Como a falta de um planejamento estratégico sistematizado pode estagnar empresas com potencial de crescimento: estudo de caso em uma escola

Abstract

Companies are currently facing increasingly complex, changing, and competitive environments, and the assertiveness and good course of their strategic level is of utmost importance. The present work approaches the strategic planning theme. Several researches show its importance and benefits, and its greatest primacy constitutes a divinity for companies: direction. Strategic planning is formed by a set of inferences from the company's internal and external environment, succeeded by the establishment of actions that guide its steps, knowing that changes and adjustments will probably mark the way. It is sequenced in stages and the sequence is generally described similarly in the literature. The implementation of strategic planning usually faces some challenges, among them corporate resistance to change, lack of employee engagement, and denial of its dynamic nature. There are several tools that make strategic planning possible, and besides knowing them it is important to discern how and when to use them. The research has as its main objective the investigation of the strategic planning process in the context of an organization in the early childhood education sector. The analysis of the perception of the strategic planning process by the case study company, how the implementations of its stages occur, the recognized challenges, and the analysis of the efficiency of the application of SWOT and brainstorming tools by the strategic layer constitute the specific objectives of the work. The object of study of this research is a medium-sized school located in the city of João Pessoa. The school offers kindergarten and first years of elementary school and has an interesting value proposition, including partnerships with nationally renowned companies such as the School of Intelligence directed by Dr. Augusto Cury. Its trajectory is approximately 40 years old, but it still has no notability or expressive competitiveness in the market. The data were collected primarily from interviews directed to the components of the strategic level and field observations made during the period of the author's professional experience in the company. Among the results obtained, the research identified the genuine and simplistic perception of the strategic planning process by the school and the absence or non-systematization of its stages. In general terms, the work accomplished its objectives and encourages the investigation of other themes related to the line of research, such as which would be the most appropriate strategic process for companies with this profile.