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The function of strategic planning is to position a company for long-term growth and expansion in a variety of markets by analyzing its strengths and weaknesses and examining current and potential opportunities. Based on this information, the company develops strategy for itself. That strategy then becomes the basis for supporting strategies for its various departments.

This is where all too many strategic plans go astray-at implementation. Recent business management surveys show that most $\text{CEOs}$ who have a strategic plan are concerned with the potential breakdown in the implementation of the plan. Unlike $1980s$ corporations that blindly followed their $5-$year plans, even when they were misguided, today’s corporations tend to second-guess.

Outsiders can help facilitate the process, but in the final analysis, if the company doesn’t make the plan, the company won’t follow the plan. This was one of the problems with strategic planning in the $1980s.$ In that era, it was an abstract, top-down process involving only a few top corporate officers and hired guns. Number crunching experts came into a company and generated tome-like volumes filled with a mixture of abstruse facts and grand theories which had little to do with the day-to-day realities of the company. Key middle managers were left out of planning sessions, resulting in lost opportunities and ruffled feelings.

However, more hands-on strategic planning can produce starting results. A recent survey queried more than a thousand small-to-medium sized businesses to compare companies with a strategic plan to companies without one. The survey found that companies with strategic plans had annual revenue growth of $6.2$ percent as opposed to $3.8$ percent fo the other companies.

Perhaps most important, a strategic plan helps companies anticipate-and survive-change. New technology and the mobility of capital mean that markets can shift faster than ever before. Some financial analysts wonder why they should bother planning two years ahead when market dynamics might be transformed by next quarter. The fact is that it’s the very pace of change that makes planning so crucial. Now, more than ever, companies have to stay alert to the marketplace. In an environment of continual and rapid change, long range planning expands options and organizational flexibility.

 

It can be inferred from the passage that, in general, strategic planning during the 1980's had all of the following shortcomings $\text{EXCEPT}.$

  1. A reliance on outside consultants who did not necessarily understand the nuts and bolts of the business
  2. A dependence on theoretical models that did not always perfectly describe the workings of the company.
  3. An inherent weakness in the company's own ability to implement the strategic plan.
  4. An excess of information and data that made it difficult to get to key concepts.

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