When evaluating the effectiveness of a strategic plan, you must first understand the
definition of strategic pan; the strategic plan is a way to provide the organization with a way
to define the purpose, vision and future of said organization. To evaluate the effectiveness of
said plan you must record the progress of your company by determining the future of the
company and how the company is heading now. You have to be able to assess the situation
of the organization to see if the objective has been met or if the plans that you set up have
failed and why it has. It cases such as these the organization has to rely on what we learn
previously the component of strategic planning: SWOT analysis, vision, mission, core value,
goals and objectives. These components are most valuable to effectiveness of said strategic
planning.The most important piece of information to consider when determining
effectiveness are the components that I mentioned because they help manage the work
environment between the employee and the employer while keeping the vision of the
organization as the main goal. Because strategic planning forces companies to adopt a long-
term view, it helps them better prepare for the future, setting them up to initiate influence
instead of just responding to situations. It also strengthens communication between
employers and employees. In strategic planning, leaders gather data and decide on the path
the organization will take to achieve its goals. With strategic thinking, employees at all
levels and in all functions continually scan for new ways to contribute to the organization’s
success.Strategic planning makes organizational goals and objectives real, and employees
can more readily understand the relationship between their performance, the company’s
success, and compensation. As a result, both employees and managers tend to become more
innovative and creative, which fosters further growth of the company.The purpose of
strategic control is to steer a business toward its long-term goal by controlling its strategic
direction. The strategic control definition states that the process tracks a strategy during its
implementation period and detects changes or problems that may affect the outcome. It then
makes adjustments to avoid such problems. When evaluating the effectiveness of a strategic
plan, you need to look at all of the different levels. Starting with making sure that your
strategic plan is in-line with your visions and goals. These may have changed over time, so
make sure that it is the current vision and goals that you are working with and not back
tracking. The next thing that you want to evaluate is SWOT and the balance scorecard.
Making sure that you do not ignore SWOT and find your company failing to fix the
weaknesses and threats as well as capitalizing on the strengths and opportunities. Make sure
you have a strong team working with you on your plan. Listen to their input and take into
consideration that what they bring to the table could make something even better. Let them
play devils advocate, as this can help work out any kinks in the plan. Pay attention to the
actual structure of your company and if the plan that you are working on fits or will you
need to do some restructuring of the company. Evaluating an effectiveness to a strategic plan
would not overwhelm your business or employees it is intended to drive results. For
example, place measurements on three areas of the organization objectives. Looking into the
internal and external objectives with the plan on how you can achieve them within the plan.
It will only effective if the resources are used on the metric objectives that are tied to the
plan. Ask in planning scenario for the long-range planning what should be stopped, what is
not working? An evaluation of the strategy plan needs to happen yearly in my opinion to
explore the planning, leading, and controlling within the organization or department. The
last process is determining what is working and how can it be improved or updated to
current business trend.The important piece of information to consider the effectiveness of
strategy is the employee input. Coming up with the three-step process strategy plan looking
at employee onboarding/continue training. My management asked the three questions – Is
there something we should be doing, what should be stopped or is not working, and what is
working and needs to continue. Our organization is always trending to the next generation of
technology which means processes are constantly evolving. Listening to net promoting
process with employees was showing metrics that were failing in employee satisfaction and
security. Stepping back to monitor and evaluate developed a strategic plan on what needs to
happen. Remember is the employees are not considered important input then business will
struggle in many areas. The effectiveness in planning session broke down important
components that will be targeted this calendar year. Well to evaluate the effectiveness of a
strategic plan you have to examine hot it links your objectives to the way you plan to
achieve them and the means you plan to use. the strategies are effective if it uses the
resources, you allocate according to your plan and delivers to expected results. I think you
need to take a look at all the aspects of a strategic plan, planning, leading, organizing and
controlling. Some will be more important than others or useful then others. I think you need
to look at what the goal is for the future for the company and go from there what you want
to do. I know with my company my goal is to grow my company bigger, have some loyal
customers, which I do already have a few and they have been spreading the word to friends
and family. and to be able to hire some employees eventually, so it's not just me working
and I have some people that I can rely on and that will help with making my company better.
To evaluate the effectiveness of a strategic plan there must be a time set aside to do a
feedback session to discuss what is working, what is not working, what improvements need
to be done, if the plan is still aligned with the organization’s objective. If the results
expected are not being delivered, this could be a result that the plan is not working and
needs to be modified. If the plan was not attainable or measurable, it will most likely not
reach the expected result. Strategic plans are just what they are, they are plans. Plans can be
changed or tweaked at any time. Once it realized that it is not effective, changes should be
made to ensure avoid costly mistakes. Your vision provides support for a strategic plan and
typically outlined an organization's overall goals and states the purpose of the company to
exist. For these reasons is why i feel the vision and mission are important information to
consider. The management process designs and manages an atmosphere in which workers,
working together in groups, achieve selected goals effectively. When looking at the strategic
planning efforts consisting of planning, leading, organizing, and controlling some tend to
think the effectiveness of the strategic plan are based on the final results of the given focus.
I think the way I would look at evaluating the process would go a little deeper beyond the
final outcome, I would try to look at each step of the strategic plan and understand the value
and guidance each section had given to the final outcome. I believe this is the only way to
ensure the effectiveness of the strategic plan was developed correctly. Taking this
information into account for the next strategic plan could benefit an organization by
reducing some of the issues that arose on the way to completing the goals outlined and
generate an even better outcome for future endeavors. I don’t believe that there is a single
piece that is greater than the other when it comes to strategic planning, I believe that each
section has a vital part in obtaining the goals of the organization. To look at an individual
section within the plan and say this is the reason why this plan was effective misses the
guiding principles from other sections of the plan that might have helped the other sections
be successful. This is why I believe that in order to have a successful strategic plan in place
the organization needs to value each section to ensure the goals are met. Evaluating the
effectiveness of a strategic plan determines is the plan was measurable and what the
expected results would be. Strategic planning is the method of recording and directing your
small company by determining where you are as well as where you are going. The strategic
plan provides you with a place to document your purpose, vision, and principles, as well as
your long-term objectives and the action plans that you will use to achieve them. A well-
written strategic plan will play a vital role in the development and progress of your small
company. When your plan is fully implemented, you will measure its overall success by
asking to what degree it has accomplished the objectives you have set with the funds you
have allocated. You have to assess where your action plan has failed if your project has not
met its targets or used up extra resources. Without these four management functions/aspects,
you can not assess effectiveness: planning, leading, organizing, and controlling. They are
inter-related and cannot be skipped. The management process designs and manages an
atmosphere in which workers, working together in groups, achieve selected goals
effectively. The three major strategy types include Cost Differentiation (or low cost
leadership), differentiation (from a product or service perspective), and finally focus (or
niche). A couple of examples that I can think about includes Walmart, which implemented a
low cost differentiation strategy and Hot Topic, which uses a niche strategy type. Many
organizations use hybrid strategies, which uses characteristics from the three major strategy
types. This is sometimes referred to as a best value strategy.
It is important for a company to properly recognize how they want to operate and take the
steps to implement the right strategy type. An organization that targets a specific market
population should make sure that their products or services are tailored to meet the demands
of that group. If an organization selects a low price strategy, then it has to make sure their
business model allows selling products or services at a discounted price. To evaluate the
effectiveness of a strategic plan you could examine how it connects your objectives to the
way you plan to achieve them and the means you plan to use. You could check up on the
progress of your strategy on a regular and scheduled basis to see if your plan is still on track.
I believe that performing a situation analysis, self-evaluation, and internal/external
competitor analysis could also evaluate the effectiveness of a strategic plan. The most
important piece of information to consider when determining effectiveness is whether or not
you know your mission and vision. Your mission aligns your people and your organization,
it is the thing that will help you accomplish your vision. It helps you focus your team on
what you need to work on the be better and successful as well as what you don't need to
waste time working on. Your vision provides support for a strategic plan and typically
outlined an organization's overall goals and states the purpose of the company to exist. For
these reasons is why i feel the vision and mission are important information to consider.
When evaluating the effectives of a strategic plan, you must determine if the strategic plan
was measurable. Once that has been determined, then it must be decided what were the
expected results. To evaluate the effectiveness of a strategic plan there must be a time set
aside to do a feedback session to discuss what is working, what is not working, what
improvements need to be done, if the plan is still aligned with the organization’s objective.
If the results expected are not being delivered, this could be a result that the plan is not
working and needs to be modified. If the plan was not attainable or measurable, it will most
likely not reach the expected result. Strategic plans are just what they are, they are plans.
Plans can be changed or tweaked at any time. Once it realized that it is not effective,
changes should be made to ensure avoid costly mistakes. My current employer requires
performance reviews. During those performance reviews each employee provides goals and
those goals are encouraged to align with the organization’s values. During the conversations
with management, they would say make sure the goals were attainable and measurable. In
my opinion, the most important piece of information to consider when determine
effectiveness, is the results. If the results are not being monitored, that means the
performance is not being evaluated. This could result in resources not being used in the most
effective way. On the flip side that may be more resources that need to be allocated in order
to achieve the results. Not monitoring the results could also lead to costly mistakes that
could impact the organization in a negative way. When thinking about the aspects of
planning, leading, organizing, and controlling through the strategic planning process there
are many things that can be done to measure success and evaluate the effectiveness of the
strategic plan for a company. I really enjoyed the readings this week and specifically the
callout to the "strategy graveyard" which is strategic implementation. A company can have
all the strategy plans in the world but if structure falls before strategy and if there is no
alignment in the organization on the strategic priorities then implementation and
effectiveness will lose every time. When the leadership team is reviewing and conducting
the SWOT analysis and defining the key measures of success on their balanced scorecard, it
is imperative that the objectives of the strategic plan are clearly defined and are written in
the way that it is clear what will be true if the objective and goals are met. From there, the
leadership team needs to have transparent and clear communication consistently across the
board so that the business is in alignment on the priorities of the strategic plan and
understand how each and all can make an impact on its success. Finally, the most important
piece of information to consider how to evaluate effectives will be that the inputs and
outputs are in alignment with the business values, as well as the appropriate awards system
is in place to invent ethical behaviours to help the organization win in the right way.
Strategic planning involves analyzing the organization's positive opportunities, threats,
strengths, and weaknesses. Also, strategic planning determines how to position the
organization to compete effectively. Strategic planners provide detailed analyses of a
company’s internal and external and apply them to quantifiable areas like prices, costs,
margins, market demand, production runs, and head counts. The executives allocate the
growth annually and based on the analysis, the company adjusts the vision, goals, mission,
and values. The executive team will implement the new strategies in their company
planning. The most important part of strategic planning is planning and goals. I was a
Market Operations Manager at my previous employer, and our duties were to plan our
projects and ensure our goals were effective. More than often some of our Market Leads'
goals were not specific, and the data used was not well thought out. To be more effective
when aligning your company objective and goals implement a system that manages your
progress. As a leader, I always kept a spreadsheet for my recording to make sure my goals
were on their stated task. I watch my timeline carefully and automated my projects. If all
the ideas and concepts are created in a closed room and they aren't open shared in a
consistent way, then it leaves the vast majority of the organization in the dark. This, in turn,
creates misalignment because the understanding of the why, how, and what isn't clear and all
just continue on in their day to day. As to your question on rewarding ethical behaviors, I
would refer to the Wells Fargo example in our reading. Their rewards system was focused
heavily on growth in accounts and their core values were not strong enough to counter
balance the unethical behaviors and activities that led to team members cloning and creating
fake accounts to hit objectives. The goals were unrealistic and the leadership team didn't
reinforce the right road to take to get there, leaving team members to make poor decisions.
Leaders and front line team members must clearly understand the goals, their role in helping
the company win, and ensuring core values are not overlooked to achieve them. Businesses
do themselves a big disservice if they don't put a non-strategic plan into action. An
organization's business model, as well as new missions and innovations, are explained more
clearly with the aid of strategic planning. Communication is one of the most crucial planning
procedures in a business. Employee performance and purpose alignment are both improved
when they are aware of a company's plan. For the team to establish what works and what
doesn't, a well-organized strategy should be documented and examined on a monthly or
quarterly basis. Linking the objectives and or goals, is essential. The use of SWOT is an
effective tool. Know that is will more likely that the organization will fail if it is not grasped
by all throughout the organization. Top to bottom and vice versa, will have to buy into the
goal. This is why the planning, leading, organizing, and controlling is so important. A
company with a strategic plan can predict significant growth in earnings and sales revenue
over the coming year. Strategic planning broadens a business vision and mission which
drives goals toward success. It lays forth a company’s vision for expanding its organization's
potential to spark innovation and ignite growth. It helps identify opportunities that would
otherwise not be present and help further develop new opportunities and development. When
establishing new priorities several changes must occur to begin evaluating the present
internal and external areas for improvement. A company with a strategic plan can predict
significant growth in earnings and sales revenue over the coming year.
