What is Strategic Planning?
Strategic planning is the process an organization defines as its strategy to making decisions on allocating resources such as human resources, raw material, and time to reach strategic goals. Strategic planning is forming a plan that distributes resources evenly as well as ensuring raw materials are available when they are needed. The plan or schedule of a project is a visual representation of the strategic planning of time, aw material, and human resources. Strategic planning is a skill that enables "work flow" within in an organization. Work flow is when tasks are moving forward in alignment with the project plan--everyone has the resources they need, all uncertainties have been removed, and team members are working on their assigned tasks. Work flow increases the mood and morale of team members, increases productivity and production, and decreases mistakes and errors. With strategic planning comes the articulation of strategic objectives. Fred Sollish and John Semanik discuss strategic objectives in their book The Procurement and Supply Chain Manager's Desk Reference with this:
"...strategic objectives could be articulated as follows:
"...strategic objectives could be articulated as follows:
- being focused upon core business activities...that are neither considered core competencies nor directly responsible for the organization's competitive advantage;
- leveraging external subject matter expertise...;
- reducing labour-intensive processes and increase of cutting edge, customer-centric activities in locations which exhibit high labour cost and
- understanding the exit criteria for outsourced activities which will lead to a relocation of outsourced activities back to the parent organization..." (Sollish & Semanik, 2012)
Strategic Planning in Leadership
From my experience, when leaders don't give team members some sort of direction and structure to follow, team members will either come to the leader for them to tell them what to do, or this could be a potential for conflict and risks to arise. When there is too many people assigned to a task, team members begin to question, "Why am I even here?," which causes friction within that coworker that could initiate a decrease in behavior or productivity. As a leader, it is critical I find the fine line between of having just the right amount of workers for each work package that is included in the strategic plan. To incorporate strategic planning, I always try to look at each objective from many different perspectives to find the most efficient path.
Artifact
The artifact I have chosen was the second paper we had to write in OGL300 - Theory and Practice of Leadership course. In this paper, I identified the primary characteristics of the Transformational and the Authentic and explained how they help us to understand leadership. I, then, compared and contrasted the key difference between the two leadership styles, gave examples from my personal experience relating to each, and, finally, I identified an experience that involved both of these types of leadership relate to how support and direction was given. Here, I go into the discussion of how each theory of leadership addresses planning processes in their organizations.
Reflection
Project Management & Organizational Leadership
In the professional environment, with strategic planning the organization may never have flow within the organization. Have you ever been at work, doing a task your normally do every day, but everyone is so in-sync that it feels like the positive energy in the room doubles and the team is functioning like "a well-oiled machine." That is what work flow is in an organization. It is one of the greatest feelings at work, and strategic planning gives individuals the direction and objectives they need to create and enhance the work flow and productivity.
Personal Growth & Development
Personally, strategic planning has helped me get through my time in online school. In in a fast-pace, only college environment, it was critical that I use a planner to plan out my semester. The day before classes started, I would always go through the syllabus and course models and write down all of the assignments on the days they were due with a short description of the assignment. I would also include an estimated time it would take me to complete assignments. I would color code each course with a different color that matched in Canvas to help me understand which assignments for what classes. After I had written down all of the assignments for all of the courses I was enrolled in that term, I would go back through with pencil and pencil in a daily plan based on the assignments that week. This gave me the direction I needed to keep myself on track without missing any assignments. Had I not done this strategic planning at the beginning of each course, I would have missed assignment due dates and spend a majority of my time trying to figure out what I needed to do.
Reference: Sollish, F. & Semanik, J. (2012). The procurement and supply manager’s desk reference (2nd ed). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
