Strategy project planning

In most companies, short and medium term plans are produced or reviewed on an annual basis. There are usually guidelines or traditional practices which determine at what point in the year planning or updating occurs and how it is done. Because of this experience with short and medium term planning, most managers think of planning as a regular or cyclically occurring activity which proceeds in an almost routine fashion. It would be mistaken to think of strategic planning in this way. Decisions as to which markets to serve, what competitive strategies to follow and what investments to make in resources are too important to be approached in this spirit. All strategic decisions have the following characteristics:

• they deal with complex interrelationships

• they occur at irregular intervals

• they are always unique in their scope, in their questions and in the framework of preconditions to be met

• they have a long-term influence on the fate of the company