Question 1

Identify an organization -- real or hypothetical (made up) -- for which you are helping design at strategic planning process. Prepare a post of at least 250 words that outlines the approach and activities you recommend the organization use to conduct an environmental scan and identify the organization's strategic issues.

Be as specific as possible (e.g., if you suggest a meeting or workshop, note a question or two that would be posed to the group), and note how the approach and activities contribute to identifying strategic issues. Include a short description of the organization in your post to give your fellow students the background they need to understand the organization.

Question 2

Think about the organization you work for or another organization with which you are familiar. Identify one strategic issue facing the organization and one operational issue facing the organization. Explain why each is strategic or operational. Please refer to the text and think about the distinctions between strategic and operational.

Question 3

Imagine that you are one of two people who are leading in a strategic planning effort for a fair-sized government agency/department. You are in the second or third meeting of the strategic planning team, and several participants in the planning group get into a heated discussion about the missteps in an emergency response several months ago. You are concerned this could derail the planned discussion about strategic issues for the organization.

Think about and outline in approximately 250 words what you would say and approaches you would use to defuse the situation and refocus participants on the need to identify strategic issues as part of the strategic planning process. Use our text, your own experiences with people, and other resources as needed.

Question 4

Public, private, or non-profit

The textbook for this course focuses on strategic planning for public and non-profit organizations -- organizations with a public service focus.

Strategic planning also is important and is used in the private sector (business and industry). Given what we have learned so far from our readings, describe and explain at least one way in which purposes, content, and development process of strategic plans for private sector organizations would likely be similar to that for public and non-profit organizations and at least one way the purpose, content, and development process might be different for private sector organizations. Include at least one reference citation to something in our textbook.