Introduction
Strategic management plan finds use in promoting strategic leadership as well as in strategic planning to ensure that the business processes of an organization are in line with goals (Probst, Raub, & Romhardt 1999). Strategic plan should reflect the goals and vision that the organization aspires to accomplish within a given period of time. It entails the principles of management that enables the organization to govern its decisions and actions.
It enables an organization to focus its energy on achieving common goals as well as in evaluating and adjusting its operations to be able to respond to the changing environment. It enables organizations to formulate effective means of responding to the hostile environmental conditions by developing consciously responsive ways to the dynamics in the environment (Chen, Hambrick, & Nag, 2007).
Greenwood Nursery’s primary objective is to promote the growth of new wood as well as to maintain healthy fruit formation. Strategic management planning is therefore very important to Greenwood Nursery in ensuring that it maintains sustainability in its environmental operations as well as in ensuring that the communities that it serves are provided with plant species which are able to successfully thrive in the specific environments despite the environmental dynamics.
Greenwood Nursery also needs strategic management plan to develop appropriate cost-cutting measures in its operations and in ensuring strategic leadership in the organization as well as environmental leadership in the community that it serves.
Strategic Management Process
Environmental Analysis
Once an organization has reviewed its objectives, it starts from its current situation to work out a strategic plan that would enable it achieve its objectives. An environmental analysis is done to identify the opportunities available to an organization to enable it meet the set objectives (Davidow, & Uttal, 1990).
The organization has to understand its own capabilities as well as limitations. This would enable the organization choose opportunities which can help it achieve greater success. The organization also has to analyze its external environment which includes the macro-environment that affects all organizations, and the micro-environment which include all those factors which affect organizations in particulars sector.
The macro-environment in this case may include technological, social, economic, as well as political factors. Micro-environment analysis should be very specific to the factors which affect the organization. These factors may include the operational efficiency and capacity of the organization, the organizational structure and image, the organization’s access and utilization of natural resources, financial resources, as well as the key staff among many other factors (Heskett, 1986).
Strategy Formulation
Once the analysis has been done to identify the environmental forces affecting the organization, it now embarks on developing specific strategic alternatives which can be applied to ensure that the organization meets its objectives and mission (Ohmae, 1982).
Implementation
The organization has to decode the complex and abstract terms developed during the strategy formulation process into very detailed policies which can be understood by every individual in the organization at every functional level of the organization. This would help place more emphasis on any practical issues which might not have been understood well at a higher functional level.
Implementation requires that the strategy be developed into specific strategies for each functional unit in the organization. This phase also involves the identification of the required resources as well as adopting the necessary changes in the organization.
This stage involves distributing resources, designing the structure of the organization, managing the organization’s human resources as well as developing the organization’s decision making process. The implementation process involves putting in place benchmarks against which the organization can be measured (Lamb, 1984).
Evaluation
After the implementation, the organization’s processes have to be measured and evaluated to determine the extent of objective achievements. The internal and external factors have to be evaluated so as to obtain facts which are used to consider possible corrective measures. The process should determine the organization’s suitability, acceptability as well as feasibility (Lamb, 1984).
Greenwood Nursery: Strategic Management Plan
Mission
Greenwood Nursery’s mission is to conserve the environment and to enhance the community’s capacity to improve the quality of the environment.
Core Functions
The core functions of Greenwood Nursery are conservation and stewardship by providing plants species which protect and add aesthetic value to the environment and by enhancing the community’s capacity to ensure environment sustainability. The other core functions include research, analysis as well as information management to enable the organization provide technical services to its customers.
Vision
Greenwood Nursery’s vision is to enhance the community’s capacity to improve the quality of their environment and to add aesthetic value to their environment.
Assessment
An analysis to determine the organization’s performance was done in December 2010 and the compilation of the analysis was as follows.
Strengths
The demand for the organization’s products and plant species continues to rise as the organization maintains workers motivation to perform their duties perfectly. The reputation of the organization has also improved and most customers from the community tend to prefer the organization’s services to other organizations.
Weaknesses
The organization only relies on the internet to market its products and services and also put less effort in ensuring customers and the community involvement.
Opportunities
It is important that the organization adopts a leadership style that is more customer-oriented which would ensure customers and community involvement. It is also important to develop a more comprehensive marketing strategy that involves the use of traditional and modern communication channels. The marketing strategy should also involve measures that focus more emphasis on the customers’ perception and capacity development.
Threats
The major threat on the organization’s operations is inadequate time to follow up community capacity development in ensuring sustainable environment.
Goals
Goal 1: To increase the diversity of plants species in the organization’s nursery and garden.
The organization will carry out research to find more plant species which are appealing to its customers and can easily adapt to the environmental conditions of the region. The organization will also research on the impacts of such new plant species on the environment including their invasive influence on the plant diversity in the organization’s garden and in the surrounding region.
Goal 2: To take a leadership role in developing consistent as well as dynamic working relationships with the members of the community.
In order to achieve this goal, the organization intends to put in place several measures aimed at positive environmental relationship with the community members who are the Greenwood Nursery’s customers. The organization would create a department to offer consultation services to its customers on the maintenance and development processes of the various plant species available in the organization’s garden.
The organizations will also provide outreach education services to the surrounding community to enable them understand the environmental sustainability and how to achieve and maintain environmental quality. In order to achieve positive relationship that would also market the organization’s plant nursery and gardens as well as its services, the organization will also foster relationships with its customers by offering critical health and safety matters associated with the plants.
Goal 3: To enhance the organization’s workers empowerment through retraining and knowledge development.
The organization acknowledges the significance of the human resource in achieving quality services to customers as well as healthy plants. The organization will involve workers in mandatory training programs to enable them better understand the maintenance of the plant species.
This would make them more efficient and effective in the organization’s operations and enable them provide quality services to customers. This would enable the organization develop guidance procedures on how to treat every plant during the plant growth and development. This will be supplied to each customer who buys any plant.
Goal 4: to enhance the customer’s decision making process through improved communication.
The organization will adopt an integrated marketing communication by investing in other traditional channels of communication like TV stations and newspapers to advertise its services. Promotional campaigns will be implemented to ensure that the organization’s reputation reaches the whole nation.
Conclusion
Strategic management has to be adopted and made specific to every functional unit of an organization. Each unit in the organization should also have specific benchmarks to evaluate their performance so as to ensure that every functional unit of the organization is line with the organization’s goals and mission.
Reference List
Chen, M.-J, Hambrick, D. C, & Nag, R. (2007). What is strategic management, really? Inductive derivation of a consensus definition of the field. Strategic Management Journal. 28(9), 935–955. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers.
Davidow, W & Uttal, B. (1990). Total customer service. New York: Harper Perennial Books.
Heskett, J. (1986). Managing in the service economy. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Lamb, R. B. (1984). Competitive strategic management. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Ohmae, K. (1982). The Mind of the Strategist. New York: McGraw Hill, New York.
Probst, G, Raub, S. & Romhardt K. (1999). Managing knowledge. London: Wiley.