1 One of the critical success factors in strategic planning

1. One of the critical success factors in strategic planning is employee involvement. While I firmly believe in engaging all stakeholders in the strategic planning process, how they are engaged is extremely important. This short article (http://work911.com/planningmaster/faq/processwho.htm) talks about the practically of involving employees in the strategic planning process.

What’s your opinion on who to involve in the planning process? What trade-offs do you see with your view of stakeholder involvement?

Solution

The most important and very first step in development of a strategic plan is to decide who needs to be involved in the planning process itself. It is the role of management committee to decide whom to involved in the planning process and how to involve them as mentioned article said that it is almost impossible to involve all the stakeholders, or all the employees of the organization to involve in the planning, the role of management committee is to identify different people to involve in planning process in different ways. No doubt, engaging all stakeholders in strategic planning process is very important but how and at what stage they should be engaged is also equally important. According to me the one who will be implementing the plan, those who will be affected such as users and members, those who will going to monitor the implementation like management committee and those who contribute to its development like employees, funding agency and community activist, these all should be engaged in strategic planning process. Because stakeholders at different level have different knowledge, experience and ideas, which all are required in a successful strategic planning. But their knowledge and ideas can be useful at different level of planning process so it is most important for management committee to identify the role of different stakeholder at different stages of planning process. Engaging all stakeholders who are going to contribute in process is also important because people who participate in planning process or decision making process affects their feelings towards their work, they started feeling degree of ownership and become more committed to that work and when more people involved in any process of common interest, the quality of result is better. Involvement from all stakeholders in the strategic planning process by people of different level and at different stages tends to generate better outcomes.

Hence according to me stakeholders to be involved in planning process that has their interest in the success of the company. Besides Management committee and owners, they include employees, community members, regulatory agencies, shareholders, supply chain partners, customers, unions etc. They all have unique viewpoint about organization’s success. Employees know the weaknesses and strengths of company hence they understand what should be done to success. External stakeholder’s opinions are valuable in the starting stages of planning as to visualize the future of company.

We can engage stakeholders by communicate and sharing information in determined way. For example, internal stakeholders of the organization should know the direction in which organization is going so that they can line up their work with those goals. While external stakeholders needs to be understand what value this process going to provide its customers and to market.

Organization, in strategic planning process should ensure that people should know about the plan and hence it need to actively involve stakeholders in the strategic planning process.

For a successful strategy planning, it will be required for a senior management to understand the alternative and the trade-offs of each. Manager have to take decision involving trade-offs among stakeholder’s. Committee has to decide, which group of stakeholders can effectively contribute in what stage of planning process. As I discuss above that external stakeholder’s opinion matters in early stage of process hence they should be engaged in early phase of process. Management committee should engage different stakeholders as per their requirement and they have to identify which requirement will be fulfilled by whom.

According to me, management committee should understand the importance of all stakeholder’s decisions and perspective in successful strategic planning process and hence all stakeholders must be included as per their requirements at different stages of whole process.