Description
Planning has always been an evolving field. The rise of strategic planning simply represents one of the latest challenges for the profession. Strategic planning is a disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organizationùor other entityùis, what it does, and why it does it. It helps leaders and decision makers think and act strategically.
Strategic planning doesn't replace comprehensive planning. But if planners expect to be involved with strategic decision making—and they should—they need the appropriate skills.
This book provides a critical examination of strategic planning and how it differs from comprehensive and long-range planning. It emphasizes the challenges these techniques offer the planning professional. It shows how to use various analytical tools including environmental scanning. The techniques described here can help planners, managers, administrators, and policy makers cope with an increasingly complicated and interconnected world. Four case studies—a city, a county, a health agency, and a federal program—show how strategic planning efforts can work effectively in different settings.
The authors argue that strategic planning can enhance the planning profession and make public and nonprofit organizations more effective. Every planner should read this book to learn how!
Table of Contents
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