Running head: ORGANIZING HR PROJECTS 1 ORGANIZING HR PROJECTS 8 Strategic Planning Larry Ratliff HRM 517 Strayer University April 27, 2020 Professor J Young Strategic planning includes ways, activities, or plans set up by the management team to help in sustaining the growth of the organization through guiding developments of programs and building solid financial foundations. Strategic planning is crucial within an organization as it helps in the realization of short and long-term goals (Cassidy, 2016). Since this company has had downsizes in maintaining standards, the cost of embedding HR generalists, and frustrations within business units, there is a need for this strategic planning. This centralized model of delivering HR services will need a team so that the initiation of need changes can be done. This paper provides a brief description of how strategic planning will apply to initiate these changes. Steps of strategic planning The general goal for strategic planning is developing a plan that can help in achieving the overall goals of an organization. Different steps were proposed to help in realization of the set objectives and goals (Cassidy, 2016). Discussed and described the following strategic planning steps: strategic analysis, guiding principles, strategic objectives, flow-down objectives, and portfolio alignment. i) Strategic Analysis Strategic analysis includes identifying and evaluating relevant data. In an organization, there are internal and external environments that need to be analyzed so that the ability to influence performance can be established. In this stage, the SWOT analysis is applied (Gürel, & Tat, 2017). This entails the identification of strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities. The reason for analyzing the external environment is to seek knowledge pertaining to threats as well as opportunities (Cassidy, 2016). The threats, risks, and opportunities within an organization are usually resulted by stakeholders' presence or members of the organization, for example, the employees. Through a critical evaluation of the environment, it's easier to understand what strongholds are there in the current competing positions. ii) Guiding Principles Guiding principle as the second step within strategic planning involves modeling and designing missions and visions (Cassidy, 2016). Within this step, concepts and even ideas are formulated to help in bringing up a framework that will be used in strategic planning. This step is useful since the organization will be able to know where more effort and focus need to be put; so that the desired outcome can be met and achieved and also not to lead the organization astray. A vision is a vividly described statement concerning the future of the organization. Through the vision statement, employee.