Introduction
Strategic and Tactical Planning is essential in any business.
Companies develop programmes and schedules to reach their overall targets and goals, and they usually find it useful to separate planning into phases with an accommodative work breakdown structure (WBS). This allows companies to track immediate improvements while evaluating progress toward eventual goals and targets.
The different time frames of the planning process place the focus on time-sensitive aspects of the company's structure and environment. You can differentiate planning based on the time frames of the inputs and expected outcomes.
The essential doesn’t change.”
Samuel Beckett
Strategic Planning Characteristics
Many businesses develop strategic planning, as a high-level summary of activities or events spanning as much as five years.
This programme will identify high level activities and key milestones and will generally consist of between 30 and 50 activities and act as the executive control document.
From the strategic programme other programmes will evolve to capture more detail.
Strategic planning is worthless - unless there is first a strategic vision”
John Naisbitt
Moving away from “Strategic Planning” there is a need to affect “Tactical Planning.”
This focuses on detail like:
What tasks are required to do the project?
How long will each task take?
Who will perform these tasks?
How much is each task going to cost?
Which tasks are more important?
How will a change in one task influence others?
How will the project deadline be me?
Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat”
Sun Tzu Fa
Medium – Short- & Long-Term Planning
Medium-Term Planning
The Medium-Term Planning executes the tactical strategy, this programme is a by-product of the strategic plan and applies more permanent solutions.
Medium term planning can result in 100/150 activities dependent upon the scale of the procedures involved.
The medium-term plan needs to be sufficiently detailed to assess performance and relative actual costs vs, budgeted costs.
At this point the strategic plan may change to reflect fuller Information.
Short -Term Planning
The short-term plan will focus on the weekly tasks that lie ahead. The short-term planning will be seamless with the medium-term planning and acts as a proactive document that measures performance at regular intervals, which in turn feeds into the medium-term plan.
The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.
William Gibson
Long-Term Planning
In the long term, companies will look to solve problems permanently and to reach their overall targets.
They derive their strategies based on past performance.
Long-term planning reacts to the competitive situation of the company in its social, economic, and political environment and develops strategies for adapting its budgets as a look-ahead to inflation and influencing its position to achieve long-term goals.
It examines major capital expenditures such as their procurement procedures and the adequacy of their facilities.
The companies policy and procedures will mould the company's profile to match top management's ideas.
When short-term and medium-term planning is successful, long-term planning builds on those achievements to preserve accomplishments and ensure continued progress and recognition in the marketplace.
You must have long term goals to keep you from being frustrated by short term failures."
Charles C. Noble