Strategic planning1 is an exercise to visualize or anticipate or project the future and act accordingly (Terry, 1953; Allen, 1958 and 1973; and Strong, 1965), keeping in sync the organizational resources and objectives. Hence, visualizing the future and making adequate provisions to deal with the same to meet organizational objectives can be termed as strategic planning. Moreover, strategic planning is an intellectual process, the conscious determination of course of action, the basing of decisions on purpose, facts and considered estimates (Weihrich et al., 1986). Strategic planning involves decision making through alternative courses of action, with a view to implementing the same in future to synchronize with the changing external environment. It is important to note that strategic plans should exist to show directions, not to prophesize by rigidly fixing unalterable boundaries for any action in future. Future remains unpredictable and forecasting remains an effective way to counter the same. However, it is seen that forecasting sometimes misses its mark completely. The reason for this radical miss is explained through the complexity of the elements that affect the whole planning process. The strategic planning process, after the cerebral stage, asks for scheduling to form an action-plan necessary for implementation. Therefore, forecasting and scheduling can be seen as the essential elements of strategic planning and a framework is essential for the successful implementation of the same. The framework proposed in this paper is scenario-planning with the help of complexity theory that holds the potential to aid strategic planning overcome strategic planning impediments as well as to indicate the arts, science and technology involved in achieving the objectives generated from experience and expertise.

Strategic planning can be seen as a fundamental activity of management. Forecasting forms the basis of planning and can be seen as a scientifically calculated guess that has both controllable and uncontrollable factors. It is relatively easy to address controllable factors, but for uncontrollable factors, appropriate provisions are needed. Naturally, the task of forecasting is somewhat difficult. Developments shaping the global environment are usually unforeseen, yet can be seen as evolutionary. Numerous off-the-mark forecasting can be seen as the result of dynamic nature of environment, compounded by innovation and change.

Significant strong correlation of factors can be argued between future profile and current state of things. The current strategy pursued will affect forecasting opportunities and will provide multiple future scenarios.2 Hence it is evident that strategic planning directly depends on the past for future activities. However, it is important to note that for strategic planning for something new, especially where past history is inexistent or turbulent, some qualitative polishing needs to be done before extending the past into future. For this, causal model of forecasting serves well,3 to the extent where causal link can be established. For seemingly inexistent causal link, the theory of complexity promises to establish a plausible explanation to the dynamics of turbulence that the environment exerts4 and envisage threats, which remains one of the objectives of this paper.

Scheduling forms the basis of implementation in (strategic) planning (Kotler, 2000). Therefore, forecasting and scheduling remain the essential elements of strategic planning. Moreover, a framework is necessary for successful implementation, where important elements should be understood, incorporated through strategic preferences and fine-tunings be done through tactical alternatives. Whatever the way strategic planning appears efficient, it is expected not to yield results if the same is ineffective. Proposing a way for successful implementation remains the other objective of this paper.

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