Strategic planning is a business concept that’s useful to all businesses and organizations, no matter its size or resources. Strategic planning is incorrectly positioned as a tool only available to big businesses. With the help of a practical and realistic approach to strategic planning, the plan is organization-wide or focused on a major function such as a division or a department. The strategic planning is a management philosophy that serves the purpose of helping an organization does a better job, because planning focuses the energy, resources, and time of everyone in the organization in the same direction. In this article, the author presents some of the practices of strategic planning, why organizations use and don’t use such philosophy in their organizations, benefits and pitfalls. The paper also gives a clear roadmap of the major steps involved in the strategic planning process inside an organization.
Keywords: Best Practices, Planning, Strategic Planning