Introductory Statement
The strategic plan was established by the CEO (Chief Executive Officer) to assist in monitoring progress, making sure that the goals are achieved, and monitoring development against the business plan. The CEO works closely with the board and chairs to advance and develop the farm‘s strategy. The CEO collaborates with the broader team to update the various goals of the business plan on an annual basis to ensure they reflect the strategy (City, 2018).
The Theory About Strategic Planning
Planning is one of the practical essentials of current life. All people tend to practice it to a lesser or even greater extent. In their personal lives, people plan for different occasions such as asset acquisitions, e.g., houses, consumable goods, cars, etc., careers, and holidays. However, in some cases, people plan detailed business budgets, while on other occasions, people tend to do it informally and efficiently work things out in their heads. Nevertheless, people mainly plan as events arise, taking respective actions to achieve the projected results. Therefore, business planning is implemented in work areas with much more systematic methods. People intend to plan and improve new services or products for new initiatives and agendas. Plans are drawn to deliver change by doing things from different perspectives and doing them better (Mintzberg, 2018). All short-, medium-, or long-term projects pertaining to the organization are drafted and implemented. In essence, plans are route maps showing the current organizational structure and location and where it is intended to head. Therefore, planning is essential to business and the life of the entire organization.
Planning in the business environment: Henri Fayol’s approach states that planning is included in management’s prime responsibilities. Hence, he refers to planning as describing the future, deciding what is supposed to be carried out, and then coming up with a plan of action. Therefore, it entails planning, organization, expertise, management, and control (H.I., 2018).
Therefore, strategic plans involve systematic visions for the desired future and thus translate the vision into various broad, well-defined goals and aims using a series of procedures to achieve them. Whatever the case, in contrast to long-term planning, the strategic plan has to begin with the defined end and work backward to the existing status. During the early stages, the planner has to define what is supposed to be done to help move to the next level. Therefore, strategic plans have to be broader and also somewhat flexible when making responsible choices (Fayol et al., 1930).
Background Statement
Stepney City Farm was established as a charity farm in the year 2000. Stepney City Farm is a four-acre city farm which is located in Tower Hamlets in the London Borough. However, it is a registered charity that is structured to provide recreation and education opportunities in the community and also encourages improvement as well as well-being. As an organized farm, the organization is entitled to deliver meat, vegetables, and fruits for sale. Just to cite a few, the farm is designated to carry out volunteer training, curriculum-based linked classes, and craft classes for the employees in crafts and food growing. However, all ages are covered by the involved projects. It entails a community resource that provides opportunities for urbanized people to experience an actual rural setting close to their homes. The farm has a shop that makes a profit for the charity.
However, the other aspects include maintaining the daily activities on the farm responsible for the charity, regarding the long-term work strategy. There are responsibilities that include reporting to the trustees, health and safety, budget management and line management, new project development, and making sure that the projects are successfully run. Hence, the farm is based on food, offering a supportive and friendly environment and an enjoyable place to work in a unique setting. The farm works under a strategized and organized structure that maintains good communication with the stakeholders and the entire community. This is to promote awareness of the importance of food and agriculture, hence bringing good diversity to the use of the farm and ensuring incorporation.
Vision
Stepney City Farm aims to be a communal and all-inclusive social development focused on the elevation of charity principles and farming excellence in a multicultural framework. The organization is dedicated to culturally based charity services to produce service eligibility in food growing and crafts for the enabled people, with a distinctive concern for the approach towards community enhancement projects, especially in the city. As a significant result, the farm aspires to carry out all possible plans to help transform the reliability of the members of the community. Therefore, it works together with all genders, ethnicities, and the community at large (Hofstrand, 2018).
Values
- Trusted farm management in meat, fruit, and vegetable production.
- A privileged choice for unemployed youth
- Charity services
- Reliability
- Quality services
- Conduct farming skills and projects to promote lively cityhood among city dwellers.
- Responsible working environment.
- The Best Choice
Mission
Stepney City Farm provides a hospitable working environment and development projects to help prepare the unemployed to transform into a busy context on the farm. Stepney City Farm is therefore devoted to offering versatile and excellent products in the city environment, which assist in promoting merit in training and equipping its workers with skills, exploration, and education, as well as primary working skills and essential progress.
Problem Statement
The farm is not able to run its services adequately due to unsustainable conditions that affect the daily running of the business. There is a lack of sufficient infrastructure and funds to host the maximum number of projects and involve as many members of the community as possible. There are additional hindrances, which include, e.g., poor living conditions for the animals; the conditions of animals like cows are very discouraging. The farm experiences a problem of having only two animals, which are both considered to be unsuitable for the site and for a progressing farm. This therefore challenges the management of Stepney City Farm in carrying out the daily activities as expected. However, the farm is working towards its objective plans under the existing challenges.
SWOT Analysis
| Strengths History: The farm has a good history of assisting the community, therefore making it reliable for the services it offers and the services it is engaged in. Knowledge: Adequate knowledge in programs is offered by the farm to the community, therefore equipping them with sustainable skills in farming and the production of farm products. External factors: there have been a lot of contributions by well-wishers and able members of the community through funding and other related grants, hence making Stepney City Farm grow towards its actual goals (Cityfarm, 2018). | Weakness Small site: the site is not very accommodating; for example, when the farm began, the site was overstocked due to space insufficiency. This led to animal welfare problems, and therefore, RSPCA was involved (City, 2018). Working in the most impoverished and densely populated places has been a continuing challenge that is making it hard to configure all the projects and satisfy the adequate needs of the community. Brand power: Not everybody in the town is satisfied with Stepney City Farm products. Some prefer other modernized products rather than the natural products from the farm. |
| Opportunities Training: the farm is in a good position to train more personnel to serve the community, hence delivering one of its goals. The availability of human volunteers is growing at a significant rate, thereby fulfilling projects. Services: more services are growing in demand, and the farm is now equipping its structure and workforce to deliver more community-based programs and products. Market: the population is very high. Hence, there is availability of both labor and consumption on the other end. The demand is growing, allowing more chances for organizational growth. | Threats Larger price-oriented store: to deliver quality products and services, the farm is required to have primary storage for raw materials such as stock, but due to insufficient accommodation, there is a need to find an external store, which is a bit inconvenient for the distribution of work. Funding: income generation and funding are ideally low, therefore risking the convenient running of the farm. This reflects low services delivered to the communities, thus lowering the targeted objective of the company’s goal. |
Goals
Stepney City Farm has a general statement of what the farm needs to achieve. Categorically, the ideal goal is a milestone in an implementation process. To start with, one long-term goal is to increase the number of consumers; the farm is structured to serve an adequate number of consumers. Considering that the farm is not based on profit-making, it is projected to have reliable services that are acceptable and highly consumable by the targeted customers. In this case, the increase in the farm’s rate of growth from when it was established is aimed at meeting the threshold of serving the entire community in the city.
Provide better customer service: ideally, advancing employee skills will therefore help in offering professional consumer services. All the services provided to the customers will be satisfactory and serve the adequate needs of the customers. More convenient methodologies will be implemented through employee participation in their duties, hence delivering quality as expected in the overall performance.
Increase good relations with the customers: the farm is established to be reliable and improve the community’s livelihood. Therefore, it provides all customer requirements when supplying customers with respective products or services. Customers are supposed to be handled responsibly, and their needs are addressed within the appropriate time to deliver maximum relationship quality. Demand from consumers is to be met in minimum time. Since there is an adequate number of employees on the farm, this will help retain customers and also provide good working terms for both parties.
Short-Term Goals Have To Be Implemented Within Three Months
Improve employee training: the main agenda of the farm is to establish more skills for the workers so that they can manage to provide adequate services and timely delivery. The employees will have to attend extra classes where they will advance their knowledge of farming techniques. However, the acquired skills will offer better support in handling farm animals with professional care. Implementing the new skills will deliver quality, timely, and convenient working methodologies within the farm.
Stepney City Farm Goals Objectives Procedure
The main objective of the farm is to develop procedural goals and set objectives to offer good relations among all its respective departments and with the ideal client. This therefore ensures good coordination, respectively, and every department runs progressively.
Therefore, the goal objective is directed as follows:
The board of directors—they are accountable for reviewing and approving the farm’s objectives and goals.
The strategy team: accountable for objectives and goals and then presenting them respectively to the board of directors.
The CEO of the company—is responsible for making sure that the company’s goals are appropriate, delivering necessary communication to the employees, and monitoring the progress of the company.
Therefore, the goal procedural activity will have to be inclusive of the company background goals, setting the goals, reviewing and finalizing goals, communication, and monitoring of the goals.
From the beginning, the farm’s CEO is supposed to communicate the strategic business goals and objectives after evaluating the goals.
Executive Summary
Stepney City Farm’s strategic goals are designed to improve overall leadership management, income generation and funding, community engagement, and finance. Therefore, the initiatives of the farm are to manage the team of workers and dedicated volunteers to help deliver leisure and educational opportunities that are based on crafts, farming, food, and the environment. The farm has to maintain responsibility for projects and critical strands of work and make sure that the laid objectives for funding are met and the respective reports are signed off. The company strategy staff has to collaborate with respective stakeholders to help develop links with the foremost targeted audience (Cityfarm, 2018). However, Stepney City Farm has to use the team to lead and develop the respective farm charitable activities, such as cooperative volunteering, workshops and courses, the shop and café, and the rural crafts center. In short, it must establish sufficient quality and mentoring assurance programs for the services delivered. In conclusion, Stepney City Farm will ensure that the board of trustees performs its best to ensure that the farm manager meets the charity’s needs as a whole, relevant statutory, regulatory, and company obligations. Hence, it confirms the safety and health requirements and management policies.
References
Ansoff, H.I., 1957. Strategies for diversification. Harvard Business Review, 35(5), pp. 113-124.
City, S. (2018). Stepney City Farm | Stepney City Farm and Rural Arts Centre. [online] Stepneycityfarm.org. Available at: https://stepneycityfarm.org/ [Accessed 8 Mar. 2018].
Cityfarm, S. (2018). Cite a Website – Cite This For Me. [online] Stepneycityfarm.org. Available at: https://stepneycityfarm.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Stepney-City-Farm-CEO-JD.pdf [Accessed 8 Mar. 2018].
Drucker, P.F., 1998. Management’s new paradigms. Forbes Magazine, 10(2), pp. 98-99.
Hofstrand, D. (2018). Vision and Mission Statements — a Roadmap of Where You Want to Go and How to Get There | Ag Decision Maker. [online] Extension.iastate.edu. Available at: https://www.extension.iastate.edu/AGDm/wholefarm/html/c5-09.html [Accessed 8 Mar. 2018].
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