Environmental scanning involves examining the economic and social forces influencing the organization, especially the long-term composition of the labor force and the future availability of employees. It’s an ongoing tracking of trends and occurrences in an organization's internal and external environment that may affect its success, currently and in the future.

You are preparing to take your exam and you’re overwhelmed. I know.. We’ve been there and we get it. We’ve compiled a list of tips to help you as you prepare to ace your exam!

Consider your favorite fast food restaurant (or in this case… maybe your least favorite). They may be making tons of profit. However, their business practices are outdated, their customers are unhappy and you don’t see any progressive changes anytime soon. But they making money so they must be doing something right. Right? The finances give us an unbalanced view of how an organization is really doing.

Strategic planning is a complete look at how to position an organization for future success by evaluating the organization’s current status, where it would like to be, and how to get there. It also includes integrating the goals of the primary business functions.

Strategy is essentially setting goals and priorities, determining actions to achieve the goals, and deploying resources to execute the actions. A strategy describes how the ends (goals) will be achieved by the means (resources). ... It involves activities such as strategic planning and strategic thinking.

Now further along in my career, I reflect back and realize that there were some employers who cared about the certification and others who cared about the degree and or experience. I concluded that what’s really expected can sometimes be ambiguous and subjective, depending on the company.