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. c
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. c 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.
