Many people I have seen and met on both profit and non-profit sectors believe in ad-hoc management style rather than strategic management, especially in vibrant and highly changing and dynamic environments which can be referred to as turbulent environment is the best way to manage the available resources and get the best possible outputs as it gives the organization the required flexibility to that will provide the organization with the best results.

I disagree.

Let me start with very important aspect, history. In my opinion, organizations that are managed to succeed on both the local and the international schemes are the ones that made use of their past successes and failures. Quoting George Santayana in his masterpiece The Life of Reason, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. Learning from the past is a simple way to keep the organization moving forward. In other words, strategy as a process and strategic thinking means not only going with the flow but also bringing in the present the lesson of the past, to better act in the next coming future. In turbulent environment, usually the pattern of the factors affecting the organization business is repeating itself but in an accelerated manner that at first glance will look like a random process. However, capturing the failures and successes and documenting them and then building the strategy while bearing in mind those lessons, will definitely become an advantage of your organization.

Secondly, Strategy process enforce the management to pause and look at the organization from different perspectives and this will shed the light on the integration and harmony levels and the organization different components and the different units (financial, people, intellectual capital, specific tools etc.). As bringing the best talents of the organization from different departments will be the major factor of bringing the organization’s aspirations to life and that’s for me is the essence and the main goal of the strategy development process. Usually in highly dynamic environment, the silos are created between the organization different units and departments which cause the organization significant loss of resources in the form of work duplication, misinformed decisions and unhealthy as well as undesired tension between the different units.

However, with a clear and communicated strategy the organization and its different units will be working in harmonized manners due to the fact that the set objectives already been broken down and the way to reach those goals already set and agreed between these different units. As a result, the quick pace of the turbulent environment won’t impact the overall performance and coordination between the organization units.

Finally, if we look at the organization definition from all different schools and below are a couple of those widely used definitions:

• An organization is defined as the necessary combination of human efforts, material equipment’s brought together in a systematic and effective correlation to accomplish the desired results.
• Organization refers to a collection of people, who are involved in pursuing defined objectives.

The definitions are many, however, they all come down into consensus about achieving specific planned goals, objectives or results. These goals, if not probably set then the organization will be drifted, employees will be misguided and confused about their related unit objectives and it might contradict the objectives set for the other related units. Hence, strategy is vital to clarify organizational identity, pinpoint the organization future directions and priorities. This will help and guide the organization and its management on how to better manage their employees and provide them with the required tool sets to achieve these goals. Setting the right goals is vital to the organization near term as well as future success, harmonizing the work between the organization won’t happen unless the whole organization is working towards a common, agreed and properly communicated goals so the organization as whole can aim beyond surviving and focus on developing and working towards new heights that won’t be visible which may lead to the loss of the competitive advantage that every organization is trying to develop in today’s highly competitive market.

I would like to end this article by saying that in addition to the previously mentioned advantages of strategic planning which are learning from history, engaging different units and focusing the organization efforts into what matters the most which could ease the unexpected impact of the turbulent environment. Clear strategy will also add the required discipline and streamline the organization process. As strategy will tell you which chess piece you have to move today, to proclaim “checkmate” tomorrow.