Planning is a crucial part of any progress. It is especially important in the sphere of business. Independent business makers and big companies are in equal need of proper projects, a plan divided into stages and the awareness of the business priorities. Planning and strategy provides the business managers with required instructions and a view of the development of their progress or absence of it. Lack of definite strategy is most likely to create confusion and scatter the moods of the employees and managers and loss of discipline and organization. This is why the importance of a strategy and planning for any business cannot be underestimated.
The basis for defining a strategy in a business organization is in identifying its main objective. This element of a strategy statement should not be confused with the list of ethical values and moral preferences of the organization (Collins, Rukstad, 3). Basically, the strategy statement for a business is its initial mission, so companies working in the same sphere and doing the same kinds of business will end up having similar strategy statements. This mission definition, though, is quite impractical and cannot serve as a strategic goal of a company. A proper and useful strategic goal is to be very specific, so if the company’s mission is to maximize its revenue or increase the number of customers, the goal has to elaborate on the ways this mission will be achieved.
In order to create a proper strategy the manager needs to carefully learn their business and all of its aspects. After mission of the company has been stated, and the values and goals of it have been established, the best research that can help a manager to identify their business strategy is SWOT analysis. The name of this analysis is an acronym, which means “Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats” (Olsen, par. 6).
Basically, all of these aspects of a business need to be characterized and analyzed so that the manager is aware of what they should look into developing their business, what they should avoid, what kind of obstacles they will be facing and what the ways of development for their business are. After all of these qualities are established the manager is responsible for sharing the strategy with the employees.
Creating a shared knowledge of the company’s strategies and goals is the best way to achieve collective agreement at the workplace and enforce all employees to work for one goal and gradually move towards the desires results and success. Establishing steps of achieving certain goals is also a great way to strengthen the manager’s leadership. In this case the manager would be putting into practice a Path-Goal leadership theory (Martin, 1).
Employing this approach the leader needs to communicate the strategy of business development to their employees, identify all of its parts and stages, explain some of the challenges and ways of dealing with them. Basically, the leader working by means of this theory is to draw a path towards the goal for the workers and then make sure to emphasize every stage of development and every successful move of the company, informing the workers about the progress, possibly, rewarding the best and most devoted employees and motivating the rest.
This kind of approach creates the state of awareness and organization in the company, it shows that the leader has everything planned and keeps an eye on the working process, which sets discipline and confidence among the employees and shows the importance of having a business strategy.
Works Cited
Collins, David. J., Rukstad, Michel, G. “Can You Say What Your Strategy Is?” Harvard Business Review 86.4 (2008): 82-90. Print.
Olsen, Erica. How to Write a Strategic Plan. 2010. Web.
Martin, Robin. “PathGoal Theory of Leadership.” Encyclopedia of Group Processes & Intergroup Relations. Ed. John M. Levine and Michael A. Hogg. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2009. 636-637.