Small Business Matters: Strategic Management

 

 

Over the years, strategic planning has grown into what is known in the industry as strategic management. Strategic management converts the strategic planning strategies that many organizations use as a one-time event into an ongoing management process. Effective strategic management consists of the following four steps:

 

1. Strategic Thinking. This first step in the process focuses on internal and external influences. You should conduct an environmental scan that examines your needs as identified by your internal stakeholders: volunteer leadership (board of directors), staff, and customers. The external scan should look beyond your immediate environment to recognize regional, national, and even global issues that may impact your business or market. Your ability to control these environments is limited, but understanding their impact can help you make informed decisions about your future, or what we call "alternative futures."

 

2. Strategic Planning. This involves applying the information obtained from your environmental scan to your organization's current position and future projections. You should revisit and even rewrite, if necessary, your organization's mission. Once your mission is clear, you should create a vision for your organization. Your mission is a daily activity, but your vision gives your mission a long-term focus. Once you are clear about your mission and vision, you are charged with developing a multiyear strategic plan.

 

3. Strategic Implementation. Your plan is just a guide for achieving your performance objectives. During strategic implementation, your strategy will be put into action. Our company developed a strategy called Performance Impact Management, which is designed to help organizations maintain their focus on performance outcomes and impact. For example, meeting a sales goal is a performance out-come for a company's sales department, but the key for measuring organizational success is to understand how those revenues move the business toward achieving its mission and
creating an impact.

 

4. Evaluation Strategies. Although evaluation strategies are the fourth step of management, they are actually developed throughout the strategic planning and strategic implementation processes. As your organization's multiyear plan is developed, you must continually ask, "How will we know we are on target with our goals, and how will we measure success?" Evaluation strategies must be regularly assessed, easily reported, communicated to stakeholders, and open to feedback and change.