Strategic planning is a management tool, period. As with any management tool, it is used for one purpose only: to help an organization do a better job – to focus its energy, to ensure that members of the organization are working toward the same goals, to assess and adjust the organization’s direction in response to a changing environment. In short, strategic planning is a disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, what it does, and why it does it, with a focus on the future.

Duration: 2 Days

Unit Standards

• This course is aligned to Unit Standard 15219 – “Develop and implement a strategy and action plans for a team, department or division”. It is a NQF level 5 course and carries 4

Learning Outcomes

• Developing a strategy for the department/division
• Developing action plans for the department/division
• Implementing action plans
• Reviewing action plans.

Course Outlines

Module 1 Introduction and Definitions

1. Components of
   • strategy
   • Vision
   • Mission
   • Goals
   • Objectives
2. Models for developing strategy
   
   • Model One – “Basic” Strategic Planning
   • Model Two – Issue-Based (or Goal-Based) Planning
   • Model Three – Alignment Model
   • Model Four – Scenario Planning
   • Model Five – “Organic” (or Self-Organizing) Planning
3. Techniques for identifying strengths and weaknesses e.g. SWOT analysis
4. Approaches and tools for strategy implementation e.g. Balanced Scorecard

Module 2 Developing a strategy for the department/division/section

• Analysing the strategic plan of the organisation with a view to aligning the operations of the section/department with it.
• Aligning the mission statement of the section/division/department with the mission statement and strategic plan of the organisation.
• Setting clear objectives
• Involving stakeholders on the process

Module 3 Developing action plans for the department/division/section

• Ensuring that the action plans are in accordance with the strategy
• Ensuring that the action plans are complete and include provision for contingencies
• Documenting the action plans to show tasks, responsibilities, timeframes, performance measures and resource needs.
• Including existing organisational tools for implementing strategy in plans.
• Involving stakeholders in the process.

Module 4 Implementing action plans

• Communicating strategy and action plans to the team, department or division.
• Ensuring that implementation matches specified action plans.
• Ensuring that implementation makes optimum use of available resources

Module 5 Review action plans

• Conducting reviews of the implementation against departmental/divisional/sectional objectives
• Communicating results to stakeholders throughout the process
• Making amendments to plans if necessary to ensure efficiency and effectiveness of department/division/section>