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How to Create a Strategic Plan

Looking for a way to take your company in a new and profitable direction? It starts with strategic planning. Keep reading to learn what a strategic plan is, why you need it and how you can strategically create one.

What Is a Strategic Plan?

When it comes to business and finance, strategic planning will help you allocate your resources, energy and assets. When implemented, a strategic plan will begin to move your operations in a more profitable direction. The primary goal of the plan is to ensure you and any other stakeholders are on the same page and striving to reach the same goal.

Creating a strategic plan requires a disciplined effort. Once you put the plan into action, it will influence the segment of customers that you target, how you serve those customers and the experience those customers have.

Assess the Current Infrastructure and Operations

The first step in creating a strategic plan is to carefully assess your existing infrastructure and operations. You can do this through a SWOT analysis, which is an analysis of the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The goal here is to pinpoint the resources that you use to carry out your day-to-day operations, to look at your monthly revenue patterns, to list any company challenges related to the customer experience and, most importantly, to look at your marketing methods and ways to improve the overall customer experience.

Creation of Mission Statement and Objectives

The next step is to create a mission statement. You may already have one, but it’s important to note your mission at the top of the strategic plan document you create. This ensures everyone is focused on the same goal. Your mission statement should cover why you started the company and what you intend to accomplish through the products and services that you offer.

In addition to the mission statement, make sure to outline both short- and long-term objectives. List the objectives according to their priority and designate certain managers or employees to be responsible for each one. Also, jot down the resources that will be used to achieve each objective.

Measure Performance

Now that you know what you’re trying to achieve and who is responsible for each goal, it’s time to deploy the plan and measure its progress. A weekly meeting is extremely important for all managers and stakeholders provide feedback. Your goal is to determine if the company is headed in the right direction. If not, you’ll need to revise the strategic plan accordingly.

Strategic Plans Are Ongoing

Once your strategic plan helps you achieve several objectives, it’s smart to regroup and set new objectives. As your company grows, you can set new goals to ensure the company keeps moving forward. You can share the success of your strategic plan with potential investors as a way to tap into new capital funding.

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The Benefits of Using an Excel Project Template for Project Planning

Project planning is a crucial aspect of any successful endeavor. Whether you’re managing a small personal project or coordinating a large team effort, having a clear plan in place is essential. One tool that can greatly assist in project planning is an Excel project template. In this article, we will explore the benefits of using an Excel project template for project planning.

Streamline Your Planning Process

Creating a project plan from scratch can be time-consuming and overwhelming. However, with an Excel project template, you can streamline your planning process significantly. Templates are pre-designed with the necessary sections and fields, allowing you to focus on filling in the specific details of your project rather than starting from scratch.

By using an Excel project template, you eliminate the need to spend hours formatting cells and adding formulas. Instead, you can simply input your data into the designated areas of the template and let it do all the calculations for you. This not only saves time but also ensures accuracy in your calculations and projections.

Ensure Consistency Across Projects

Consistency is key when it comes to managing multiple projects within an organization or even as an individual. With an Excel project template, you can establish consistent processes and formats across all your projects.

By using the same template for each new project, you ensure that all relevant information is captured consistently. This allows for easy comparison between different projects and provides a standardized approach to analyzing data and making informed decisions.

Track Progress Effectively

Tracking progress is crucial in ensuring that your projects stay on track and meet their deadlines. An Excel project template offers various features that make progress tracking efficient and straightforward.

With built-in Gantt charts or milestone trackers, you can visualize your project’s timeline at a glance. These visual representations help identify potential bottlenecks or delays early on so that necessary adjustments can be made promptly.

Additionally, using conditional formatting features in Excel, you can automatically highlight tasks that are behind schedule or nearing their deadlines. This visual cue allows you to prioritize and allocate resources accordingly, ensuring that your project stays on schedule.

Generate Meaningful Reports

Reporting is an integral part of project management as it provides stakeholders with valuable insights into the project’s progress and performance. Excel project templates make generating reports a breeze.

By inputting data into the designated fields of the template, you can automatically generate comprehensive reports that summarize key project metrics. These reports can include information such as task completion rates, budget utilization, and resource allocation. By having these reports readily available, you can easily communicate your project’s status to stakeholders and make informed decisions based on real-time data.

In conclusion, utilizing an Excel project template for your project planning offers numerous benefits. From streamlining your planning process to ensuring consistency across projects and tracking progress effectively, these templates provide a valuable tool for any project manager or team lead. Additionally, they simplify the process of generating meaningful reports that help drive informed decision-making. So why not take advantage of this powerful tool and start using an Excel project template for your next project?

This text was generated using a large language model, and select text has been reviewed and moderated for purposes such as readability.

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Free Strategic Planning Templates

By Joe Weller | May 16, 2018

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The success of your organization — no matter what size or industry — depends on the thoroughness of your planning and vision. A strategic plan can provide a roadmap for accomplishing specific goals, and will increase your chances of reaching objectives on time and budget. In this article, we’ve rounded up the top strategic planning templates in Microsoft Word and Excel, all of which are free to download and fully customizable.

Additionally, we've provided customizable strategic planning templates in Smartsheet, a collaborative, real-time work execution platform that empowers you to better plan, manage, and report on strategic initiatives.

Strategic Business Plan Template

Download Strategic Business Plan Template

Excel | Smartsheet

A comprehensive, strategic business plan may include company information, SWOT analysis, research, goals, resources, risks and more. A template provides structure for your business planning process as well as a communication tool that’s simple to update or modify. Use the template as a guide for evaluating your business, identifying opportunities for growth and development, and creating a strategic plan.

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Nonprofit Strategic Plan Template

Download Nonprofit Strategic Plan Template

A nonprofit strategic plan often emphasizes vision, values, and mission as the foundation for future objectives. A template can be used to clearly define who is being served and what issues need to be addressed. As with a business plan, nonprofit planning may include sections for evaluating risks and opportunities, measuring financial resources, developing a marketing plan, and creating objectives for organizational change.

HR Strategic Plan Template

‌ Download HR Strategic Plan Template

Create a detailed human resources strategic plan for your organization, or modify the template to focus on one specific area, such as recruitment or employee relations. Use the template to translate strategies into measurable action plans. This simple layout makes it easy for readers to quickly view key information.

IT Strategic Planning Template

‌ Download IT Strategic Planning Template

IT is an essential part of any business, nonprofit, school, or government agency. While information technology is just one part of an overall business strategy, creating a separate strategic plan for IT will help ensure that you have a comprehensive roadmap to follow for managing and purchasing new assets, understanding your current and potential technology usage, and aligning your IT goals with business objectives.

Strategic Marketing Plan Template

‌ Download Strategic Marketing Plan Template

Use this free template to help shape your marketing strategy. It combines information on your target market and business with marketing tactics to help you think strategically and create a plan of action. The template can guide your research process or be used as a simple brainstorming tool.

Social Media Strategy Plan Template

‌ Download Social Media Strategy Plan Template

Social media is an integral part of online marketing, and creating a strategic plan can help ensure that you are using your time and resources effectively. Consider your branding, mission, target audience, competition and other factors to determine which social networks and types of content will perform best for your company. Keep track of KPIs and adjust your social media plan accordingly.

SWOT Analysis Strategy Template

‌ Download SWOT Analysis Strategy Template

This matrix template combines SWOT analysis with strategic planning. Examine the relationships between your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and then list related strategies to tackle your goals. The layout of this template allows you to view the SWOT categories and strategies side-by-side, which may be useful for a presentation or summary.

One-Page Strategic Planning Template

Download One-Page Strategic Planning Template

Excel | Word | Smartsheet

A one-page strategic plan is perfect for small businesses or for summarizing a longer planning process. Use this template as is, or edit the layout or included information to better suit your needs. This template includes all the essentials on one page, including values, strengths and weaknesses, goals, and actions.

Strategic Vision Template

Download Strategic Vision Template

Excel | Word

Summarize your strategic vision and plan, highlighting key information for stakeholders, management, investors, or for your own reference. Combining a vision statement with a brief summary of goals, actions and KPIs makes it easy to see how your business values and purpose relate to your objectives. It also provides a succinct summary for use in a presentation or meeting.

University Strategic Plan Outline

‌ Download University Strategic Plan Outline

This template provides an outline for university strategy planning. The actual strategic plan may cover multiple pages and provide an in-depth analysis and detailed mission and vision statements. Strategic planning is an opportunity for universities to look closely at campus needs, institutional values, infrastructure, long-term goals, important obstacles, and more. The strategic plan will be a guiding document that is reviewed and updated regularly.

What Is Strategic Planning?

Strategic planning is an organization’s process for defining their strategy so that they can accomplish specific goals and objectives. Strategic planning may be utilized on a large scale, such as planning for business growth over several years or to help a nonprofit or governmental organization reach its stated mission. A strategic plan can also be used on a smaller scale, such as crafting a marketing plan or developing strategy for the goals of one department within a business or organization. It is important to note that strategy is distinct from planning: While strategy looks at why certain steps should be taken, a plan outlines how to enact those steps. strategic planning marries these two concepts in order to determine the best possible course of action. The purpose of strategic planning is to provide a thoughtful, deliberate approach to reaching objectives based on an in-depth analysis of both internal and external factors affecting an organization.

A strategic plan often covers multiple years, addressing both short- and long-term goals. It also provides a way of tracking progress and measuring success. However, it’s not a document that is fixed in stone — instead, it’s wise to revisit and adjust a strategic plan periodically based on the evolving vision, objectives, needs, and resources of a business or institution.

Depending on the scope of your plan, you may be working with a team of multiple stakeholders during the strategic planning process. To keep the process running smoothly, make roles and responsibilities clear. Different parties may be responsible for providing data, reviewing the plan, or authorizing strategic decisions. As you prepare for planning, make sure all participants understand what’s involved in the process and have received any relevant information prior to meeting.

Benefits of Strategic Planning

There are benefits of strategic planning, including the following:

• Align the goals of a department or project with larger business goals
• Provide clear communication to team members, stakeholders, or clients
• Clearly define the vision and mission of an organization
• Provide clarity on how to deal with internal or environmental changes

Parts of a Strategic Plan

One way to think about strategic planning is that it identifies any gaps between a current state and desired future state, and then dictates how to close those gaps — how you get from where you are to where you want to be. To that end, various factors are taken into consideration in order to formulate an effective plan. Here are some of the elements often included in a strategic plan.

• Introductory Statement: The introductory statement should briefly describe why the strategic plan was developed and for what time period, and list the authors of the plan.  
• Background Statement: This section may provide information about the organization, such as history, management structure, and supporting partners or agencies. Alternatively, you could use this section as a brief business statement — more of an elevator pitch — to concisely describe your business.  
• Organizational Structure: Include this information if it’s relevant to evaluate how your business or organization operates and is structured, from governing board to staffing.  
• Vision: A vision statement should briefly describe what a company wants to achieve or become. This is one of the primary organizational tenets to consider, along with values and mission.  
• Values: These are the principles that an organization stands for and abides by. Many businesses create core value statements to guide company culture.  
• Mission Statement: A mission statement describes the purpose of a business or organization. This is distinct from a vision statement because it is not a projected goal for the future.  
• Problem Statement: Some plans include a problem statement, which can outline key or discrete issues that need to be addressed.  
• SWOT Analysis: A SWOT analysis provides a foundation and context for developing strategy by examining the strengths and weaknesses within and organization as well as external opportunities and threats.  
• Goals: As stated earlier, a strategic plan may include long-term as well as short-term (i.e, monthly or quarterly) goals. Objectives should be measurable and broken down into actionable steps, and the action plan for each goal should specify who is responsible for implementing the strategy, a timeline for starting and ending the action, and how the outcome will be evaluated.  
• Evaluation: Methods for evaluation should be spelled out in the strategic plan. This could include tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) and documenting the progress of action steps on an ongoing basis.  
• Executive Summary : This final summary helps employees, investors, or other readers quickly understand your plan.

No matter what type of strategic plan you are working on, using a template provides a simple and quick outline to organize your process. In the following sections, you’ll find free, downloadable planning templates for business, nonprofit, human resources, marketing, IT strategic planning, and more.

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20 Free Strategic Plan Templates (Excel & Cascade) 2023

There are no shortcuts to success when it comes to driving profitable business growth. It’s hard. It’s challenging. It’s a grind. But you know what makes it even harder? Lack of guidance. No direction. No accountability.

That’s why we compiled our best-of-the-best, most popular, crème de la crème strategic plan templates to help you achieve business goals faster. And they are yours—for free.   You can use these templates to make strategic plans for your business strategy, different business functions, or teams. Or you can use them as an aid in your analysis as part of the planning process.

101,347 strategy pros have already used them and added them to their strategy playbook. What are you still waiting for?

In this article, you will get:

• 20 free strategic plan templates that will help you to build a roadmap and execute it
• A quick rundown of 7 steps you shouldn't miss in strategic planning

What Is A Strategic Plan Template?

A strategic plan template is a tool that helps leaders translate business strategies into actionable steps with a clear roadmap , projects, deliverables, budgets, and owners. It provides a decision-making framework and ensures that all initiatives and resources within an organization align with the overall business strategy.

Think of it like a map that helps you navigate from point A to point B. It lays out roads and milestones to help you get to your destination, all while keeping you focused on your company goals.

In other words, a strategic business plan helps you create alignment and focus across all levels of your organization to maintain momentum and successfully execute your strategies .

And the best part is that it allows you to monitor performance in one place without having to switch between spreadsheets and disconnected systems. This simplifies identifying areas for improvement and measuring progress in real-time. With a well-integrated system, data errors are reduced, and performance analysis and strategy reporting become easier.

With the right template, you’ll be able to keep your team (or teams) on track and identify red flags before it's too late.

20 Strategic Plan Templates To Turn Your Goals Into Action

Success doesn't follow a set path—that's why this article gives you multiple strategic planning templates. Each is for a specific use case or team within your organization. Plus, you can pick between Cascade or Excel version—whichever works best for you.

1. Strategic Planning Template

If you're tired of using complicated spreadsheets for strategic planning, you’ll love the Strategic Planning Template —Cascade version!

This Cascade template offers you a better way than Excel and other static tools. It’s packed with pre-filled examples and features that will help you create a clear roadmap with timelines, KPIs, goals, and owners. You’ll be able to bring in your team and collaborate to transform goals into results faster than ever.

And there’s more! 👀

You’ll also get access to additional features like Dashboards , Timeline View, and Strategy Maps . This will help you pinpoint performance at any given moment and track progress so you can take corrective action before it’s too late.

You’ll be able to plan, execute , measure, and adapt your strategic plan in one place. You can even create multiple strategic plans and link them together so you have full visibility into performance.

Looking for a way to save time and automate your reports?

Cascade makes it easy for you with powerful Reports . With this template, you’ll get access to integrations that will help you automatically track key performance metrics and pull data into reports that can be easily customized to fit your target audience's needs.

How to use this template?

Start by filling out the objectives, goals, and KPIs, and start executing your plan right away!

💡Best for: This is a general, pre-filled strategic planning template, so you can use it as inspiration and set your own strategic goals. It’s suitable for outcome-oriented teams at any level of organization, regardless of industry or company size.

👉 Click here to get your FREE Strategic Planning Template (Cascade version).

2. Strategic Plan Template (Excel)

Not feeling ready to elevate your strategic planning and execution to the next level?

Our simple Strategic Plan Template in an Excel spreadsheet will help you fill out key elements of a strategic plan, including the vision statement, strategic objectives, and key performance indicators (KPIs). With this template, you can also add an executive summary and create a one-page strategic plan that you can quickly share with your team or leadership.

Download your Excel template here.

However, Excel isn’t the best way to create a strategic plan . Here’s why:

• You usually end up with multiple strategic planning documents that are difficult to align and track in real-time.
• When you are using manual methods, using spreadsheets to track performance, you run the risk of errors.
• You spend too much time collecting data and pinging your team members to collect the latest information on progress.

Excel is a great starting point for strategic planning, but you should consider the Excel alternative to streamline strategic planning and execution— Cascade , the strategy execution platform designed for teams of all sizes.

“ Cascade provides a readily accessible platform for hosting our strategy and enables us to generate live updates at the push of a button. It has increased transparency and accountability for our Strategic Priorities and has allowed us to remove silo working and improve alignment . The real game changer from my perspective is the reporting function. Cascade has turned a labor-intensive manual process into something which can be completed in minutes . ” - Enterprise user, Source: G2 review .

3. Business Strategy Template

Like the general strategic planning template above, the Business Strategy Template is loaded with features that will help you achieve business goals faster.

You’ll be able to set your organization’s strategic direction, long-term goals, business objectives, and KPIs to measure progress.

This business plan template will help you communicate business priorities, break down siloed teams, and gain real-time visibility into what’s happening across the business.

💡Best for: This is a pre-filled business strategy template, so you can use it as inspiration and streamline your business planning process. It can be used by leadership teams in organizations of any size, including enterprises and startups.

👉 Click here to get your Business Strategy Template.

4. Operations Plan Template

Operations are the core engine of an organization’s performance. With this Operational Plan Template , you'll be able to plan your company's operational strategy in a way that helps your employees maximize the resources you have and gain a competitive edge.

You can build a high-level strategic plan for your operations or set goals for each of your departments. This will help you keep your teams accountable for progress and have visibility into what’s happening in your key areas.

By using Reports , you can build tailored progress reports and provide up-to-date information to your executive team at any time. This will help you save time, ensure accuracy, and build trust with your board by giving them insights into the company’s performance.

On top of that, you can link your operational plan template with the overarching business strategy. This will help you stay aligned with business goals, and your teams will have the needed context to make aligned decisions on a daily basis.

💡Best for: Chief operating officers (COOs) and operations teams that need to align day-to-day operations with strategic business goals and ensure they deliver on performance.

👉 Click here to get your free Operational Plan Template.

5. Human Resources Plan Template

A strong HR Strategic Plan Template is very helpful not only in the hiring process but also in defining the workplace culture and the types of people your organization wants to work with. With this template, you can set KPIs and track progress toward set targets in real time.

💡Best for: Business leaders, HR managers, and HR teams that need to support business goals with a clear HR roadmap.

👉 Click here to get your free HR Strategy Template.

6. Balanced Scorecard Template

A balanced scorecard (BSC) is a strategic planning tool that helps organizations track, monitor, and execute their business strategy.

This template will help you set goals, KPIs, and projects for each of the four perspectives within the balanced scorecard framework.

You’ll also get access to Dashboards where you can set up real-time dashboards to monitor progress within each perspective. Using the Cascade template, you will have a complete view of your balanced scorecard in one place.

💡Best for: Strategy teams, business leaders, and managers that are using a balanced scorecard methodology in their organizations.

👉 Click here to get your Balanced Scorecard Template.

7. OKR Template (Excel)

In recent years, OKRs have become one of the most popular performance management frameworks. Some are raving fans, and others cringe at their mention. If you fall into the first category, here's the OKR template that'll help you set and meet your OKRs.

You can use it to set OKRs at a company, team, or individual level.

💡Best for: Business and team leaders who are already familiar with the OKR framework and want to track performance.

👉 Read more and grab your OKR Template here.

8. Digital Transformation Plan Template

A digital transformation goes beyond implementing digital tools in your processes. It requires an organization-wide shift. This Digital Transformation Strategic Planning Template will help you build a digital transformation plan that takes into account all areas of your organization that need to change.

You'll be able to define focus areas, set clear goals, KPIs, and projects, which are all needed for a successful transformation.

Digital transformation is the responsibility of the whole organization. Using this template, you’ll make sure your team has the context and the right information so they can help you implement digital transformation initiatives across the organization.

Another key benefit of this template is that you’ll have all the data centralized in one place. This will help you make informed decisions and keep your digital transformation strategy from failing.

And yes, you can connect it with your favorite business tools , including Power BI, Tableau, Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Microsoft Outlook.

💡Best for: Leadership, CIOs, transformation managers , and teams responsible for developing a digital transformation roadmap and implementing initiatives across the organization.

👉 Click here to get your Digital Transformation Strategic Planning Template.

9. IT Strategy Template

This Cascade IT Strategic Plan Template will help you outline your bold initiatives to transform, modernize, and optimize your IT landscape. Bring in your IT team and collaborate on shared goals.

Also, you'll be able to link your IT strategic plan to your business strategy and ensure the executive team understands how IT projects help achieve business goals. You’ll be able to demonstrate the interdependencies across IT initiatives that impact financial performance.

This template will help you prioritize key IT initiatives to support business outcomes and keep track of progress.  

💡Best for: CTOs, CIOs, IT directors, and IT teams that are responsible for IT strategic planning and implementation.

👉 Click here to get your free IT Strategic Plan Template.

10. Change Management Plan Template

Need a template to build a change management plan that will support your business strategy? Look no further.

This Change Management Plan Template will help you define a clear timeline, action steps, and clear expectations for those who will be involved in change implementation.

💡Best for: Leaders who own the change strategy and need to make a plan and monitor key metrics associated with change initiatives.

👉 Click here to get your Change Management Template.

11. Digital Marketing Strategy Template

Build your digital marketing plan with this free template. You’ll be able to set goals, assign owners, and track the performance of key marketing metrics. This Digital Marketing Plan Template can be your living document as you scale marketing activities and serve as a North Star for your marketing team.

💡Best for: This template is designed for marketing teams aiming to expand their presence virtually and businesses aiming to go global or gain an international customer base. Digital content creators, project management teams, social media managers, digital CRM analysts, e-commerce executives, public relations specialists, and user experience specialists might also find this template useful.

👉   Click here to get your FREE Digital Marketing Strategy Template.

12. McKinsey's 3 Horizons Strategy Template

This strategic planning template is based on McKinsey’s Three Horizons Framework . It helps you organize the organization’s goals into three timeframes:

• Horizon 1: Short-term initiatives and projects that will help you achieve business goals within a few months or a year. The focus of this horizon is to maintain and defend your core business.
• Horizon 2: This horizon focuses on extending your current business models that will pay off in 2 or 3 years.
• Horizon 3: Long-term strategic initiatives and investments that will create new business models or products in 3-5 years. Or later - depending on your strategic planning cycles.

The key benefit of the Three Horizons template is that it gives you a complete picture of your three horizons. On top of that, you'll be able to update key goals and initiatives with just a few clicks. A new update will be reflected in all subgoals or project plans that are linked. If you want to outperform your rivals or merely survive in uncertain times, you must be able to quickly adapt your strategy and plans.

💡Best for: Leadership and strategy teams who are responsible for strategic planning at a company level.

👉 Click here to get your Three Horizons Strategic Plan Template.

13. Retail Strategic Plan Template

This Retail Strategic Plan Template provides an example of a corporate strategic plan for companies in the retail industry. You can use it as inspiration to develop a strategic plan for your retail business .

💡Best for: Strategy teams and business leaders within the retail industry.

👉 Click here to get your FREE Retail Strategic Plan Template.

14. SWOT Analysis Template (Excel)

A SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool that helps you identify the internal strengths, weaknesses, and external opportunities and threats that can impact the organization’s growth initiatives and pursuit of its goals.

You can also use it to perform a competitive analysis but you need to look at it through different lenses—from the competitor’s perspective.

💡Best for: Leadership, strategy teams, and other functional teams that are responsible for formulating strategies and strategic plans.

👉 Click here to download your SWOT Analysis Template.

15-17. Internal Analysis Toolkit

In this collection, you will find 5 different templates to help you with internal analysis, including:

• Gap Analysis Template
• McKinsey 7S Framework Template
• Core Competencies Analysis

An internal analysis is an important step before drafting a strategic plan. It will help you carry out your competitive analysis, identify your current situation, and set action plans and relevant strategic goals.

💡Best for: Leadership, strategy teams, and other stakeholders that are involved in the strategic planning process.

👉 Get your internal analysis toolkit here.

18. VRIO Strategy Template

What’s the point of analysis if you don't use those insights to solve your business problem?

VRIO analysis helps you look at your resources and skills to see where your business is lacking. This is important if you want your business to build a sustainable competitive advantage.

Once you’ve found your gaps, you need to make a plan and set goals that will help you develop the missing resources and capabilities.

This VRIO Strategy Template will help you set clear strategic objectives, assign KPIs, and monitor performance so you can gain a competitive advantage and a market leadership position.

💡 Best for: Strategy teams, COOs, and portfolio managers who are in charge of business development and business strategic planning.

👉 Click here to get your free VRIO Strategy Template.

19. Nonprofit Business Plan Template

Our Nonprofit Business Plan Template provides you with a comprehensive framework to develop a strategic plan specifically tailored to the unique needs and challenges of nonprofit endeavors. It serves as a roadmap, guiding you through the strategic planning process and ensuring that your nonprofit's initiatives are aligned with your core mission and objectives.

💡 Best for: Nonprofit leaders, board members, and teams dedicated to advancing nonprofit missions.

👉 Get your Nonprofit Business Plan Template here

20. Operating & Financial Model Template (Excel)

This template is your go-to for turning numbers into smart moves. You can establish your financial projections, automate your P&L statements, key financial and operational metrics, and even gain access to real-time automated dashboards.

With our Operating & Financial Model Template in Excel format, you'll grasp what your financial and operational metrics are really saying and act on these insights. Keeping a close eye on these key indicators will allow you to approach your planning process with clear data rooted in reality.

👉 Get your Operating & Financial Model Template here!

📚 Read our article to learn more about this template : The Ultimate Operating & Financial Model Template (Free Spreadsheet)

👀 Did you find what you were looking for? If not, you can explore our template library with 100+ strategy templates that will assist you in planning and executing your strategy. You can select between various strategic planning templates tailored for business leaders, specific departments, or industries.

5 Steps You Shouldn't Miss In The Strategic Planning Process

Here’s a short recap of each step so you know what to keep in mind before diving deep into the strategic planning process.

Step 1: Decide on your key metrics

How can you make a plan if you don’t know where you want the plan to take you?

This is the moment where you define your desired future state and align on the key metrics the whole company will need to work on to get there.

These should be no more than 4-5 and present in every strategic discussion.

💡 Pro Tip : To be able to set realistic key metrics for the future, you need to understand where you are today. Maybe you have a clear diagnosis of your current state, but if you don’t, we suggest you assess it before setting these metrics. But beware of analysis paralysis! Make a quick analysis and move.

Step 2: Choose your focus areas

Now that you know where you need to go, you can give your plan a little structure by setting focus areas. These are the areas that you’ll want to focus on to achieve those key metrics you defined in the previous step.

📚Recommended reading : Strategic Focus Areas: How To Create Them + Examples

Step 3: Define your strategic objectives

Strategic objectives are high-level statements that outline exactly what you want to accomplish by a specific deadline.

In other words, it is something that can be tangibly achieved and should contribute to achieving at least one of your strategic focus areas.

📚Recommended reading : How to Write Strategic Objectives .  

Step 4: Assign projects & set KPIs

Projects and KPIs will ensure you move forward toward achieving your strategic objectives.

Projects will determine the actions that you’ll carry out to achieve the objectives, and your KPIs will help you understand and measure the progress toward them.

Having projects and KPIs in place will provide a clear roadmap with important milestones you need to hit to get closer to achieving your key metrics.

💡 Pro Tip : KPIs are necessary for any business, whether public, private, or non-profit, so think about the KPIs that are more relevant to your organization. To make them realistic and achievable, we suggest you use the SMART methodology.

📚Recommended reading:

• How To Create Effective Projects
• How to write KPIs

Step 5: Constantly monitor and iterate

Things don’t always work out the way we plan.

Part of building your strategic plan is to monitor its progress toward the goals you set. With real-time tracking, you can quickly pinpoint those things that aren’t working and adapt fast to get back on track. That’s why strategic planning must be an iterative process .

🎁 Bonus Tip: Don’t forget your core elements—Vision Statement & Core Values

This is not a step in your strategic planning process, but it’s an important consideration.

Always remember to align your plans with the overarching core elements of your organization:

• Vision statement— your company’s North Star that guides the direction
• Mission statement —the “why” behind your company’s existence
• Core values— the behaviors you celebrate and preach as a company
• How To Write A Good Vision Statement
• How to Create Company Values

Now that you know the steps you need to effectively plan your strategy, get your FREE strategic planning template to streamline the process!

Use Cascade To Plan And Execute Your Strategy 🚀

Too often, strategies live in the minds of intellectuals, spread through the organization via a fancy PowerPoint once a quarter. In truth, this approach will never work.

Organizations today are operating on razor-thin margins, and leaders need to be able to guarantee organizational-wide alignment, real-time visibility of the progress, and accelerated decision-making to maximize efficiency.

This is where Cascade becomes your favorite business tool. Cascade is the #1 strategy execution platform that helps organizations embrace a strategy rooted in reality.

With Cascade, you get less chaos, more visibility, and faster results. By connecting your metrics, initiatives, and investments to your business performance, you’ll be able to make better decisions, faster.

Here’s what you get with Cascade:

• Streamline strategy development by simplifying complexity.
• Directly link your business data to core initiatives.
• Gain insight into the synergy of various organizational plans.
• Monitor activity interactions, log dependencies, blockers, and risks.
• Utilize dashboards and reports to assess strategic performance and share with stakeholders.
• Enjoy over 1,000 integrations with popular business tools like Teams, Jira, Airtable, Microsoft Outlook, Power BI, and more.

Streamline your strategic planning process with our tested and proven strategic plan templates .

What is the purpose of a strategic plan?

A strategic plan helps you build a roadmap to get your business or team from where it is today to where it wants to be in the future. It provides strategic clarity to all involved stakeholders, so they can make informed decisions on a daily basis.

How do you write a strategic plan?

One of the most effective ways to write your strategic plan is to choose one of the strategic planning models and follow step-by-step instructions. Read more in this in-depth overview of the 5 best strategic planning models.

What are the 7 elements of a strategic plan?

The seven elements of a corporate strategic plan are vision, values, focus areas, objectives, KPIs, projects, and initiatives . You can write a strategic plan for a team or department focusing only on five key elements—without vision and values.

Who should use a strategic planning template?

Anyone in a leadership role who needs to align their team (or teams) on specific goals, objectives, and initiatives, should use a strategic planning template. It's also helpful for anyone who needs to create a visual representation of their strategies, so they can be communicated and implemented across the organization.

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Essential Guide to Strategic Planning

Strategic planning maps the initiatives and investments required to achieve long‑⁠term strategic objectives. Here’s how to do it well.

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Strategic planning that works — even in volatile times

Just 29% of strategists say their organizations change plans fast enough to respond to disruption. What’s the problem? Most often, unclear objectives, poor strategic planning processes and disengaged business leaders.

Use this guide to:

Turn your strategy into action faster

Combat 7 mistakes  common to strategic planning

Capture and communicate your plans with an  exclusive one-page template

4 critical things to know about strategic planning

Especially in times of disruption, it’s key to understand what strategic planning is and does, what assumptions you need and how to leverage the value of adaptive strategy and scenario planning.

• What Is Strategic Planning?
• Strategic Assumptions
• Scenario Planning
• Adaptive Strategy

Strategy and strategic plans: How they are different and why it matters

Strategy creates a common understanding of what an organization wants to achieve and what it needs to do to meet its goals. Strategic plans bridge the gap from overall direction to specific projects and day-to-day actions that ultimately execute the strategy. Job No. 1 is to know the difference between strategy and strategic plans — and why it matters.

Strategy defines the long-term direction of the enterprise. It articulates what the enterprise will do to compete and succeed in its chosen markets or, for the public sector, what the agency will do to achieve its mission.

Strategic planning defines how the enterprise will realize its strategic ambitions in the midterm. Too often, strategic plans are created and then forgotten until the next planning cycle begins. A well-done strategic plan turns an enterprise strategy into a clear roadmap of initiatives, actions and investments required to execute the strategy and meet business goals.

Functional strategic plans document the choices and actions needed for the function to move from the current state to the desired end state, and contribute effectively to the enterprise business model and goals.

Business unit strategic plans define and finalize business unit goals, objectives and initiatives, while cognizant of enterprise priorities and external trends. 

Operational plans deal with the short-term execution of specific projects and changes, as well as any operational tasks not contained in the strategic plan.

If you’re responsible for functional strategy,  such as IT , create strategic frameworks focused only on what’s material — critical assumptions, relevant metrics and the key initiatives your function needs to contribute effectively to organizational goals, even as those goals shift.

Look out for key trends and disruptions, and test strategic assumptions

It’s critical to scan and respond to trends and disruptions that could impact your strategy and strategic plans — and change your strategic assumptions. Strategic planning cycles should incorporate some mechanism to vet assumptions for relevance (also see “Scenario Planning”).

Ignoring or devaluing trends and disruptions can leave critical gaps in both your strategic assumptions and your strategic planning process, because you may be overlooking both threats and opportunities for your value proposition and competitive positioning.

One Gartner survey found that only 38% of organizations have a formal process for this type of trendspotting. Gartner scopes the seven key areas of disruptive change as a “TPESTRE” of interconnected trend areas (see figure). 

Executives across functions and teams can use the TPESTRE construct to identify key trends at any time — from augmented human experience to purpose-driven organizations and digitally enabled sustainability — and analyze their impact. From there, they can build strategic assumptions around the trends as they begin to map what actions might be needed in terms of business models, people/capabilities, IT systems and resources.

After sudden humanitarian or geopolitical disruptions like the COVID-19 pandemic or Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a framework like TPESTRE can help you identify and monitor  a range of risks  that may affect your enterprise or function and that you may need to include in scenario planning. 

Scenario planning as a strategic planning tool for functions

Scenario planning enables executives and their teams to explore and evaluate plausible alternative futures to make strategic plans more robust and resilient. Pandemic-related disruption and volatility showed the importance of leveraging a range of scenarios to reset business strategy and strategic plans. 

Commonly used by strategists at the organizational level, scenario planning at the functional level is just as valuable. Many functional leaders have little experience with strategic scenario planning, even though they may regularly work with their CFO to build budget and forecast scenarios. Those who can learn and apply scenario planning in strategic planning can help their organization navigate volatile and dynamic conditions more effectively, especially in areas like supply chain , where disruption remains high.

Exploring scenarios enables you to determine suitable action plans or strategies for different possible futures. It reveals how to react to a specific future and which set of actions would make sense no matter what conditions ultimately unfold. 

For leaders of functional teams, developing scenarios and their underlying assumptions is in itself a useful exercise to corroborate or challenge strategies and keep them current.

The objective of scenario planning is to secure the best immediate outcome while preparing suitable alternative action plans, depending on how a situation unfolds. Proactively agreeing on both near-term operational decisions and long-term strategic plans will reduce the time it takes you to respond to emerging risks and opportunities. This can help your function preempt, rather than reactively control for, the negative effects of a major event or disruption.

Additional resources:

Guide to Scenario Planning for Functional Leaders

Scenario Planning for Supply Chain Leaders

Scenario Planning Ignition Guide for Marketing

Strengthen Your R&D Portfolio With Scenario Planning

Use adaptive strategic planning to enable a dynamic response

In an increasingly volatile and uncertain world, strategy can rapidly become out-of-date. To address this challenge, strategic planning must be adaptive. The faster the rate of change in operating conditions and the more disruptions you need to integrate into long-term strategy, the more adaptive your strategy models must be.

An adaptive strategy approach is what ensures your organization can spot new opportunities earlier and respond more quickly than your competitors, making you most likely to succeed in a dynamic digital world.

A truly adaptive strategy approach is consistent with four core practices (see figure) designed to move the enterprise from a rigid, top-down, calendar-based process to a more event-driven strategy approach. Functional strategy can incorporate the same principles. While a truly adaptive approach will be based on all four core practices, functional leaders can initially focus on the practices that address their immediate strategy challenges. 

Rather than requiring perfect or complete information to execute, adaptive strategy uses available information to identify immediate actions required for an enterprise or function to be successful. These actions may range from focusing on high-priority areas to making foundational investments or conducting experiments to test ideas. You can use insights from these actions, along with any new information and analysis, to identify your next set of actions.

Adaptive strategy requires you to review strategy whenever new (and relevant) information becomes available, so it’s important to continually scan the business context to identify changes and review — and, where necessary, adjust — strategy in response to changes. (Also see “Strategic Assumptions.”)

Check out more strategic planning essentials for your function

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Marketing Research & Development Risk Sales Service & Support Supply Chain

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Frequently asked questions

What is strategic planning.

Strategic planning is the process through which enterprises, functions and business units identify the roadmap of initiatives and portfolio of investments that will be required in the medium term to achieve long-term strategic objectives.

What are the four types of strategic planning and the three levels of strategic planning?

Strategic planning starts with setting strategy at the enterprise level, but that strategy must then be turned into action. The three levels of strategic planning typically refer to corporate versus business unit and functional. The four types of plans are typically strategic, operational, tactical and contingency.

What steps are involved in the strategic planning process?

To build a successful strategic plan with a consistent and sequential process,  functional leaders  should:

Ensure consistent usage of terms to minimize confusion in strategic planning and set a baseline for collaboration

Build a strong foundation for more detailed planning by setting or pressure-testing mission, vision and goal statements first

Streamline stakeholder input by limiting mission, vision and goal setting to senior leadership, and leaving objective, action plan, and measure and metric development to managers with execution expertise

What are the key elements of strategic planning?

The key elements of a successful strategic plan include:

Mission and vision.  The organization’s mission articulates its reasons for being, and the vision lays out where the organization hopes to be. The strategic plan, which links the two, must be adaptive enough to respond if the context changes during execution.

Strategic assumptions.  To build a successful strategic plan, leadership should scope for trends and disruptions, and assess their potential impact on enterprise goals.

Strategic plan design.  A rigorous strategic planning design effectively translates the strategy into plans that can and will be executed. Poor plans lead to poor execution.

What are the key terms in strategic planning?

Mission: Organization’s purpose

Vision: Desired future state

Objective: How to reach goals

Action plan: What’s needed to achieve objectives

Measures and metrics: To track progress toward goals

How do we design a strategic planning system?

Strategic planning “systems” refer to the tools used to document strategic plans. Gartner urges organizations not to focus on strategy in terms of the document they’re creating, but instead focus on turning strategy into an easily communicated action plan.

What is a strategic action plan?

The strategic action plan is a formal document that serves as the primary source of information for how objectives will be executed, monitored, controlled and closed. Many organizations also deploy an associated but separate “action plan” for achieving the operating model. 

What are strategic measures and metrics?

Measures are observable outcomes that allow organizations to evaluate the efficacy of their action plans. Metrics quantify those observed changes to enable an organization to concretely quantify its progress and stay aligned to its chosen measures.

What are the 7 key success factors involved in strategic planning?

These seven success factors are key to producing high-quality strategic plans that will be successfully executed yet responsive to change:

Focus on designing a minimally viable strategy.

Customize planning efforts to meet participants where they are.

Sketch out initiative design before prioritizing strategic actions.

Be clear about who owns what.

Cascade plans side to side, not just top-down.

Focus performance measures on key assumptions.

Pressure-test plans against a narrow set of future scenarios.

Drive stronger performance on your mission-critical priorities.

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10 Free Strategic Planning Templates in ClickUp, Word, and Excel

ClickUp Contributor

February 9, 2023

Strategic planning is among the most important processes in any business. It builds the roadmap for the future, creating a framework against which every major business decision can be made and weighed.

But its importance goes beyond that as well. Every type of business planning, from action plans to sprint plans and resource planning , ultimately derives from the larger strategic plan. That means one thing above all: you have to get your strategic planning process right.

To get there, you need to start somewhere. The many resources related to planning are a great start. But even more specifically, you need a template that can help you plug in information, digest that information, and come up with a plan that everyone in the organization can follow.

What exactly that ideal template looks like depends on your needs and existing software. That’s why in this guide, we’re sharing our 10 favorite free strategic planning templates you can start using (almost) immediately.

What is a Strategic Planning Template?

What makes a good strategic planning template, 1. clickup strategic roadmap list template, 2. clickup strategic roadmap timeline template, 3. clickup grand strategy matrix template, 4. clickup strategic plan whiteboard template, 5. clickup strategic marketing plan template, 6. clickup event strategic plan template, 7. clickup action plan template, 8. projectmanager strategic planning word template, 9. powerpoint strategic planning template, 10. excel strategic planning template.

A strategic planning template is a roadmap to your business roadmap. It provides business leaders with the exact steps needed to build a plan that can outline the near- and long-term future of the business.

At its best, the template is a measurable tool that everyone involved in the planning process can follow. It helps you solidify where you are, and where you want to go.

And, just as importantly, it helps you consolidate that information into an actionable, measurable, and easy-to-process strategic plan that everyone in the organization can use.

Of course, there is no simple  best business strategy template. Just like a project plan can differ from a product roadmap , you’ll need a template that matches the way you work and the type of planning you’re doing.

That’s why this guide highlights not just one, but 10 free planning templates to cover a variety of needs.

A good strategic planning template accomplishes a few key goals:

• It establishes a clear timeline for the planning process
• It outlines the goals of the strategic plan and derives any actions and strategies from those goals
• It clearly outlines the individual tactics and overall business strategy underlying those goals
• It establishes a way to measure the progress and outcomes of implementing the plan
• It outlines clear responsibilities for individual tasks related to the planning process
• It provides check-in points and opportunities for the team to review and adjust as needed
• It’s customizable enough to make tweaks that can make the plan more relevant for your organization and business planning process

Most importantly, though, the strategic plan template streamlines the entire process. Whereas in processes like capacity planning , details matter above all, business strategy planning should focus on a broader viewpoint that helps every stakeholder involved quickly gain an overview of the plan and its connection to the business.

10 Strategic Planning Templates to Use for Your Team

If every strategic plan has the same goals, you might think that most of them are nearly identical. You’d be surprised.

Much like project planning , different templates can lead to very different outcomes. That’s why it’s best to consider a few free strategic planning templates before selecting the one that works best for your business and situation. To help you get started, these are our 10 favorites to use for your next strategic plan.

It’s a basic template with potential power behind it. ClickUp’s Strategic Roadmap List Template helps you visualize how your organization can get through its strategic plam, with custom fields ranging from the duration of individual tasks to the progress of those tasks, their impact, and their ease of implementation.

Within ClickUp, you’ll be able to view your Strategic Roadmap as a progress view. But, once tasks and deadlines are assigned to individual tasks, you’ll also be able to see a timeline or even workload view to ensure continued progress. While it’s a primarily list-based template, we especially enjoy the Gantt chart as a way to see how the individual tasks interact with each other regarding the larger timeline.

If you’re thinking of your strategic planning as basically bridging the gap between your company’s present and desired future state, this is the template for you. It’s more complex than the list-based template mentioned above, providing you with a more nuanced strategic roadmap once built.

ClickUp’s Strategic Roadmap Timeline Template defaults to a Gantt chart with sections for individual departments. From there, you can view a progress board and outline your current capacity. Meanwhile, a number of custom fields help you better plan through each of these efforts:

• Completion %
• Expected Outcome
• Strategy Progress
• Team Members

It might not be the right template if you’re just getting started with strategic planning. But for experienced leaders looking to take that planning process to the next level, it’s just the right outline.

It’s simple but beautiful. ClickUp’s Grand Strategy Matrix Template allows you to build a four-quadrant view of the strategic environment surrounding your organization, with a framework designed to help you understand what the path to your organization’s future might look like.

How you get to that path, of course, is up to you. The quadrants can be used for a simple SWOT analysis or for more complex planning processes, like finding market growth niches and opportunities in a tight competitive environment. Some of these options are pre-built into the template, while others can be customized to match your exact marketing plan or whatever else you need your strategic planning process to be.

For the visual thinkers among us, this ClickUp’s Strategic Plan Whiteboard Template is a perfect choice. Above all, it’s a visual road map that easily shows not just what steps are necessary for strategic planning, but also how those steps can (and should) flow into each other in the context of the larger project.

Of course, you can still assign different tasks and stages to individual members of the team to keep responsibilities intact and obvious. But the template’s flowchart nature and whiteboard feel also mean you can seamlessly adjust the process as needed.

The chart’s color coding ensures that anyone working on it keeps a clear overview of what’s needed and when.

A strategic plan isn’t just relevant organization-wide. A solid business strategy is just as important for individual units, and this template shows just how those differences can manifest themselves.

Think of this ClickUp’s Strategic Marketing Plan Template as a more practical opportunity to plan your marketing efforts. The default list view is sorted by the Objectives and Key Results (OKR) method, sorting tasks into defined overarching objectives for the larger marketing effort. 

But that’s only the beginning. Custom fields allow you to define the channels through which you’ll approach executing the plan, while the timeline view helps you keep track of progress. And of course, the Progress Board allows you to see how those stages you’ve defined ultimately lead to achieving your strategic goals.

Planning an event is hard work, and countless tasks will need need to be accomplished to ensure its success. A strategic plan template for that event, on the other hand, can keep a clear overview of the tasks needed and accomplished, and how everything connects to achieve core goals.

ClickUp’s Event Strategic Plan Template accomplishes that through a wide range of custom fields, from channel to budget, hashtags, the voice used, and more. It’s designed to plan multiple events at once, all overlapping to create an event-based strategy that helps to elevate your business or your marketing strategy.

Because of the complexities involved, we’re especially fond of the board-based Event Status view. This strategic plan template has a simple overview of where all events stand, and what still needs to be done.

Of course, the list and calendar-based views can also be helpful to get into some of the deeper nuances of event planning.

Strategic planning is not universally liked, in part because it tends toward the theoretical. Goals and tasks alike tend to be lofty for a true business strategy, focusing on the 30,000-foot view rather than the on-the-ground needs of the organization or your business partners.

That’s a major reason why we love ClickUp’s Action Plan Template . It’s a note-based system that folds all necessary tasks to move your strategic plan forward into three sections:

Within that structure, tasks are separated into daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly reviews to account for their varying complexities and timelines. The result is a simple overview of everything that needs to be done, which also does a great job highlighting existing successes and accomplished tasks for the entire team to see and celebrate. Now that’s a strategic plan.

What if we told you that you can build a strategic plan entirely in MS Word? That’s what this template seeks to accomplish, through easy-to-digest sections all designed to streamline the business strategy as much as possible:

• An executive summary that introduces the context and background of the strategic plan.
• A spot for your vision and mission statements to anchor your plan into your organization’s core being.
• A SWOT analysis to take an honest look at your organization and its environment (think vision statement)
• Business goals to define exactly what the strategic plan should accomplish
• A marketing plan that outlines the promotional side of the business strategy to hit those goals
• An operations plan that serves as the actionable road map toward achieving your goals
• Financial projections of the future with the goals for the business strategy (and business growth)
• The team that will be responsible for executing the strategic, marketing, and operational plan

Keep in mind that this plan is customizable to match your needs. It requires a bit more manual work than some of the other examples shared in this guide but can provide a nice overview of the plan you’re building.

If part of your strategic planning process includes presentations for stakeholders (and for most organizations, it does), why not go straight to the software in which those presentations will eventually happen?

This template is, at its core, a roadmap timeline similar to others we’ve discussed above. This business strategy template focuses on the individual milestones needed to get from goal setting all the way to execution. But it’s designed specifically for PowerPoint, with customization options that make it easy to dive in and tweak.

The download is free and easy, and customization only requires basic PowerPoint skills. The timeline is set to one year by default, so you might need to make some tweaks if your strategic plan spans multiple years across your vision statement.

MS Excel is not always user-friendly, but its cell-based build has enormous customization potential. It’s no surprise, then, that our final template on Excel is also one of the most comprehensive options in this guide for your business strategy needs.

The worksheet itself divides into three areas or tabs:

• Goal identification to identify key elements like goals for your organization through focused brainstorming.
• Goal setting, using the SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely) business strategy template for business goals.
• Action planning, converting those goals into tactics, and tracking the progress of those tactics towards attaining your goals.

Keep in mind that, thanks to its MS Excel nature, this is largely an internal planning document and not designed for external presentation. But within that context, the key elements of this business strategy template can be immensely helpful to get and keep your strategic planning on track.

Supercharge Your Strategic Planning With ClickUp

It’s impossible to build a strategic plan in isolation. No matter the organization, chances are it’s a team effort. So why not expand that team to include the right tools? 

This is not an exaggeration: the right strategic planning template can make or break the process for you. Whether you’re trying to hit business objectives, run competitive analysis , or perform SWOT analysis, a clear outline lets easily build a plan that the entire organization can follow.

And when that template is free? All the better.

And here’s the best part: the software powering most of the templates we’ve shared above, ClickUp, is free to try as well. It’s a project management and productivity tool built for teams, which works out perfectly if that project is your next plan to create your overall business strategy. 

Ready to get started? Try ClickUp for free today.

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10 best strategy planning templates you can use right now

When you’re working in the business, it can be hard to find the time to step away and work on the business. But strategy planning is important for every business, as it’ll help you look at opportunities for growth and improvement. We want to make it as easy for you as possible, so we’ve created a library full of strategy planning templates you complete with your team.

Best of all, everything is available on our collaborative online whiteboard, so regardless of where your team is located, everyone can share and collaborate in real-time.

Check out our list below of 10 strategy planning templates you can use for everything from starting a new business, conducting a risk analysis, identifying business opportunities, and setting big goals.

Our comprehensive list includes:

• SWOT analysis template
• Business model canvas
• PESTEL analysis
• Ansoff matrix
• Porter’s 5 forces
• OKR planning template
• Risk assessment matrix
• Strategy diamond template
• Cost benefit analysis template

1. SWOT analysis template

The SWOT analysis stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. These four little words have been helping businesses stand out for over 50 years. The major benefit of a SWOT analysis is that it can give you a broad, bird’s-eye view of your business and your position within your industry. Thus giving you a clear insight on how best to move forward. Kick start your strategy planning session with this classic template!

When to use it? 

Kick start your strategy planning session with this classic template!

Who should use it?

It can be used by solopreneurs through to large teams, anyone who wants to analyze the industry they are looking at entering.

Use template

2. Business model canvas

The Business Model canvas is the pre-eminent business strategy tool for anyone wanting to launch a new business. The idea is to consider nine key elements of your business before you get started. They are key partners, key activities, value proposition, customer relationships, customer segments, key resources, distribution channels, cost structure, revenue stream.

The Business Model canvas is best used when you are looking to launch a new business.

It should be completed by the business founders.

3. PESTEL analysis

A  PESTEL analysis (aka PESTLE) strategy planning template is a tool used to analyze external macro-environmental factors of change in a business environment. It is a vital part of any strategic planning that will ensure you’ve examined and can plan for any external factors that could affect your company in the Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal spheres.

A PESTEL analysis should be conducted before any major issue takes place, not as a crisis management tool. By conducting it in advance, you’ll have guidelines in place to deal with potential issues you may face.

It is best for product teams, with the collaborative session facilitated by the product manager.

4. Ansoff Matrix

The Ansoff Matrix is a product market expansion grid designed to help you identify opportunities to grow or expand your business. It is designed to help product teams weigh up the risk vs reward of four different types of growth strategies :  Market penetration, Market development, product development and diversification.

The Ansoff Matrix is best used when you are looking to expand in some capacity.

5. BCG matrix

The BCG matrix is a product portfolio management framework designed by BCG to help companies manage their product lines. It does this by plotting the two major determiners of success: growth and market share, to help you decide what products should be retained, which ones to prioritize and which ones to discontinue altogether.

The BCG Matrix is best used to help you get a clearer understanding of which products are performing within a portfolio.

It is best for portfolio, product or category managers in the FMCG or consumer durables industries.

6. Porter’s 5 forces

Michael E. Porter, the man behind Porter’s Five Forces Analysis believed that strategy shouldn’t be based purely on price, in fact, it was five other factors that ultimately determined price. They are:

• Supplier Power: the ability of suppliers to increase their prices.
• Buyer Power: the strength of your customers to bring down your prices.
• Competitive Rivalry: the strength of your competitors.
• The Threat of New Entrants: the existence of barriers to entry.
• The Threat of Substitution: the extent to which other different products and services can replace your own.

Porters 5 forces framework will help you with strategic planning when arriving at key decisions regarding pricing, expansion, growth and product development.

Best used as a collaborative tool for teams with input from various departments to include various perspectives.

7. OKR planning

OKR (Objectives and Key Results) is a goal-setting framework that works on the idea that setting goals is important to achieving growth.  With the likes of Google and Uber using the method, it has quickly become the go-to goal setting and tracking method in the business world. Put simply, the Objective  tells you where to go;  Key Results tell you how to get there. The key differentiator here is that when you set your goals, they should be so ambitious that they may even feel unattainable.

When to use it?

OKR planning should be done on a regular basis, ideally quarterly.

It can be used in product teams to help reach stretch targets, or as individual KPI tracking between a manager and their staff.

8. RISK assessment matrix

A risk assessment matrix is a framework used to plot the probability of certain risks occurring against the impact this would have on your business. In other words, how likely is it that this identified risk will actually happen, and how severely will it affect your business if it does? By providing a simple visualization  of potential risks, you can easily see which ones are high priority and which ones can be ignored – for now.

The best time to use a risk assessment matrix is during the project planning phase. It can also be used during moments of change, such as office renovations, transitions to remote work, or during safety reviews. 

Project teams can collaborate on a risk matrix, or it can be conducted by the safety warden or management. 

9. Strategy diamond template

The strategy diamond is a simple model for creating a business strategy outline.  The framework shows the way various factors interconnect to deliver profit within the macroeconomy.  The five factors that need to be looked at are:

• Arenas: Where will we be active? 
• Vehicles: How will we get there? 
• Differentiators: How will we win in the marketplace? 
• Staging: What will be our speed and sequence of moves? 
• Economic logic: How will we make our returns? 

A completed strategy diamond can be extremely useful in turning these ideas into a strategic action plan. 

The Strategy Diamond template is best used when your team needs to consider a well-rounded strategy before launching a new product or service.

It is best for product teams, but it’s important to invite external team collaborators who can contribute an outsiders’ perspective, such as legal, HR or finance.

10. Cost benefit analysis template

We would be remiss to not include the mother of all strategy planning templates. Think of it like a pros and cons list for your business. Everything comes at the cost of something else, so it’s important to look at the big picture before taking any major steps. Not only will a cost benefit analysis help you make a well-informed decision, it will also help you understand where to focus your resources, costs and time before commencing a project. 

A Cost-Benefit analysis will be most helpful when weighing up big decisions such as hiring new staff, launching a new product or purchasing a big piece of equipment.

It is most useful for managers who need to show evidence-based research regarding decisions.

Strategy planning is essential for every business that wants to remain competitive in the crowded marketplace. Even one hour per week with your remote team will open your eyes to so many new opportunities for growth or potential risks you may face down the road. 

Conceptboard helps you map out complex information in a visual way, making it easier to understand and see connections. Best of all, our remote-first whiteboard enables all teams to collaborate with ease. Discover all the templates we offer in our library and try them for free today on Conceptboard!

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Strategic Plan Template

Use this free Strategic Plan Template for Word to manage your projects better.

When a company wants to map out its long-term business objectives and how it’ll get there, they use a strategic plan. Our free strategic plan template captures all topics that any company needs to define, so everything is aligned with the overall mission and vision of the company. More than that, the free strategic plan template guides you through the actions, resources and costs that will help you get there.

What Is a Strategic Plan?

A strategic plan is a document that company leaders use to capture the company’s future vision, goals and objectives. Unlike a business plan that focuses on short-term goals of serval months to several years, a strategic plan looks at the mid-to-long-term goals such as 3-5 years but is often longer than that.

The strategic plan should be easily shared as it provides a map for the whole company to follow in order to meet its goals. The strategic plan isn’t only shared, but it’s thoroughly understood by company employees, customers, business partners and investors.

Strategic planning and the strategic plan that comes from this process isn’t a one-time occurrence. Teams should conduct strategic planning regularly to quickly respond to changes in the business, industry, legal and regulatory conditions. As conditions shift, so should the response plans.

Why You Need a Strategic Plan Template

A strategic plan template is a great tool in that it’s already laid out for you. Everything you need to define is outlined and saves you the time and effort of creating a new document. Templates are great for creating an archive of consistent documentation, especially as historical data can influence your current strategic plan.

In more general terms, all businesses need a target or direction to work towards. Strategic plans are like the roadmap that gets you there and defines the landscape. If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never know when you get there. That’s true from the highest executive to the newest employee as well as customers, investors and so on.

Strategic plans also help you track your goals across departments. Each department can then set its own goals to help the business achieve its larger goals. These various initiatives can be monitored and tracked with key performance indicators (KPIs). This can be extended to business units, teams and even individuals so everyone is working towards the same goals.

A strategic plan template is only a static document. To implement that plan you need project management software. ProjectManager has online roadmaps that allow you to manage all the projects that feed into your company’s overall mission. You can track your tasks, budgets, resources, processes and more, so you know you’re always progressing. Of course, you can build a strategic plan with milestones in the software, too. Try ProjectManager today for free.

Who Should Use This Strategic Plan Template?

The free strategic plan template can be filled in by any number of people depending on the business. Usually, though, this responsibility falls on the shoulders of the owner or top business managers.

However, sometimes specialists are employed or the whole company becomes involved in the strategic planning process. In fact, more voices provide a wider perspective. One person should oversee refining those different perspectives in order to rein in the possible chaos of too many chefs in the kitchen.

Once the strategic plan is finalized, it should be shared among the company. The strategic plan template acts as a guide to keep the long-term goal in sight and how to get there. For some businesses, the customer should also be aware of the strategic plan. Other companies will want to share the strategic plan with investors.

How to Use This Strategic Plan Template

When you download our free strategic plan template for Word, you’ll find it’s broken up into sections. The free template is completely customizable so you can add or subtract as many sections as you need to flesh out your strategic plan. What we provide you with is the backbone of any thorough strategic plan, which is as follows.

1. Executive Summary

To start, you want to summarize what will follow. That’s all the executive summary is; a short introduction to the important information that’ll be fleshed out in the strategic plan. It gives an overview to investors and stakeholders.

2. Vision Statement

A vision statement is a statement that declares the mid-to-long-term goals of the company. Think of it as the target you want to hit with your strategic plan. What this statement should do is project your company into the future and in so doing help to define the plan and execution of getting you there.

3. Mission Statement

The mission statement is a short description of the purpose of the company. It should be no longer than one to three sentences at most and explain what the company does, who it serves and how it’s different from its competitors. But more than a dry definition, it should be inspirational, offering direction and focus for employees and giving customers a clear picture of what they can expect from the company.

4. SWOT Analysis

SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. A SWOT analysis is used to assess those four aspects of the company. This is how a company can capture its current performance and build a strategy to achieve its future goals. But beyond internal factors or charting the company, make sure to explore external factors as well. This provides a fuller picture of how a company can carve a route to reach its objectives.

5. Business Goals

Business goals should define the target that a company is aiming for in the future. By doing this, a company has a way to measure its success, communicate these goals to its employees and ensure the company is going in the right direction.

6. Marketing Plan

The marketing plan outlines a company’s advertising strategy. It can be used to generate leads and reach a target audience, outreach and PR campaigns. Also included is how the company will measure the effectiveness of the initiatives.

• Market research:  Uses competitive analysis, testing, surveys, etc., to determine the target audience and what needs the company is fulfilling or pain point it’s resolving.
• Marketing campaigns: These include promotions, value propositions, differentiation factors, pricing, distribution channels, etc., to see the product or service.
• Marketing KPIs: Using various metrics will help the company measure the success of its campaigns.

7. Operations Plan

The operation plan is an outline of the strategic plan’s goals and how the company plans to meet them. It’s an action plan that shows team members what they’re responsible for in achieving the goals of the strategic plan.

8. Financial Projections

When making financial projections for a company’s strategic plans they should include a forecast of the income statement, the balance sheet and the cash flow statement. These financial projects like the strategic plan are mid-to-long term.

Identify the team members with the skills and experience who will be responsible for executing the operational plan set forth in the company’s strategic plan.

Other Templates to Help with Your Strategic Plan

The free strategic plan document template for Word is a helpful tool to outline a company’s mid-to-long-term objectives. We have dozens of other free templates for Word and Excel that can help you manage every phase of a project, from planning to closure. Here are just a few of the free templates that we offer for download that are related to strategic planning.

Executive Summary Template

If you need help with the executive summary portion of the free strategic plan template, this free executive summary template is a great asset. It breaks down the points you’ll want to capture for an effective executive summary and is a valuable tool to complete that section of the strategic plan.

Marketing Campaign Template

The marketing plan is another section of the strategic plan that can be fully fleshed out with the free marketing campaign template. It outlines all the steps you need to introduce your product or service to market. It has fields to collect the goals of the campaign, identify the target audience and much more.

SWOT Analysis Template 

We’ve included a small SWOT analysis table in the free strategic plan template, but you might want more space to capture this important data. If so, use our free SWOT analysis template for Word, which you can then attach to the strategic plan template. This colorful template helps you see where you are and offer guidance to get you where you want to be.

ProjectManager Is a Robust Planning Tool

Free templates are a great way to gather information and develop a strategic plan, but they’re not as good at managing that plan once you implement it. You need more robust tools, not static documents or spreadsheets. ProjectManager is online project management software that connects teams and helps them plan, manage and track their progress in real time.

Track Progress with Real-Time Dashboards

You’ve put the strategic plan in the Gantt chart and can now see the roadmap in a visual timeline. But to make sure you keep to that schedule you need to have a way to monitor progress and performance. Our real-time dashboards track metrics such as time, cost and more all in real time so you can respond quickly to changes that threaten your goals. Unlike other lightweight tools, there’s no configuration or set. It’s ready when you are.

Work How You Want with Multiple Project Views

Gantt charts are great for managers, but they’re not the ones who are will execute the strategic plan. It’s a group effort that involves every department in the company from marketing and sales to IT and manufacturing, and they all use different tools. That’s why we offer multiple project views that share the same real-time data whether you’re using a list view, the visual workflow of a kanban or a calendar to capture important dates. Everyone is working from a single source of truth.

Related Content

Strategic planning is a big subject and we’ve only scratched the surface. If you want to learn more, you’re in luck. ProjectManager isn’t only a great tool to create and manage your strategic plan, it’s also the online hub for all things project management. We have free blogs each week, tutorial videos, eBooks, white pages and, of course, free templates. Here are a few links to follow and read more about strategic plans.

• 15 Free Word and Excel Templates for Business
• Strategic Planning in Business
• Strategic Planning Models: An Introduction to 5 Popular Models
• A Quick Guide to Strategic Initiatives 

ProjectManager Helps You Reach Your Strategic Goals

ProjectManager is award-winning software that helps you plan, manage and track your strategic plans. Our collaborative platform connects everyone across departments and time zones. With features that help you manage risk, tasks and resources you’re more likely to adjust to changes in the market and hit your target. See why teams in organizations as varied as NASA, Siemens and Nestle use our tool to deliver success. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.

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9 Strategic Planning Models and Tools for the Customer-Focused Business

Published: July 11, 2023

As the economist and business strategy guru, Michael Porter, says, “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”

With strategic planning, businesses identify their strengths and weaknesses, choose what not to do, and determine which opportunities should be pursued. In sales operations, having a clearly defined strategy will help your organization plan for the future, set viable goals, and achieve them.

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So, how do you get started with strategic planning? You‘ll begin with strategic planning models and tools. Let’s take a look at nine of the most prominent ones here.

Free Strategic Planning Template

Fill out the form to access your business strategic planning template., strategic planning models.

Strategic planning is used to set up long-term goals and priorities for an organization. A strategic plan is a written document that outlines these goals.

Don't confuse strategic planning and tactical planning . Strategic planning is focused on long-term goals, while tactical planning is focused on the short-term.

Here are a few strategic planning models you can use to get started.

1. The Balanced Scorecard

The Balanced Scorecard is one of the most prominent strategic planning models, tailored to give managers a comprehensive overview of their companies' operations on tight timelines. It considers both financial and operational metrics to provide valuable context about how a business has performed previously, is currently performing, and is likely to perform in the future.

The model plays on these concerns: time, quality, performance/service, and cost. The sum of those components amount to four specific reference points for goal-setting and performance measurement:

• Customer: How customers view your business
• Internal Process: How you can improve your internal processes
• Organizational Capacity: How your business can grow, adapt, and improve
• Financial: The potential profitability of your business

Those four categories can inform goals that are more thoughtful and focused while surfacing the most appropriate metrics with which you can use to track them. But the elements you choose to pursue and measure are ultimately up to you. As there's no definitive list, they will vary from organization to organization.

That being said, there‘s a universally applicable technique you can use when leveraging the model—creating a scorecard. This is a document that keeps track of your goals and how you apply them. Here’s an example of what a scorecard might look like:

Image Source

The Balanced Scorecard is ideal for businesses looking to break up higher-level goals into more specific, measurable objectives. If you're interested in translating your big-picture ambitions into actionable projects, consider looking into it.

Example of the Balanced Scorecard

Let‘s imagine a B2B SaaS company that sells a construction management solution. It’s been running into trouble from virtually all angles. It‘s struggling with customer retention and, in turn, is hemorrhaging revenue. The company’s sales reps are working with very few qualified leads and the organization's tech stack is limiting growth and innovation.

The business decides to leverage a Balanced Scorecard approach to remedy its various issues. In this case, the full strategic plan—developed according to this model—might look like this:

• The company sets a broad financial goal of boosting revenue by 10% year over year.
• To help get there, it aims to improve its customer retention rate by 5% annually by investing in a more robust customer service infrastructure.
• Internally, leadership looks to improve the company's lead generation figures by 20% year over year by revamping its onboarding process for its pre-sales team.
• Finally, the business decides to move on from its legacy tech stack in favor of a virtualized operating system, making for at least 50% faster software delivery for consistent improvements to its product.

The elements listed above address key flaws in the company‘s customer perception, internal processes, financial situation, and organizational capacity. Every improvement the business is hoping to make involves a concrete goal with clearly outlined metrics and definitive figures to gauge each one’s success. Taken together, the organization's plan abides by the Balanced Scorecard model.

2. Objectives and Key Results

As its name implies, the OKR strategic planning model revolves around translating broader organizational goals into objectives and tracking their key results. The framework rests on identifying three to five attainable objectives and three to five results that should stem from each of them. Once you have those in place, you plan tactical initiatives around those results.

After you‘ve figured out those reference points, you determine the most appropriate metrics for measuring their success. And once you’ve carried out the projects informed by those ideal results, you gauge their success by giving a score on a scale from 0 to 1 or 0%-100%.

For instance, your goal might be developing relationships with 100 new targets or named accounts in a specific region. If you only were able to develop 95, you would have a score of .95 or 95%. Here's an example of what an OKR model might look like:

It's recommended that you structure your targets to land at a score of around 70% — taking some strain off workers while offering them a definitive ideal outcome. The OKR model is relatively straightforward and near-universally applicable. If your business is interested in a way to work towards firmly established, readily visible standards this model could work for you.

Example of the Objectives and Key Results

Let's consider a hypothetical company that makes educational curriculum and schedule planning for higher-education institutions. The company decides it would like to expand its presence in the community college system in California, something that constitutes an objective.

But what will it take to accomplish that? And how will the company know if it's successful? Well, in this instance, leadership within the business would get there by establishing three to five results they would like to see. Those could be:

• Generating qualified leads from 30 institutions
• Conducting demos at 10 colleges
• Closing deals at 5 campuses

Those results would lead to initiatives like setting standards for lead qualification and training reps at the top of the funnel on how to use them appropriately, revamping sales messaging for discovery calls, and conducting research to better tailor the demo process to the needs of community colleges.

Leveraging this model generally entails repeating that process between two and four more times, ultimately leading to a sizable crop of thorough, actionable, ambitious, measurable, realistic plans.

3. Theory of Change (TOC)

The Theory of Change (TOC) model revolves around organizations establishing long-term goals and essentially “working backward” to accomplish them. When leveraging the strategy, you start by setting a larger, big-picture goal.

Then, you identify the intermediate-term adjustments and plans you need to make to achieve your desired outcome. Finally, you work down a level and plan the various short-term changes you need to make to realize the intermediate ones. More specifically, you need to take these strides:

• Identify your long-term goals.
• Backward map the preconditions necessary to achieve your goal, and explain why they're necessary.
• Identify your basic assumptions about the situation.
• Determine the interventions your initiative will fulfill to achieve your goals.
• Come up with indicators to evaluate the performance of your initiative.
• Write an explanation of the logic behind your initiative.

Here's another visualization of what that looks like.

This planning model works best for organizations interested in taking on endeavors like building a team, planning an initiative, or developing an action plan. It's distinct from other models in its ability to help you differentiate between desired and actual outcomes. It also makes stakeholders more actively involved in the planning process by making them model exactly what they want out of a project.

It relies on more pointed detail than similar models. Stakeholders generally need to lay out several specifics, including information related to the company's target population, how success will be identified, and a definitive timeline for every action and intervention planned. Again, virtually any organization — be it public, corporate, nonprofit, or anything else — can get a lot out of this strategy model.

Example of the Theory of Change

For the sake of this example, imagine a business that makes HR Payroll Software , but hasn‘t been doing too well as of late. Leadership at the company feels directionless. They think it’s time to buckle down and put some firm plans in motion, but right now, they have some big picture outcomes in mind for the company without a feel for how they're going to get done.

In this case, the business might benefit from leveraging the Theory of Change model. Let‘s say its ultimate goal is to expand its market share. Leadership would then consider the preconditions that would ultimately lead to that goal and why they’re relevant.

For instance, one of those preconditions might be tapping into a new customer base without alienating its current one. The company could make an assumption like, “We currently cater to mid-size businesses almost exclusively, and we lack the resources to expand up-market to enterprise-level prospects. We need to find a way to more effectively appeal to small businesses.”

Now, the company can start looking into the specific initiatives it can take to remedy its overarching problem. Let's say it only sells its product at a fixed price point that suits midsize businesses much more than smaller ones. So the company decides that it should leverage a tiered pricing structure that offers a limited suite of features at a price that small businesses and startups can afford.

The factors the company elects to use as reference points for the plan's success are customer retention and new user acquisition. Once those have been established, leadership would explain why the goals, plans, and metrics it has outlined make sense.

If you track the process I‘ve just plotted, you’ll see the Theory of Change in motion. It starts with a big-picture goal and works its way down to specific initiatives and ways to gauge their effectiveness.

4. Hoshin Planning

The Hoshin Planning model is a process that aims to reduce friction and inefficiency by promoting active and open communication throughout an organization. In this model, everyone within an organization—regardless of department or seniority—is made aware of the company's goals.

Hoshin Planning rests on the notion that thorough communication creates cohesion, but that takes more than contributions from leadership. This model requires that results from every level be shared with management.

The ideal outcomes set according to this model are also conceived of by committee to a certain extent. Hoshin Planning involves management hearing and considering feedback from subordinates to come up with reasonable, realistic, and mutually understood goals.

The model is typically partitioned into seven steps:

• establishing a vision
• developing breakthrough objectives
• developing annual objectives
• deploying annual objectives
• implementing annual objectives
• conducting monthly and quarterly reviews
• conducting an annual review.

Note: The first three steps are referred to as the “catchball process.” It's where company leadership sets goals and establishes strategic plans to send down the food chain for feedback and new ideas. That stage is what really separates Hoshin Planning from other models.

Example of Hoshin Planning

For this example, let‘s imagine a company that manufactures commercial screen printing machines. The business has seen success with smaller-scale, retail printing operations, but realizes that selling almost exclusively to that market won’t make for long-term, sustainable growth.

Leadership at the company decides that it's interested in making an aggressive push to move up-market towards larger enterprise companies. However, before they can establish that vision, they want to ensure that the entire company is willing and able to work with them to reach those goals.

Once they‘ve set a tentative vision, they begin to establish more concrete objectives and send them down the management hierarchy. One of the most pressing activities they’re interested in pursuing is a near-comprehensive product redesign to make their machines better suited for higher volume orders.

They communicate those goals throughout the organization and ask for feedback along the way. After the product team hears their ideal plans, it relays that the product overhaul that leadership is looking into isn‘t viable within the timeframe they’ve provided. Leadership hears this and adjusts their expectations before doling out any sort of demands for the redesign.

Once both parties agree on a feasible timeline, they begin to set more definitive objectives that suit both the company‘s ambitions and the product team’s capabilities.

Strategic Plan Example

The strategic plan above is for a fictitious shoe company and outlines the way in which it'll differentiate itself within the market. It effectively uses each step in the strategic planning model framework and is written in a way to give a brief overview of how the company will enter the market and sustain longevity.

If you're working on a strategic planning model for an existing business, your plan will look similar, but have a few tweaks to the goals, including more goals about improving sales and processes. When drafting the action plan and evaluation parts of the plan, be sure to think tactically about the actions that will help you achieve the goals, and use your mission, vision, and values to guide the choices you make.

Strategic Planning Tools

There are additional resources you can use to support whatever strategic planning model you put in place. Here are some of those:

1. SWOT Analysis

SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool and acronym for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It's used to identify each of these elements in relation to your business.

This strategic planning tool allows you to determine new opportunities and which areas of your business need improvement. You'll also identify any factors or threats that might negatively impact your business or success.

2. Porter's Five Forces

Use Porter‘s Five Forces as a strategic planning tool to identify the economic forces that impact your industry and determine your business’ competitive position. The five forces include:

• Competition in the industry
• Potential of new entrants into the industry
• Power of suppliers
• Power of customers
• Threat of substitute products

To learn more, check out this comprehensive guide to using Porter's Five Forces .

3. Visioning

Visioning is a goal-setting strategy used in strategic planning. It helps your organization develop a vision for the future and the outcomes you'd like to achieve.

Once you reflect on the goals you‘d like to reach within the next five years or more, you and your team can identify the steps you need to take to get where you’d like to be. From there, you can create your strategic plan.

4. PESTLE Analysis

The PESTLE analysis is another strategic planning tool you can use. It stands for:

• P: Political
• E: Economic
• T: Technological
• E: Environmental

Each of these elements allow an organization to take stock of the business environment they're operating in, which helps them develop a strategy for success. Use a PESTLE Analysis template to help you get started.

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Strategic planning templates

Use this collection of templates to ensure every project has a clear, measurable outcome.

About this collection

Strategic planning is a company-wide process to define the direction of the business. Teams will need to set priorities and decide how resources will be allocated to support the overall vision. Use this collection of strategic planning templates to build out a cohesive strategy that supports the company’s overarching goals. A free copy of “Synergy, Disrupt, and Other Business Keywords” with every order! Use this collection of project management templates to share ideas, outline an action plan, decide and execute on key milestones, and review how your project turned out and where you can improve.

How to use this collection

Vision to values.

Define your company vision so you can form actionable business strategies.

Step 1: Create a vision

Define your company objectives and define your vision and values..

This is the time to look at the big picture and answer these essential questions: what is your company’s ultimate objective, and what drives your team’s work? With the Vision to values template, from the desk of Joff Redfern, Head of All Teams at Atlassian, collaborate with leaders to define your company’s vision and understand how each project helps your team achieve its goals. This is the north star by which you’ll navigate.

SWOT analysis

Use this template to assess how your business is performing and how it can improve.

Step 2: Analyze market gaps

Complete a competitive analysis to see how your business stacks up..

The big picture you just put together should include a strategy around how your team will grow the business. Take the time to analyze internal and external factors that could help or hurt your growth. Use a SWOT template to size up your company’s strengths and weaknesses so when market opportunities and threats crop up, you’re ready to play hardball.

Use this goal-setting template to set measurable, ambitious milestones.

Step 3: Determine objectives

Outline your team’s objectives and key results to ensure all projects are contributing to company goals..

Whether you’re setting goals for your company, your department, or a small team, make sure you know the ins and outs of goal setting, and how OKRs specifically can help. This OKRs template will guide you through a popular and proven method of goal setting and documentation. You’ll outline 1-3 big objectives, identify the measurable results you want to see, identify owners and collaborators for each one, and track your progress.

Strategic plan

Capture and present your business strategy to the executive team and board of directors.

Step 4: Build and execute your strategic plan

Create a strategic plan so you can wow key stakeholders..

Use the Strategic plan template to focus your thoughts before you present your vision and plan to executive leadership and your team. Once everyone understands your strategy, use this template to organize how you’ll get it done. Think of it as an architect’s blueprint for a building, or a montage of The Plan in an action movie.

Retrospective

What went well? What could have gone better? Crowdsource improvements with your team.

Step 5: Review and optimize

Take time to review challenges and best practices in a retrospective..

You’ve prepared, planned, and nailed the execution. (The Plan worked!) Now, your team needs to reflect on what went well and where you can improve during the next cycle. Use the retrospective template to surface constructive criticism for a large, cross-team effort or even for a year in review. No matter the project, this template can help guide the conversation and provide a visible way for your team to take action and improve. 

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Project management templates, free templates for product managers.