Assignment 1: TOPIC: What is Strategic Planning?ONLY NEED 300 WORDS

Following the completion of this week's reading/lessons assignments, complete each of the following:

•Write a one-two sentence personal definition of strategic planning. Base your definition on what you have encountered in the reading/materials this week, as well as on what you have already learned about the topic.

•Discuss this statement by Roger L. Martin: ". . . good strategy is not the product of hours of careful research and modeling that lead to an inevitable and almost perfect conclusion. Instead, it's the result of a simple and quite rough-and-ready process of thinking through what it would take to achieve what you want and then assessing whether it's realistic to try. If executives adopt this definition, then maybe, just maybe, they can keep strategy where it should be: outside the comfort zone."

•Finally, describe the differences between strategic planning and business planning.

ASSIGNMENT 2: RESPOND TO DISSCUSION BELOW (ONLY 100 WORDS)

In defining strategic planning, I believe that it is a disciplined effort that produces fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, who it serves, what it does, and why it does it, with a focus on the future. Effective strategic planning articulates not only where an organization is going and the actions needed to make progress, but also how it will know if it is successful through the use of models and other organizational sources.

Base of the statement made by Roger L. Martin it is believed that he is referencing the strategic planning and explaining that the number of hours or research put into a strategic model has no barrings on the success of a business as a whole. It depends on the what is done to separate a business from many of the other businesses out there advertising the same products in the same price range.

The statement references stepping outside of your comfort zones and doing things outside of the box in order to create a business environment that is successful but at the same time offers the public and employees a suitable, pleasant and different shopping experience where there is constantly being changes made to create an out of the box enivonment.

According to the definition of Strategic planning, it is an organizational management activity that is used to set priorities, focus energy and resources, strengthen operations, ensure that employees and other stakeholders are working toward common goals, establish agreement around intended outcomes/results, and assess and adjust the organization's direction in response to a changing environment . Whereas business planning contents a lot less and is only a written description of your business's future, a document that tells what you plan to do and how you plan to do it.

ASSIGNMENT : RESPOND TO DISSCUSION BELOW (ONLY 100 WORDS)

Business lends itself nicely to analyzing the fundamental aspects of strategic planning. Interestingly, it is not the only avenue of which to view strategic planning and most likely, not the first. The fundamentals of strategic planning are actually rooted in one of human's oldest habits-waging war.

Strategic planning, in either arena, involves analyzing the current state of affairs, defining a clear objective, and understanding the multiply decisions, external factors, and causations needed to move from the current state to the desired. In essence, a strategic plan is a road map that bridges between the status quo and some chosen objective.

I am currently enrolled in a mastery level course offered by the Naval War College entitled Strategy and War where we apply the strategic theories of Carl Von Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, and Alfred Thayer Mahan to wars fought throughout history. In week one of MGMT615, I have already begun to see parallels between the two courses.

Martin's comment highlights strategy is less an exact science of balancing debits and credits but rather a thought experiment weighing consequences in terms of potential gains and risks of pursuing an object (2014). The distinction between a strategy and a plan can be measured by the amount of unknowns. Martin highlights that managers often fall into the trap of turning a challenge into a problem with a known solution (2014).

This habit of thought is one of the "comfort traps" many executives fall into because it allows them to rationalize the problem. The truth is, a strategy is full of unknowns and oversimplifying often leads to plans dying on the vine and failing upon first encounter with the unknown (or the enemy).

Two great quotes come to mind with this lesson. The first is a classic by Albert Einstein: "If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it." This quote can be used to describe a strategy, not a plan, because the complex nature of the task will often lead individuals to thinking the objective is impossible, at first glance.

The second is from Carl Von Clausewitz's military strategy classic, On War: "Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult" (1984). The quote highlights the ease of oversimplifying strategic planning. History displays all too often that the guaranteed "short war" is often the first of many fatal flaws and that lead to the fall of some of the most powerful societies in history. The same is true in business.