Summary - The article "Lessons in How to Manage and Plan Strategically" covers the process of defining a strategy for an organization. It begins by explaining the differences between effectiveness (doing the right things) and efficiency (doing things well) and shows why a manager should keep differentiation in mind while developing a strategy. Following the definition of strategy as “a plan of actions designed to achieve a particular objective”, the first step in defining a strategy is to define the organization's objective: the mission. This mission describes the fundamental purpose of an organization and what the organization does and provides the manager with a direction to steer. Direction alone is not yet sufficient to plan actions and define a strategy. Every organization is made up of different stakeholders and must therefore represent their beliefs , the second step of strategic planning is to discover the values ​​of the organization, which represent the beliefs of the stakeholders. The next third step in defining a strategy is to analyze the current position of an organization, so that together with the mission and to an organization's values ​​can create a vision of where the company wants to see itself take a step in the future. Finally, in the last step, managers compare the organization's current position with the position defined in the vision and derive actions that build an organization's strategy and move it to the desired position. To assist this process, the article presents several tools: PESTLE analysis, Porters 5 Forces, SWAT analysis and SMART-Visions. As a final observation it is important to consider the fact that the stages of development...... middle of paper....ps I define a strong vision. SMART - which means Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely - describes what a perfect vision should look like. If a vision meets these five points, it is very likely that, once the correct action is taken, this vision will become reality. The final step in the strategic planning process brings us back to Drucker's quote. As a final step, the specified actions as a whole should be examined to determine whether they fall into the category of effective actions (in which case they move the organization towards its goal) or whether they are just efficient actions (and therefore do not bring the organization closer to its objective). If the strategic planning process has been carried out correctly, the specified actions will be effective and efficient and will lead the organization to its goal while saving resources..