E.B. Du Bois. Du Bois believed differently than Washington and raised numerous questions about Washington’s achievements, but they both ultimately were striving for the same goal. They both wanted African Americans to be equals, and furthermore wanted a level playing field for all, regardless of their skin color. The problem was that they differed on the way to achieve this goal. Du Bois was critical of Washington in the way he handled the civil and political rights of African Americans, the way he stressed industrial revolution over higher education, and the time frame in which to accomplish this ultimate goal they both strove for. To understand all the differences between these two men, we must first look to how and where they were raised. Booker T. Washington was born on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia in 1858. When Washington was eight his family, and all the slaves, were declared free by the Emancipation Proclamation. Washington then worked the rest of his life on becoming something great. With the help of others, he was able to attend the Hampton Institute, and later continued his life work at the Tuskegee. Washington was basically able to create Tuskegee from nothing and devoted himself in every aspect of his life to making it a prestigious school. Washington states, [A]s I lookShow MoreRelatedW.E.B. Du Bois vs. Booker T. Washington1344 Words   |  6 PagesA Clash of Ideologies: W.E.B. Du Bois vs. Booker T. Washington During the turn of the century, between the years 1895 and 1915 there were many theories of how African Americans were going to achieve first-class citizenship. 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