Strategic Planning

Since the dawn of humanity, humans have been undertaking projects and plans in search of survival strategies, that is, ways to prepare for and secure the future. Initially, projects were tied to the need for organization, aimed solely and exclusively at survival. Planning was done with the purpose of obtaining food, clothing, and shelter. With the emergence of social, business, or public organizations, planning is established with a view to organizing means for growth, development, and even survival against various opportunities and threats from the environment.

Today, with the existence of globalization, major changes in organizational modes, coupled with productive restructuring and changing work management methods—in a world in constant motion—planning is more than necessary for the maintenance of different organizations. After all, how can one face the existing competitiveness, as well as the influence of social, economic, political variables, and legislation that impose delicate situations on organizations?

This is where Strategic Planning comes in, which has been the most widely used management tool by organizations, aiming to boost their businesses and ensure their market permanence. Planning is fundamentally a decision-making process: choosing between alternatives of action. If we have alternatives, we need to know them as well as possible in order to be able to adopt them. A strategy is a plan, that is, a type of course of action, consciously intended, which integrates the major goals of an organization, its policies, and its action sequences cohesively; a guideline or set of guidelines for proceeding in front of a situation.

Thus, Strategic Planning is concluded to be the managerial process that allows establishing a direction to be followed by the company, with the aim of optimizing the relationship between the company and its internal and external environment. After defining the company's mission, vision, and values, the next step is to develop a plan about the stages and methodology of implementing the strategies to be developed by all members of the organization.

The adoption of strategic planning in the company typically requires a substantial change, both in philosophy and in managerial practice. Therefore, strategic planning cannot be implemented solely through simple technical modifications in the organization's decision-making processes and instruments. It is, in reality, an organizational achievement that begins at the level of conceptual changes in management, resulting in new forms of administrative behavior, along with new planning techniques and practices, since planning is not about trying to guess the future but anticipating events.

The main scope of Strategic Planning is the process of identifying occurrences in real-time, projecting trends in a cause-and-effect relationship on the paths to be taken by the organization. It involves what must be done today, based on these perceived occurrences, so as not to be surprised tomorrow. For this to happen, it is necessary to know how to manage real-time information, transforming it into knowledge, and to manage changes permanently, identifying and working on the organization's strengths and weaknesses, as well as identifying threats and opportunities in the market.

The initial phase of implementing strategic planning first involves a diagnostic phase of applying these concepts, that is, to what extent the company's mission is clear to its leaders, internal and external clients.

Considering that successful organizations, aside from the commitment to win and retain satisfied customers, must also be always ready to adapt to continuously changing markets. To this end, market-oriented strategic planning exactly fulfills this function, as it seeks to maintain a viable flexibility of its objectives, skills, and resources, while maintaining a commitment to profit, growth, and its organizational mission.

Strategic Planning, more than a static document, should be seen as a dynamic management tool that contains premeditated decisions about the course of action to be followed by the organization in fulfilling its mission.

The ability of companies to be effective depends solely on decisions made in the past. The decisions made today will be responsible for future options, whether good or bad. Strategic planning requires a vision of how the company needs to operate today—given its competencies and target audience—and how it should operate in the future to achieve the company's mission.