This document discusses strategic planning and its importance as a management tool. It provides details on strategic planning processes, including analyzing the external environment, developing shared visions and goals, creating strategic and operational plans, and identifying objectives, resources, risks and timelines. The key points are that strategic planning helps organizations anticipate and plan for the future, guides tactical decision-making, and is an important process for setting goals and allocating resources to achieve them.

1. Internal and external Objectives and strategies David Phillips

3. Public Relations is, at its best a management function "Simply put, I have come to understand public relations as a strategic management function that uses communication to cultivate relationships with publics that have a stake in the behaviour of the organization" Grunig http://www.instituteforpr.org/files/uploads/Grunig_Lecture_06.pdf

4. Strategic Planning – the MOST important management tool O’Regan, and Ghobadian demonstrate that Strategic planning is one of the most used and most popular management tools (50% more popular than customer segmentation or customer relationship management). O’Regan, N. and Ghobadian, A. (2005) The strategic planning process: a navigational tool for competitive advantage International Journal of Process Management and Benchmarking, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2005 http://www.inderscience.com/storage/f101138126512749.pdf

5. Strategic Planning is about the future According to George Steiner, strategic planning involves anticipating the future environment, but decisions or plans are made in the present. Steiner, G., Top Management Planning, Simon & Schuster, 1969

6. The Nature of Strategic Planning (Steiner) 1. Strategic planning is both continuous and irregular in response to non-routine stimuli. 2. The problems confronted by strategic planning are unstructured and usually unique. 3. Strategic planning tends to encompass the entire scope of activity of an organization. 4. Strategic planning requires large amounts of information. 5. Strategic planning is heavily dependent upon subjective assessments. 6. Strategic planning usually involves making a choice among a range of alternatives. 7. Uncertainty and risk is high in strategic planning. 8. Strategic planning usually covers a long time period. 9. Strategic planning should guide tactical planning.

9. The people part of strategy development Strategies should become a shared vision (especially inside the organisation) Strategy development is best when it is collaborative Strategy development requires leadership Strategies change – so get used to the idea and don't be disappointed when 'your baby' gets whiskers.

10. Strategic to tactical strategies Corporate Strategy will affect the long term future of the organisation interpreted as corporate mission, aims and objectives. Operational strategies translate corporate strategies, mission, aims and objectives into a manageable and actionable framework that allocates resources.

11. To create strategy we have to: Anticipated benefit Have an understanding of the eventual outcome Identify measurable goals Identify resource options Identify and minimise risk Chose most suited resources Plan and estimate: Cost and time Manning and manpower Managers must make choices

13. Where to begin – with good objectives Overview. We have identified that advances in Reach , interactivity and economic consequences of social media for communication and community building are significant. They affect the Institute; its members; its services and its internal and external relationships. Analysis of existing online interactivity evidences opportunities for improvement. The data suggest that this is a rapidly growing trend. This proposal identifies five specific objectives that need to be met:

14. Where to begin – with good objectives #Objective 1 Within the first quarter of the year: To identify and evaluate the ten most affective media that influence relationships with the CIPR in its effort to meet its strategic objectives ; Identify and evaluate their content and technologies; asses each such media for effect, impact, rate of change and risk; identify required nature and extent of response and interaction. #Objective 2 ....

16. Today we get organised Go back to those honed and practical objectives (OK hone those objectives to make them useful for operational strategy development) Anticipated benefit Have an understanding of the eventual outcome you want to achieve. Identify measurable goals - put in provisional dates

17. What you have to do You can now begin to add more references to the tactical plan such as findings from your landscaping research; types of social media you want to consider with hyperlinks to them on the wiki; examples of this kind of social media in case studies (with hyperlinks to work done by colleagues on the wiki etc).