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What is Strategic Planning?

Sport organisations, whether they are for-profit or not-for-profit, must surely desire two very important goals. The first goal is survival, that is to continue to exist for many years to come. It can be supposed that there would be few administrators that would knowingly and purposefully allow a sport organisation to fall into decline, and even disappear. The second goal is prosperity, that is the future of the organisation would be better than the present. It would also be supposed that with each passing year, those who manage and administrate sport organisations would want their efforts to result in improve facilities, programs, events, coaching and membership.

What is strategic planning

However, sport organisations do indeed fall into decline and disappear and in fact it is not so simple to achieve survival and prosperity. The management activity that gives the sport organisation the best chance to achieve these goals is strategic planning.

In any situation, for an organisation or an individual, the basic purpose of strategic planning is determine where you want to go and how you are going to get there. An individual, for example, might desire a particular career at some distant time in the future. They have to consider what steps they must take over the next few years to obtain the qualifications and experience needed to be successful. Organisations, like individuals, must also determine what sort of future is desirable, and then determine how this is to be achieved. Whenever an organisation or an individual sets a course of action to be taken to achieve longer-term goals, they are engaging in strategic planning.

There's a lot of terminology in strategic planning, and it is often misused. However, there are two terms that are relatively simple to understand and very pertinent to the activity of strategic planning. These two terms are as follows:

Returning therefore to the above statement that the basic purpose of strategic planning is determine where you want to go and how you are going to get there, then:

Read more about developing goals and objectives

In reality, strategic planning is a very necessary activity in life generally. The phrase "Failing to plan is planning to fail" (attributed to Alan Lakein and/or Winston Churchill) is often quoted in strategic planning seminars. If organisations do not engage in strategic planning, their chance of survival and a prosperous future is very much reduced. There are always forces at play that, if given the chance, will exert a negative influence on the organisation. For example, any of the following can cause participation loss and detriment to the well-being of the organisation:

Therefore the activity of strategic planning is also about keeping in touch with the real world. It helps those who manage sport organisations to:

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