Strategic planning is an organizational management activity that is used to set priorities, focus energy and resources, strengthen operations, ensure that employees and other stakeholders are working toward common goals, establish agreement around intended outcomes/results, and assess and adjust the organizations direction in response to a changing environment. It is a disciplined effort that produces fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, who it serves, what it does, and why it does it, with a focus on the future. Effective strategic planning articulates not only where an organization is going and the actions needed to make progress, but also how it will know if it is successful.
Sometimes, strategic planning goes in an unintended direction in the implementation phase. . As we read in this week’s chapter, objectives should be difficult but achievable. However, Wells Fargo & Co. is considered to have created objectives that were too difficult and led to bank employees feeling pressured by the quotes and managers pressure to meet the objective. The pressure resulted in employees creating new accounts that customers never asked for to either keep their jobs or to get more sales commissions resulted in overdraft fees for customers. The government imposed a fine of $185 million, and CEO John Stumpf retired. Mary Mack, head of Community Banking, was charged with coming up with a new incentive system that didnt result in unethical or illegal activities of its 100,000 retail bank employees at some 6,000 U.S. branches. Mack said Wells Fargo wont abandon cross-selling, or efforts to sell multiple products to individual households, which was seen as contributing to the misconduct.
Discussion Prompt:
- Research some reasons why Strategic Plans and Objectives can go wrong. Then, discuss some that made an impression on you.
- How can managers ensure a strategy’s success and correct operational objectives are set?
- If you were a manager at Well’s Fargo, how would you have handled the situation? Pressure employees to perform? Fire employees that didn’t meet quotas? Resign? Something else?
The initial post of 300 words is due before midnight on Thursday. Two (2) 150-word reply posts to classmates that responded to your initial post are due by midnight Sunday. Use the chapter concepts and terminology in all posts to demonstrate knowledge. Each post is required to be unique and add something significant or substantial to the discussion. For that reason, I AGREE type posts are not acceptable submissions. Posts should demonstrate critical thinking. proper spelling, punctuation, grammar and paragraphs are expected. Please refer to the Guidelines for Discussion Forum Posts in the START HERE MODULE or the Syllabus for complete requirements.

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