This is an interesting idea. My research has indicated that strategic planning is indicative of the organization's culture, context, and relationship to its environment. Because culture is so ingrained in the strategic planning phenomenon, I am not sure how you could prescribe performance measures that could be used across differing nations?

Dear Harekrishna,

congratulations to your question!!! Just sth i was thinking of as well and a logic consequence to your excellent answer to my question!

I have no great experience in this field. But i think there are some conditions (sine qua non) which should be asked as a kind of common future oriented sense. These should be found and can vary in the cultures to a certain degree, all being sustainable.

So each main culture of a country should make sure, that minority cultures are not hurted by their decisions. The aims should be future oriented in the sense, that money calculation is not based on short term profit, but on a long run calculation including all the cost which are from other departments and ministries and which usually are not put in. So e.g. a lot of chemicals give profit to the producing industry and to the agriculture for a short while but not on the long run and in many areas the farmers cannot pay them and besides its hurting the health of the people who deal with it without the necessary protection and at the end the rest of it in the food is deteriorating everyones health if you eat it. Anyhow the rest of the chemicals is washed into the nature and the sea, free  available for ...  - So a lot of ministries are involved...

We must overcome the isolated thinking, to protect the future of this planet, the nature and included us.

So we could try to invent an interrogatory, which gives points to how much these different obligations are fulfilled. The results could be used in an early state of planning already in order to see, if the planning is going into the right direction.

A major factor contributing to the failure in achieving strategic plans of organizations is Change Management. Most times, good plans that are capable of engendering efficient management of human and material resources are jettisoned and discarded just because the man to implement it was not at the helm of affairs in the planning stage. Individual manager just like politicians, feel they should make their own fresh plans. This leads to wastage and underdevelopment of our organizations.

Dear Harekrishna Misra,

Strategic planning - is one of the functions of management, which is the process of selecting the organization's goals and ways to achieve them. Strategic planning provides the basis for all management decisions, functions of the organization, motivation and control focused on the development of strategic plans. The dynamic process of strategic planning is the umbrella under which hide all management functions that are not taking advantage of the strategic planning, organization as a whole and individuals will be deprived of a clear way of assessing the goals and directions of the corporate enterprise. The strategic planning process provides a framework for the management members of the organization. Projecting all the above written on the realities of the situation in our country, it should be noted that strategic planning is becoming increasingly important for companies that enter into fierce competition among themselves and with foreign corporations.

The concept of "planning" is the definition of goals and ways to achieve them. In the West, business planning is carried out in such important areas as marketing, finance, production and procurement. Of course, all private plans are interrelated with each other.

Some organizations and businesses can reach a certain level of success without spending much effort on a formal plan. Furthermore, strategic planning itself does not ensure success. However, formal planning can create a number of important and often essential enabling factors for the organization.

Best regards, Shafagat

Failure of Strategic Management in an organization can be measured using: 

i) Return on Investment 

ii) Customer Satisfaction Index 

iii) Employee Satisfaction Index 

iv) Whether Vision and Mission are achieved 

v) Met Organizational Objectives or not 

vi) Whether Previously set long term goals are achieved or not. 

This is because all of these parameters are related/dependent on strategic planning/management.

Country Level: Definitely they can be propagated to country level by considering national plans in relation with economy growth rate (GDP), Financial Surplus/deficit, etc.  

All the best. 

Hi everyone,

Interesting discussion. Strategic management, to be truly effective needs to include  a set of processes which involve not just the top of the hierarchy of executive management, but involve a range of creative and innovative processes woven and actively developed throughout the organisation.

My direct experience is in strategic planning, service improvement, and lived experience Consumer Advocacy in the mental heath field. As such many of the most productive discussions involved horizontal-communication and across tables, and importantly, in the coffee breaks.

Capacity-building programs such as Leadership Plus have been promoting more flattened and participatory democracy style experiential training, which pairs up Mentors and Mentees who know each other, and the relationship is guided into a sense of equality and mutuality, where both parties can learn from each other, and knowledge is not simply "handed down from the Mentor to the Mentee." I participated in this a few years ago and I have found this inspiring and helpful in many co-learning relationships.

I can imagine this and similar approaches having many applications in organisations and perhaps in whole countries. Why on earth would managers not want to encourage the flow of thought and innovation from employees throughout an organisation? Who ever could claim convincingly that all the wisdom and knowledge resides at the top? The workers at the front lines observe and think about important issues, needs, lacks, gaps, and innovations all the time. Let's encourage that.

Partnerships and co-production in research and development, and striving to find more opportunities to participate, within new common languages, new forums, working cooperatively, and thinking creatively are increasingly important for strategic management in the mental health arena, and other areasm especially in times when governments are applying pressure on funding, calling for boosts to innovation, and making do with funding stringencies, by working more effectively, in more coordinated ways, and more creatively and strategically. This may sound a rather bitter pill, but there may be issues worth exploring.

As far as governing a country with greater opportunities for participatory democracy and a greater emphasis on  human values and knowledge in our political processes, with genuine evidence based and strategically developed policies, we can only hope.

Regards to all. ASP.

There are some most interesting comments here. I was tempted to answer the question literally by saying that failure of strategic management can often be measured by the departure of the top team - and that certainly does transfer to countries!

More seriously, those running a country have a far more diverse set of stakeholders and their desires to satisfy than those in charge of businesses, especially for those who take a Friedmanist view of business. At national level, even if you could agree a set of KPIs, calculating them is often very difficult. Allan's comments about ways to progress are very much on the point here. I think Nonaka's "middle-up-down" would be a useful recipe, but at country level the problem is there isn't much "Middle" - there tends to be a bit of a disconnect between those governing and those governed. In the UK our local Members of Parliament  are supposed to provide the Middle, and some do, but many are simply robots for their political party's views.

Best wishes,

John E

I think the balanced score card is possibly the best way to measure strategy failure and ensure strategy implementation. It is also very easy to understand.

There is no word failure or fail. Its only absence of Success like darkness is absence of light but in reality there is no darkness. Balanced Training one's mindset results into sweet fruits of no-failure

Interesting question. Usually people ask about success indicators as alternative name of performance indicators or measures. There are reasons of failure rather than measures because nobody measure failure. Focus on success which requires measures. while focus on reasons of failure to avoid or overcome them.

Albert Hirschman's (1970) classic Exit, Voice, and Loyalty comes to my mind...

Interesting question Prof Misra !! For any performance KPis (Key Performance Indicators) and PIs can be identified and developed. Depending on the usage a KPI may be used as a performance drivers or killers. Coming to strategic management;, which deals with the long term goals of an organization or country,  The apex planning body of the organization (Country) need to work out on the vision, goals, strategy, KRAs (Key Result Areas)and KPIs, which needs to be disseminated down the various hierarchical levels. For example; objectives needs to be converted and reflected through the identified composite indicators (CIs), KPIs and PIs (Performance Indicators) at different levels, so that the individual and collective performance can be evaluated for verification of targeted results. For example; the objectives at the National levels needs to be cascaded down the different hierarchical level to the Panchayat. Similarly, the results thus achieved need to be aggregated up from Panchayat level to the National level. Since "failure" is opposite of the success or achieving the results, the same concept of  CIs, KPIs and PIs can be used for measuring whether the strategic management has worked or failed?

Strategic management failure in an organization may be on account of inept assessment of scenarios. Strategic decisions are influenced by various groups like External stake holders, Internal stakeholders, Non dependent groups, Other groups.  Successful implementation of strategy requires proper organizational structure and culture that encourage transparency, communication, participation and empowerment. For successful governance of a democratic country, the same factors are applicable. There should be proper inclusive culture, flexible structure,  peoples' participation and empowerment of all democratic institutions. Finally successful governance of a country demands pragmatism on the part of both the ruling and opposition parties in a democracy. Further strategic planning is generally done for 4 to 5 years, while elected government also governs for 4 to 5 years. Sustainability concept of triple P ( People, Planet & Profit ) is applicable in governance of a country, as government must put equal importance on social, environmental and economic considerations.

Proper prior planning prevents poor performance, for a person or organization or country.

The answer to your question is very difficult. My gut reaction would be to say "no" in the way you probably mean the question, which is a set of quantitative measures that can say "success" or "failure".

The reason why I say that is because "success" is a subjective measure. In the PM space, we have been wrestling with this question for years. Whether an effort is a success or not depends on when success is evaluated, who is doing the evaluation, and who gets to set the evaluation criteria. In my view (see my paper attached), success is a subjective measure that at the organizational level is the result of a power based negotiation between social agencies. 

In your context, success might be defined different by the executives, the legislature, the rich and the poor in a society. I'm sure the Castros think their government is a success but the poor in Cuba continue to illustrate that they think it isn't by their flight to the US. 

Conference Paper A Reconceptualization of the Concept of Project Success at t...

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308427094_An_Empirical_Study_of_the_Balanced_Scorecard_Model_Evidence_from_Bangladesh

Article An Empirical Study of the Balanced Scorecard Model: Evidence...