Strategic Planning For Dummies®

Chapter 2. Why Strategic Planning Impacts Your Growth

In This Chapter

• Discovering why strategic planning is a leading management tool

• Avoiding failures by making plans

• Leading by example with good strategic goals

• Achieving better results with your strategic plan

• Starting your strategic goals today

Success isn't a matter of chance but rather a matter of choice. This concept really encapsulates why it's important to have a clear strategic direction and strategic plan. Business success isn't going to happen by accident. You must look into the future and create a plan for wherever it is you're trying to go. Forget about failure rates and all that garbage. If you aren't intentional about the direction of your business or department, you aren't likely to get there.

This chapter gives you many reasons why you should care about strategic planning. If you or your boss need convincing, the statistics as well as the intangibles are covered in the sections that follow. A peek at what high‐growth organizations are doing can show you how planning impacts your growth.

Reason #1: Strategic Planning Is the Leading Management Tool

Over the past dozen years, you may have witnessed an explosion in the use of management tools and techniques — everything from Six Sigma to benchmarking. Keeping up with the latest and greatest, as well as deciding which tools to put to work, is a key part of every leader's job. But it's tough to pick the winners from the losers. As new tools appear every year, others seem to drop ...