ABSTRACT
In part 1 of this book we looked at some of the ways in which strategic planning has developed and examined the various schools of thought. We then sought to adopt a first principles approach to help demystify the perceptions of complexity and sophistication that have grown up around strategic planning, drawing a distinction between the context, the process and the content ‘dimensions’, and we identified the four fundamental questions to be addressed in developing a strategic plan and so provide an outline framework of the stages involved to answer these. We considered the principal activities – strategising, organising, learning and leadership – and introduced the concept of sensemaking as a powerful motivation and how it could be considered as an organisational dynamic at the core of the strategic planning process. We have demystified strategic planning into a process focused on enabling people in an organisation to make sense of where it is going and to work out how it is going to get there.
