Strategic Planning in the Small Business

6

Unit 1

HO 1-5 (continued)

Part I The Concepts and Techniques of Strategic Management

American Red Cross

The mission of the American

Red Cross is to improve th,. quality of

human life; to enhance self-reliance and concern for others; and to help

people avoid, prepare for, and cope with emergencies.

Howlett-Packard Company

Hewlett-Packard is a major designer and manufacturer of electronic

prod­

ucts and systems for measurement and computation. HP's basic

business

purpose is to provide the capabilities and services needed to help

custom­

ers worldwide improve their personal and business effectiveness.

Otis Elevator

Our mission is to provide any customer

a means of moving people and

things up, down, and sideways over short distances with higher reliability

than any similar enterprise in the world.

Deluxe Checks

The mission of Deluxe Checks is to provide all banks, S&L's, and

investment firms with error-free financial instruments delivered

in a

timely fashion.

Source-Company annual reports

Setting Objectives

The act of setting objectives serves the purpose

of converting the mission and

direction into something

specific to shoot for, something specific to achieve.

Setting challenging but achievable objectives helps

guard against complacency,

internal confusion over what to accomplish,

and mediocre organizational perform­

ance. Both short-range

and long-range objectives are needed. Short-rangeobjec­

tives spell out what management needs to work toward over the next year or two;

long-rangeobjectives direct managers to consider what

they can do now to boost

the organization's

performance over the longer term.

Objective-setting ideally is something

all managers do. Every organization

unit needs concrete, measurable

performance targets that specify what it will do

to assist

in meeting the overall or organizationwide objectives. When the set of

overall organizationwide objectives is broken down into specific targets for each

organization unit and when lower-echelon managers

are hed accountable for

achieving the objectives in their area of responsibility,

a results-oriented climate

emerges, and

the whole organization ends up pointed in the intended direction.

Examples of the kinds of objectives that companies set in pursuing their

missions are shown in Illustration Capsule 2.

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