Strategic Planning Limitation

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Strategic planning Limitations
Universities may encounter a multitude of problems as they go forward with their strategic planning process. This section discusses several of these difficulties and offers ways to minimize or avoid them.
POTENTIAL PROBLEMS
Strategic planning is an involved, intricate, and complex process that takes an organization into the uncharted territory. It does not provide a ready to use prescription for success; instead, it takes the organization through a journey and helps develop a framework and context within which the answers will emerge. Literature and research has documented extensively the possible problems that may arise during the process. Being aware of these issues and prepared to address them is essential to success: organization's strategic planning effort may fail if these potential pitfalls are ignored. To increase universities' awareness, this section reviews some of these limitations.
Commitment
One of the major challenges of strategic planning is ensuring commitment at the top, because in some ways, strategic planning reduces executive decision-making power. It encourages involvement throughout the organization, and "empowers" people to make decisions within the framework defined by the strategic planning process. As a result, this shifts some of the decision making from the executive office to the participants.
Commitment of the people throughout the university "grows out of a sense of ownership of the project" (Mintzberg, 1994, p. 172). Such commitment is essential to success. Strategic planning implies organization-wide participation, which can only be achieved if people believe that their involvement counts, and that they will benefit from the process.
Inflexibility of plans and planning
Strategic planning might inhibit changes, and discourage the organization from considering disruptive alternatives (Mintzberg, 1994, p. 178). Planning might inhibit creativit...