Even though business strategy is key to provide a better control of any organisation, many entrepreneurs struggle with strategy. Despite recognising the importance of reaping benefits from aligning decision making, they get stalled during the strategic planning process of their business. Business strategy is a set of guiding principles that, when communicated and adopted in the organisation, generates a desired pattern of decision making (Watkins, 2007).
(Watkins, 2007)
The mission, network, strategy, and vision define together the strategic direction for a business by providing the what, who, how and why necessary to align action in complex decision making (Watkins, 2007).
The strategic direction of a business is directly influenced by the strategic planning, which involves the making of an integrated set of choices that collectively position the firm in its industry so as to create sustainable advantage relative to competition and deliver superior financial returns (Martin, 2013).
As per figure above, there are three main levels by which planning can be formulated in an organisation, namely strategic, tactical and operational. Differing between these levels is straightforward. Strategic planning involves the entire organisation, tactical planning involves selected areas of the organisation, and operational planning provides resource allocation to each part of tactical plans (Ackoff, 1999).