Validate Organizational Vision Mission and Values Statement

Strategic Plan Research In order to develop an effective strategic plan for a given business organization, research into that organization's specific values, mission, and overall vision needs to be conducted, and an awareness of the internal and external operating environments must also be obtained. In other words, a fundamental part of strategic planning is conducting research, and in fact without this underlying research strategy is ultimately useless.

Knowing the company as well as the industry, community, and network of trade in which the company operates is essential to developing a specific, workable strategy that will take advantage of opportunities presented in these areas and minimize the company's exposure to associated risks. Certain areas of the research methodologies necessary in strategic planning are outlined below, as a general guide for more company-specific inquiries into strategy.

Any strategic plan must uphold an organization's culture, and as such even the research phase of strategic planning must take place with an awareness of the vision, mission, and values of the company. By using these elements to specifically guide the research -- not in the collection of facts, but in the degree to which certain facts are paid more attention and in how these facts are analyzed -- direct strategic recommendations can be made from the research.

That is, the values, mission, and vision of the organization will not be used to create blinders or biases in the research being conducted, but will inform how all information obtained through the research is perceived in its relation to the company's strategic objectives and its underlying culture. This will reinforce these positions. When it comes to determining the external operating environment of a company, an excellent resource is Hoovers, a company dedicated to market and company analysis.

Hoovers (2012) is a pay-for-service website, where individual reports can be purchased or memberships can be obtained, although such memberships are generally too expensive for academic research purposes. Some organizations have access to Hoover's data through corporate memberships, however, and this makes it a potentially free source of information if some outside assistance in obtaining appropriate research articles is a possibility.

Individual reports are also not too prohibitively expensive, especially if multiple researchers wished to utilize (and split the cost of) the reports, which makes this company a strong contender for providing this research with reliable and current external environment analysis. As a source for information on the internal environment of a company, there are few better places to turn than to the.