The essence of strategic planning is to help a company develop and sustain advantage in the marketplace through unique resources, agility, superior products and/or superior service. Strategic planning is "strategic" because it requires an understanding of how the external environment impacts an organization's ability to create value. In short, strategic planning is a disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, what it does, and why it does it, with a focus on the future.

As with any management tool, it is used for the purpose of : to helping an organization do a better job - to focus its energy to ensure that members of the organization are working toward the same goals to assess and adjust the organization's direction in response to a changing environment.

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