They do so not to create strategies but to program the strategies they already have; that is, to elaborate and operationalize their consequences formally. Therefore, strategy is not the consequence of planning, but its starting point.
NOT Planning for Strategy; YET Strategizing for Planning.
Planning helps translate intended strategies into realized ones. This is planning as programming. Programming is a management activity that translates decisions into specific action patterns for implementation. The steps are to:
Therefore, the "model" for this is one of
"Codifying" as mentioned above is bringing order, through planning, by putting strategy into a suitable form for articulating to others. This is somewhat hard to do since you are going from general thoughts to specific directives. Strategies themselves often lose out in the translation because of bureaucratic necessities, such as translating a rich vision into numbers in order to communicate; you tend to diminish or lose the vividness of the imagery.
"Elaboration" is similar to "action planning," where strategy is broken down at various levels into capital budgets, then action plans with their sequencing/timing components.
"Conversion" means simply to convert into routine operations.
All of these are contingent upon having viable strategies available (this means the world will hold still or is changing predictably while the intended strategy unfolds), and makes sense only after necessary strategic learning has occurred, and when the organization really needs codified and elaborated strategies. If you do not really need these, you may actually pre-empt needed flexibility.
Regarding "learning," if the vision is robust, then the firm can adapt/learn. The vision sets the broad outline of a strategy, but leaves the details to be worked out. This broad perspective is "deliberate" but the specific position can "emerge." If the vision cannot cope, then the firm may have to go to "pure learning," which means it will have to experiment in order to capture some basic messages and then converge behaviors on them. A specific plan limits serious adaptation. Therefore, a formal plan yet no vision means that every unpredicted change makes you feel like your "sky is falling."
Remember also that formal strategic planning as a discipline and strategic planners do not make strategic decisions, but that people and organizations do. Sometimes strategic planning is used as a discipline within which to do this or seem to do this. SP provides a forum for announcing, selling, negotiating, rationalizing and legitimizing strategic decisions, and it also offers means for controlling their implementation. These roles are as important as the more usually noted role of providing information to improve the content of strategy.
Therefore, plans become communication media and devices for control. Planners become finders of strategy (pattern recognizers, whether emergent or deliberate), analysts, catalysts and even strategists (using imagination).
Formal Strategic Planning in a dynamic environment (one changing frequently in an unpredictable fashion) is basically nonsensical.
Strategic Analysis is better at this point. This is basically the analysis of specific issues that are to be fed into the strategy making process on an ad hoc basis (examples including benchmarking, decision-making). The process is one of analysis of hard data for managers, performing external strategic analysis, internal strategic analysis, and investigating intended (proposed) strategies. This latter step occurs only after the strategy making process.
Copyright © Dr. Michael W. Pitts
This page last updated November 1995
A quiz
Chapter 1 summary
Top of page
Home