Describe the traditional top-down strategic planning process.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

In the traditional top-down strategic planning process, strategic planners first provide careful analyses of internal and external data and apply it to all quantifiable areas: prices, costs, margins, market demand, head count, and production runs. Five-year plans, revisited regularly, predict future sales based on anticipated future growth. Top executives tie the allocation of the annual corporate budget to the strategic plan and monitor ongoing performance accordingly. Based on a careful analysis of these data, top managers reconfirm or adjust the company's vision, mission, and values before formulating corporate, business, and functional strategies. Appropriate organizational structures and controls as well as governance mechanisms aid in effective implementation. In this process, the formulation of strategy is separate from implementation, and thinking about strategy is separate from doing it. Information flows one way only: top-down.

At times, strategic leaders impose their visions onto a company's strategy, structure, and culture from the top down in order to create and enact a desired future state.