Set Your Strategic Management in Action

The year 2007 is rapidly coming to a close. With the start of October we are already into the fall holiday backstretch, where the weeks fly by even faster. The best way to close out this business year, especially at the leadership level, is to start thinking about next year.

Most management systems require at least an annual review of company goals and objectives, as well as its vision and mission. Now, not in January, is the time to conduct reviews so that all changes and revisions can be honed and finalized. This allows you to start the New Year with a clear image in place of where your business or department should be going, and to have it well-communicated throughout the organization at the start of the New Year.

In the next few articles we will discuss a foundation of strategic management: setting and reviewing organizational vision and mission; goals and objectives, strategy and tactics. I believe most of you would agree that having a clear destination and planned route is the best way to get somewhere, even in business.

The best way to start the discussion might be to review and clarify some terms and definitions. At times they seem to be used interchangeably and ambiguously, and perhaps it doesn’t really matter as long as they are communicated, understood, and used consistently within an organization (and it doesn’t cause confusion or conflict in interactions with other organizations). For our purposes, however, it will be useful to establish exactly what is meant when you hear terms like goals and objectives.

Vision & Mission – What Are You All About ?

Your organization’s vision and mission statements should encapsulate your organization’s core principles; perhaps you could even call them your meta-goals. It is the starting point for the organization’s goals. It should succinctly tell everyone inside and outside the organization what you are about. Many business experts emphasize the importance of having an inspirational vision and mission statement that motivates and rallies members of the organization.

Organizational Goals

Goals should be general and somewhat open ended. While vision and mission should encompass the whole organization, individualized goals should be created for all segments of the organization. Goals are usually not specifically measured, because they are too general. For example, a personal goal might be to be well-educated. How do you measure that? In a business your goals should focus on the core processes that are key to you business success.

SMART Objectives

Objectives, unlike goals, should be very specific, and should be created to fulfill goals. We frequently hear the term SMART goals, but the acronym is more appropriately applied to objectives. They should be specific, measurable, attainable, relative and time-based. So while a personal goal of being well-educated may be vague, its associated long-term and short term objectives should not be. So the long term objective may be to receive a bachelor degree in engineering, and short term objectives to pass 4 required/elective courses each semester.

Strategies – The Action Plans

Strategies are the action plans that will help you achieve the objectives. Continuing with our education example, your strategies for getting a degree may be to attend community college for two years and receive an associate degree, then transfer to a state university to receive your bachelor degree.

Tactics – Deploy Your Strategy

Tactics are the very specific, functional level activities that carry out your strategies. In our education example, the tactics would involve completing course schedules and registering for classes, then attending classes and completing course work in order to satisfactorily pass the course.

Understanding and using all of these terms are important to improving your business and organization, and now we are all on the same page in terms of their definition. In the coming weeks we will discuss in more detail how to use them in your strategic management and provide examples that will clearly show you how to use them yourself.

For a deeper understanding of process improvement programs for your organization, attend the next Implementing Lean Thinking or How to Align a System of People and Processes for Results class. If you are eager to learn more about creating more order out of the chaos you are feeling at work, then the How to Create Well-Defined Processes class is right for you.

To learn more about using effective auditing techniques to improve your organization, attend the next Internal Auditor or Lead Auditor Training Class.

Sphere: Related Content

Add to your favorite RSS readers
			Others
Let others know
		EMail This Post

Posted on Monday, October 1st, 2007 under Business Management & Operations