There is a wonderful passage in the movie “Alice in Wonderland”.
What road do I take? Question Alice to the rabbit cat. And the cat rabbit responds:
_ Where do you want to go girl?
_ Where do I want to go? I do not know. Alice responds.
_ If you do not know where to go … any road is good. Affirms the rabbit-cat so wisely.
This somewhat philosophical passage is an incentive to invest the time and energy to develop good strategic planning within organizations. Perhaps insignificant results and low productivity are a reflection of the lack of direction.
Strategic planning is important to organizations for a variety of reasons, including the ability to know themselves as to the weaknesses and threats that such vulnerabilities may bring about. It notes that Strategic Planning has been used by few companies in Brazil. The main cause would be the fear of executives that Strategic Planning is very sophisticated and requires large teams with high salaries. In logistics, this approach is even less accessible, possibly so it should be in the service market.
There are numerous books released that deal with a very practical way of doing a strategic planning. A good read is the book by Idalberto Chiavenato and Aaron Sapiro, Strategic Planning, Fundamentals and Applications. It presents all the steps of the strategic planning process – from strategic intent to final result – constituting a manual for the preparation of the strategic plan for profit and non-profit organizations, public or private companies, small, medium or large companies, family businesses or enterprises of any size or purpose. It’s worth studying.
At TRANS REID, our experience is quite interesting. We made the first strategic planning in 2011 and it was very complex, which made it difficult to communicate to all sectors of the company the plan of action. Over the years, we have been improving and simplifying our strategic planning and today, in addition to succinctly, it has become a bussle for our business. We have learned to make process management and performance evaluation more assertive and with recurring feedback. The more simplified and well communicated, the better the results.
We believe that our team works very committed to the strategic planning designed, we believe that it comes down to “doing things”. That simple. Without losing the focus and direction of where we want to go.