Author
Reference
Benard.,
L., (2014): How fire safety projects are aligned to
organization’s strategic objective. Intel Fire Group Blog. Nairobi, Kenya.
How fire safety projects are aligned to the organization’s strategic
objectives
Organization’s strategic objectives as
defined in their strategic plan, whether the 3-year or 5-plan, defines only one
thing, the direction to which the organization moving in achieving its mission
and by extension the vision of the founders of the organization. In order
therefore to ensure that every project in an organization are geared towards
this achievement, the project officers needs to ensure that the projects are
aligned to the strategic objectives. There should be a clear understanding of
how these projects contributes to the achievement of the strategic objectives
and a criteria put in place to identify the priority of projects.
Strategic
objectives
Whereas the organization’s vision tend
to be quite broad and can be described as the goals, the strategic objectives
is defined according to the online business dictionary (2014) as that which the
organization must achieve in order to make its strategy a success. In order to
align fire safety projects to the organization’s strategy it is prudent to
recognize that these strategies according to Drucker (1994) are categorized
into eight groups. These groups includes (1) Market standing: Which is the fire
station’s desired share of present and future jurisdiction; (2) Innovation: The
fire stations’ development of new products and services, and the skills and
methods required to implement them; (3) Human resources: selection and
development of fire staff; (4) Financial resources: identification of the
sources of capital and their use; (5) Physical resources: fire safety equipment
and facilities and their applications; (6) Productivity: efficient use of the
fire safety resources relative to output; (7) Social responsibility: awareness and
responsive to the effects on the wider community of the stakeholders; (8)
Profit requirements: Even though most public fire stations are non-profit
oriented, there must be achievement of measurable financial well-being and
growth.
Example
An institution may have one of its
strategic objectives stated as “Institutional Capacity building” which is
contributing to its vision and mission. According to Drucker (1994), this
strategic objective is in place in order to achieve the “Human Resource”
strategy.
Aligning
George (2009) indicates that in aligning
fire safety projects to the strategic goals and objectives, the fire safety project
strategist must look at the project’s contribution to the vision and mission of
the organization with a broad perspective on the major goals and objectives. In
the above example, if for example the below projects are undertaken, then they
will be contributing to the strategic objective “Institutional Capacity
Building”
STRATEGIC
OBJECTIVE: Institutional Capacity Building
|
|
1.
|
Training Branch Managers
|
2.
|
Team building organized for the year
2014
|
3.
|
Motivational talks for year 2014
|
In reference to the above table
therefore, the fire safety projects which entails training branch managers;
team building organized for the station in the year 2014; and motivational
talks for the same year, all contributes to the strategic objective “Institutional
capacity building”. It also necessary to note that studies in project
management have not conclusively come up with a standard structure and method
to align projects to the organizations’ strategic objectives; therefore, at
this point in time these studies are still under review by scholars around the
world.
Reference
Drucker, P. F. (1994).
"The Theory of the Business". Harvard Business Review
(September–October 1994).
George., B., (2009), How to align projects with
Organizanal Strategic Objectives. Allpine.com. Accessed 29 Nov. 2014
