Vision, Mission and Strategy

The increasing complexity of managing very large companies has resulted in the need to seek new ways of developing a more structured approach to planning future actions and to effectively monitor actual versus planned performance. By the 1960s, lessons learned in business planning in major corporations, mainly those based in the USA, in sectors such as car manufacturing and fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) saw the adoption of what became known as ‘strategic planning’. In their 1965 text, Learned et al. proposed that the process should involve setting performance goals and defining a strategy that together provide a framework upon which to define the nature of future operations. These authors suggested that organisations should assess relevant internal strengths and weaknesses to decide which distinctive internal competences can ensure that the organisation’s strategy is aligned with the opportunities and threats in the external environment. Any subsequent plan should specify appropriate actions to ensure that functional departments act in an integrated fashion to optimise future performance. This approach is often described in management texts as involving the three questions: (i) Where are we now? (ii) Where are we going? (iii) How to get there?