Strategic issues are critical unknowns driving you to embark on a robust strategic planning process. These issues can be problems, opportunities, market shifts, or anything else that keeps you awake at night and begging for a solution or decision. The best strategic plans address your strategic issues head-on.
Conducting an environmental scan will help you understand your operating environment. An environmental scan is called a PEST analysis, an acronym for Political, Economic, Social, and Technological trends. Sometimes, it is helpful to include Ecological and Legal trends as well. All of these trends play a part in determining the overall business environment.
The reason to do a competitive analysis is to assess the opportunities and threats that may occur from those organizations competing for the same business you are. You need to understand what your competitors are or aren’t offering your potential customers. Here are a few other key ways a competitive analysis fits into strategic planning:
Learn more on how to conduct a competitive analysis here .
Opportunities are situations that exist but must be acted on if the business is to benefit from them.
What do you want to capitalize on?
Threats refer to external conditions or barriers preventing a company from reaching its objectives.
What do you need to mitigate? What external driving force do you need to anticipate?
Strengths refer to what your company does well.
What do you want to build on?
Weaknesses refer to any limitations a company faces in developing or implementing a strategy.
What do you need to shore up?
Customer segmentation defines the different groups of people or organizations a company aims to reach or serve.
A SWOT analysis is a quick way of examining your organization by looking at the internal strengths and weaknesses in relation to the external opportunities and threats. Creating a SWOT analysis lets you see all the important factors affecting your organization together in one place.
It’s easy to read, easy to communicate, and easy to create. Take the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats you developed earlier, review, prioritize, and combine like terms. The SWOT analysis helps you ask and answer the following questions: “How do you….”
Want More? Deep Dive Into the “Developing Your Strategy” How-To Guide.
Determine your primary business, business model and organizational purpose (mission) | Planning Team (All staff if doing a survey) | 2 weeks (gather data, review and hold a mini-retreat with Planning Team) | |
Identify your corporate values (values) | Planning Team (All staff if doing a survey) | 2 weeks (gather data, review and hold a mini-retreat with Planning Team) | |
Create an image of what success would look like in 3-5 years (vision) | Planning Team (All staff if doing a survey) | 2 weeks (gather data, review and hold a mini-retreat with Planning Team) | |
Solidify your competitive advantages based on your key strengths | Planning Team (All staff if doing a survey) | 2 weeks (gather data, review and hold a mini-retreat with Planning Team) | |
Formulate organization-wide strategies that explain your base for competing | Planning Team (All staff if doing a survey) | 2 weeks (gather data, review and hold a mini-retreat with Planning Team) | |
Agree on the strategic issues you need to address in the planning process | Planning Team | 2 weeks (gather data, review and hold a mini-retreat with Planning Team) |
The mission statement describes an organization’s purpose or reason for existing.
What is our purpose? Why do we exist? What do we do?
Step 2: discover your values.
Your values statement clarifies what your organization stands for, believes in and the behaviors you expect to see as a result. Check our the post on great what are core values and examples of core values .
How will we behave?
Step 3: casting your vision statement.
A Vision Statement defines your desired future state and directs where we are going as an organization.
Where are we going?
Step 4: identify your competitive advantages.
A competitive advantage is a characteristic of an organization that allows it to meet its customer’s need(s) better than its competition can. It’s important to consider your competitive advantages when creating your competitive strategy.
What are we best at?
Step 5: crafting your organization-wide strategies.
Your competitive strategy is the general methods you intend to use to reach your vision. Regardless of the level, a strategy answers the question “how.”
How will we succeed?
Want More? Deep Dive Into the “Build Your Plan” How-To Guide.
Action | Who is Involved | Tools & Techniques | Estimated Duration |
---|---|---|---|
Develop your strategic framework and define long-term strategic objectives/priorities | Executive Team Planning Team | Strategy Comparison Chart Strategy Map | Leadership Offsite: 1 – 2 days |
Set short-term SMART organizational goals and measures | Executive Team Planning Team | Strategy Comparison Chart Strategy Map | Leadership Offsite: 1 – 2 days |
Select which measures will be your key performance indicators | Executive Team and Strategic Director | Strategy Map | Follow Up Offsite Meeting: 2-4 hours |
If your team wants to take the next step in the SWOT analysis, apply the TOWS Strategic Alternatives Matrix to your strategy map to help you think about the options you could pursue. To do this, match external opportunities and threats with your internal strengths and weaknesses, as illustrated in the matrix below:
External Opportunities (O) | External Threats (T) | |
---|---|---|
Internal Strengths (S) | SO Strategies that use strengths to maximize opportunities. | ST Strategies that use strengths to minimize threats. |
Internal Weaknesses (W) | WO Strategies that minimize weaknesses by taking advantage of opportunities. | WT Strategies that minimize weaknesses and avoid threats. |
Evaluate the options you’ve generated, and identify the ones that give the greatest benefit, and that best achieve the mission and vision of your organization. Add these to the other strategic options that you’re considering.
Long-Term Strategic Objectives are long-term, broad, continuous statements that holistically address all areas of your organization. What must we focus on to achieve our vision? Check out examples of strategic objectives here. What are the “big rocks”?
Outcome: Framework for your plan – no more than 6. You can use the balanced scorecard framework, OKRs, or whatever methodology works best for you. Just don’t exceed 6 long-term objectives.
Once you have formulated your strategic objectives, you should translate them into goals and measures that can be communicated to your strategic planning team (team of business leaders and/or team members).
You want to set goals that convert the strategic objectives into specific performance targets. Effective strategic goals clearly state what, when, how, and who, and they are specifically measurable. They should address what you must do in the short term (think 1-3 years) to achieve your strategic objectives.
Organization-wide goals are annual statements that are SMART – specific, measurable, attainable, responsible, and time-bound. These are outcome statements expressing a result to achieve the desired outcomes expected in the organization.
Outcome: clear outcomes for the current year..
Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are the key measures that will have the most impact in moving your organization forward. We recommend you guide your organization with measures that matter. See examples of KPIs here.
Outcome: 5-7 measures that help you keep the pulse on your performance. When selecting your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), ask, “What are the key performance measures we need to track to monitor if we are achieving our goals?” These KPIs include the key goals you want to measure that will have the most impact on moving your organization forward.
To move from big ideas to action, creating action items and to-dos for short-term goals is crucial. This involves translating strategy from the organizational level to individuals. Functional area managers and contributors play a role in developing short-term goals to support the organization.
Before taking action, decide whether to create plans directly derived from the strategic plan or sync existing operational, business, or account plans with organizational goals. Avoid the pitfall of managing multiple sets of goals and actions, as this shifts from strategic planning to annual planning.
Department/functional goals, actions, measures and targets for the next 12-24 months
Now in your Departments / Teams, you need to create goals to support the organization-wide goals. These goals should still be SMART and are generally (short-term) something to be done in the next 12-18 months. Finally, you should develop an action plan for each goal.
Keep the acronym SMART in mind again when setting action items, and make sure they include start and end dates and have someone assigned their responsibility. Since these action items support your previously established goals, it may be helpful to consider action items your immediate plans on the way to achieving your (short-term) goals. In other words, identify all the actions that need to occur in the next 90 days and continue this same process every 90 days until the goal is achieved.
1 Increase new customer base. |
1.1 Reach a 15% annual increase in new customers. (Due annually for 2 years) |
1.1.1 Implement marketing campaign to draw in new markets. (Marketing, due in 12 months) |
1.1.1.1 Research the opportunities in new markets that we could expand into. (Doug) (Marketing, due in 6 months) |
1.1.1.1.1 Complete a competitive analysis study of our current and prospective markets. (Doug) (Marketing, due in 60 days) |
1.1.1.2 Develop campaign material for new markets. (Mary) (Marketing, due in 10 months) |
1.1.1.2.1 Research marketing methods best for reaching the new markets. (Mary) (Marketing,due in 8 months) |
Want more? Dive Into the “Managing Performance” How-To Guide.
Action | Who is Involved | Tools & Techniques | Estimated Duration |
---|---|---|---|
Establish implementation schedule | Planning Team | 1-2 hours | |
Train your team to use OnStrategy to manage their part of the plan | HR Team, Department Managers & Teams | 1 hr per team member | |
Review progress and adapt the plan at Quarterly Strategy Reviews (QBR) | Department Teams + Executive Team | Department QBR: 2 hrs Organizational QBR: 4 hrs |
Implementation is the process that turns strategies and plans into actions in order to accomplish strategic objectives and goals.
Once your resources are in place, you can set your implementation schedule. Use the following steps as your base implementation plan:
Monthly strategy meetings don’t need to take a lot of time – 30 to 60 minutes should suffice. But it is important that key team members report on their progress toward the goals they are responsible for – including reporting on metrics in the scorecard they have been assigned.
By using the measurements already established, it’s easy to make course corrections if necessary. You should also commit to reviewing your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) during these regular meetings. Need help comparing strategic planning software ? Check out our guide.
Never lose sight of the fact that strategic plans are guidelines, not rules. Every six months or so, you should evaluate your strategy execution and strategic plan implementation by asking these key questions:
Guidelines for your strategy review.
The most important part of this meeting is a 70/30 review. 30% is about reviewing performance, and 70% should be spent on making decisions to move the company’s strategy forward in the next quarter.
The best strategic planners spend about 60-90 minutes in the sessions. Holding meetings helps focus your goals on accomplishing top priorities and accelerating the organization’s growth. Although the meeting structure is relatively simple, it does require a high degree of discipline.
Strategic planning frequently asked questions, read our frequently asked questions about strategic planning to learn how to build a great strategic plan..
Strategic planning is when organizations define a bold vision and create a plan with objectives and goals to reach that future. A great strategic plan defines where your organization is going, how you’ll win, who must do what, and how you’ll review and adapt your strategy..
Your strategic plan needs to include an assessment of your current state, a SWOT analysis, mission, vision, values, competitive advantages, growth strategy, growth enablers, a 3-year roadmap, and annual plan with strategic goals, OKRs, and KPIs.
A strategic planning process should take no longer than 90 days to complete from start to finish! Any longer could fatigue your organization and team.
There are four overarching phases to the strategic planning process that include: determining position, developing your strategy, building your plan, and managing performance. Each phase plays a unique but distinctly crucial role in the strategic planning process.
Prior to starting your strategic plan, you must go through this pre-planning process to determine your organization’s readiness by following these steps:
Ask yourself these questions: Are the conditions and criteria for successful planning in place now? Can we foresee any pitfalls that we can avoid? Is there an appropriate time for our organization to initiate this process?
Develop your team and schedule. Who will oversee the implementation as Chief Strategy Officer or Director? Do we have at least 12-15 other key individuals on our team?
Research and Collect Current Data. Find the following resources that your organization may have used in the past to assist you with your new plan: last strategic plan, mission, vision, and values statement, business plan, financial records, marketing plan, SWOT, sales figures, or projections.
Finally, review the data with your strategy director and facilitator and ask these questions: What trends do we see? Any obvious strengths or weaknesses? Have we been following a plan or just going along with the market?
Subscribe to get the latest agile strategy best practices, free guides, case studies, and videos in your inbox every week..
Become a member of the chief strategy officer collaborative..
Do you want to 2x your impact.
Learn the essential steps to writing a strategic plan that delivers real results and aligns with your business objectives. Contact us for more information!
Strategic planning is essential for any organization aiming to achieve its long-term goals and sustain growth. ClearPoint Strategy offers a powerful platform that streamlines the strategic planning process, making it easier for your organization to develop, implement, and monitor your strategic initiatives.
“Why isn’t my strategy working?”
Statistics around the failure rates of corporate strategies vary—some put it as high as 9 out of 10 while others say nearly 7 out of 10.
It doesn’t matter which number is right; both estimates are higher than they should be. That means the majority of organizations are floundering when it comes to crafting and executing their strategy. Many executives, when faced with these stats, are wondering, “How do I avoid coming up short in my strategy?”
But don’t worry—these abysmal statistics don’t mean you’re doomed to failure. You can be in the small percentage of businesses that actually achieve the goals in their strategic plans, and we’re here to tell you how. (You’re already a step ahead of your competitors simply by taking the time to research the problem!)
Over the years, we’ve helped hundreds of clients beat the odds using the steps outlined in the guide below. It covers everything you need to know about strategy planning and execution, from beginning to end, in each of the three critical phases:
Based on our experience, we know that following this three-phase approach will significantly increase your odds of getting high-quality results.
So let’s get started.
Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its direction and long-term goals, creating specific plans to achieve them, implementing those plans , and evaluating the results. On one hand, that definition makes strategy planning sound like a Business 101 concept—define your goals and a plan to achieve them. Unfortunately, the strategic planning process isn’t as straightforward as it seems, especially for large companies.
Some experts say there’s a simple explanation behind the dismal statistics mentioned above: companies are failing to strategize at all. They may talk a good game and be able to explain an innovative new mission, but they cannot articulate the processes and business models that will make it happen.
As a result, nothing about their way of doing business—including their priorities, projects, or culture—changes. Months or years later, strategic leaders are left wondering why the company never achieved what was intended.
This absence of a strategic plan demonstrates why having one is so important.
The strategic planning process is about looking forward, outside the immediate future for your organization, to reach a particular set of goals. But as noted in the definition above, it also involves laying out—step-by-step—how you’re going to get there. Without this foundation in place, you’ll either continue on a path to nowhere, or get caught up in a tornado of urgent activities that may not actually benefit your organization in the long term. Neither of these scenarios will give you the competitive edge you hoped for.
There are also plenty of organizations that do take steps to fulfill the requirements of strategic planning, yet still fail to see results. These strategies fail for many reasons, including:
Whatever is preventing you from meeting your strategic goals—whether it’s the absence of a strategic plan altogether or an imperfect plan execution—it’s worth your time to address the issue.
Analysis has shown that strategic planning has a positive and significant impact on organizational performance. Most importantly, it enhances an organization’s ability to achieve its goals, but there’s more to it than that. Because strategic planning forces companies to adopt a long-term view, it helps them better prepare for the future, setting them up to initiate influence instead of just responding to situations.
It also strengthens communication between employers and employees. The participation and dialogue that takes place among managers and employees throughout the strategic planning process improves transparency and engagement on everyone’s part.
However, the same team that conducted the above analysis also noted that, for strategic planning to work, it requires some specific ingredients, including formal analysis of the internal and external environment, consideration of several strategic options, and careful consideration around whom to involve during the different steps of the strategic planning process. We’ll go through all these ingredients—and more—in the strategic planning guide that follows.
1. preparing for strategic planning, - gather your team, set up meetings, and create a timeline, get the right people involved.
Let’s get one thing straight right now: If your organization has turned to you (or your department, a colleague, etc.) and requested that you “make a strategic plan and then report back to the leadership team when you’re done”—stop right where you are. That’s not an effective plan. Why? You need to have buy-in across your organization, and so you need leadership involvement from the beginning.
Now let’s talk about the major player needed for this process: The strategic planner. The strategic planner’s job is to align thoughts from the leadership team with a process the organization can use to execute on their strategy. If this is your role (or even if you’re just highly involved in the process), this guide will be immensely helpful as you navigate the coordination of the strategy.
The strategic planner will also need the help of a cross-functional team that involves members of the board or leadership, along with representatives from finance, human resources, operations, sales, and any other critical functions. We’ll discuss this further when we talk through the Office of Strategy Management.
This is also a good time to think about your strategy review meetings, which are a necessity for staying on track over the long haul. However, try to avoid adding yet another meeting onto everyone’s plates; instead, there may be a current meeting you can replace or redesign to make time for strategy discussion.
For now, decide how often you’ll meet and who should be involved. As for timing, there are three types of strategy review meetings:
For each of these, you’ll want to send out calendar invites in advance and make sure people know these meetings are a top priority.
Monthly meetings typically include department heads and subject matter experts. Quarterly review meetings may include department heads and upper management. Annual refresh meetings may include upper levels of management and occasionally board members.
Create a reasonable timeline.
Next, you need to work out a timeline in which you can complete your strategic plan and move through the process. Reasonable is the key word here, as that depends on your organization’s maturity level with regard to strategic planning.
Whatever the case, don’t expect this to be done by the end of the week. You’ll be disappointed.
It’s important to understand strategy vs. tactics . Strategy is focused on the destination and how you are going to get there, and tactics are focused on the specific actions you plan to take along the way.
So while this whole process is focused on your overall strategy (i.e. your long-term goals and how you’ll achieve them), we’ll be placing a lot of emphasis on the smaller steps (i.e. practices, resources, initiatives) you’ll take to get there. Make sure your leadership team knows the difference between strategy and tactics going forward!
Sometimes it is smart to keep leadership out of the tactics, but other times, you might need a strong hand to guide the organization through some details.
Get appropriate background information for your strategic plan.
Now it’s time to dig into your internal and external information.
Once you’ve gathered up the quantitative data from the sources above, you’ll also want to get feedback from a number of different sources:
Combined, all of this data will help you get a better grasp on the future of the business.
Don’t reinvent the wheel—use our assortment of strategic planning templates to get your strategy up and running more easily. See our most popular templates here.
A SWOT Analysis stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. This exercise offers a helpful way to think about and organize your internal and external data.
Sometimes it is helpful to use the SWOT analysis framework to organize your interview questions for your qualitative data gathering.
Porter’s Five Forces is another tool used to find these inputs. It’s a time-honored strategy execution framework built around the competition in your industry. Who are your rivals? What are they doing? You then need to look at the threat of substitutes. Is there another product consumers could purchase instead of your industry’s product, for example, substituting natural gas or solar for coal when it comes to electricity generation?
Now that you’ve prepared for your strategy...
Pro tip You may have researched risk assessments, core competencies, scenario planning, or industry scans as part of your strategic planning. If you’re wondering where these tools fit, they’re all relevant to this first stage of strategic planning. They help you prepare to create the strategic plan. If you have worked through one of these tools before, the results can act as inputs to help you in the next stage.
You now have all the background information necessary to create your strategic plan! But this plan doesn’t live in a vacuum—so we’ll start by revisiting your mission and vision statements and then get into the nuts and bolts of the planning process.
Mission & vision.
If you haven’t created formal mission and vision statements, this is the time to do so.
Where the mission is timeless, your vision is time-bound and more tangible.
Two tools that will help build your mission and vision statements:
If you’ve already created mission and vision statements, confirm that both are aligned with your current strategy before proceeding to the next step.
During your search for strategic planning tools, you’ve almost certainly come across a Strategy Pyramid (shown below). This pyramid can be visualized in countless different ways, the order of the pyramid isn’t what’s important. The importance lies in ensuring you’ve chosen the elements in the pyramid that work best for your organization, and making sure those components are going to help you achieve strategic success.
Develop the framework that will hold your high-level priorities.
You can use your OAS or Strategic Shift exercises to help you define your priorities and objectives—but more importantly, you need a way to manage these elements. The way to do that is by selecting and developing a strategy management framework that will bring all your priorities together in one cohesive format.
Using a framework such as Balanced Scorecard (BSC), Theory of Change (TOC), or Objectives and Key Results (OKR) is critical to your strategic success. Many management teams fail at this point simply because of their disorganization!
Note: Choose only one of these three frameworks, as they have numerous similarities!
The Balanced Scorecard , developed by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, has been one of the world’s top strategy management frameworks since its introduction in the early 1990s. Those who use the BSC do so to bring their strategy to life, communicate it across their organization , and track their strategy progress and performance.
The BSC divides up your objectives by perspectives—financial, customer, process, and people—and themes, like innovation, customer management, operational excellence, etc. (The idea of perspectives is fully developed in Norton and Kaplan’s book The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action .) Here’s an example:
For an in-depth look at how your organization could use the BSC, check out this Full & Exhaustive Balanced Scorecard Example .
The Theory of Change is a logic model that describes a step-by-step approach to achieving your vision. The TOC is focused on how to achieve the change you’re looking for , and is popular amongst mission-driven organizations who are describing a change they’re making in the world instead of putting change in their pockets.
The idea behind TOC is that if you have the right people doing the right activities, they’ll affect change on your customers, which will impact your financials, and bring you closer to your vision. A great example of a this theory of change is the nonprofit RARE .
According to the Harvard Family Research Project , the steps to create a TOC are:
OKR was originally created by Intel and is used today in primarily two ways: At the enterprise/department level and at the personal performance level.
The idea is that your defined objectives and measurements help employees, managers, and executives link to and align with overall strategic priorities. Not only does OKR strive to measure whether objectives are successful, but also how successful they are.
Define your objectives, measures, and projects.
The strategic planning frameworks above are all meant, in different ways, to help you organize your objectives, measures, and projects. So it’s critical that these elements are well thought-out and defined.
Here’s how objectives, measures, and projects interact:
You have a high-level goal in mind—your objective. Your measures answer the question, “How will I know that we’re meeting our goal?” From there, initiatives, or projects, are put in place to answer the question, “What actions are we taking to accomplish our goals?”
We’ve defined each of these concepts more thoroughly below with a few business strategy examples:
Examples include:
Whether or not you’re using a Balanced Scorecard as your strategy framework, you’ll benefit from using a graphic model to represent your strategic plan. While many people use a strategy map (shown in the example below), you could also use icons or a color-coding system to visually understand how the elements of your strategy work together.
If you’re just becoming familiar with how strategy mapping works, this article will teach you exactly how to read one—and what you need to do to create one.
Feeling the strategic fatigue? It’s okay! This is a tiring process—so be careful to tailor everything in this section to what those in your organization will tolerate. Putting your strategic plan into practice (our final step) is the key to making it all work during the strategy implementation plan, and getting these details 80% right in a timely fashion is much more important than getting them 100% right in a year.
You’ve made it this far—now you have to be sure you launch correctly! To do so, you need someone from the Office of Strategy Management to push that process, ensure resources are aligned to your strategy, put a solid strategy communication program in place, and get technology to keep you organized.
Ensure the office of strategy management (osm) is pushing things forward.
The Office of Strategy Management is comprised of a group of people responsible for coordinating strategy implementation. This team isn’t responsible for doing everything in your strategy, but it should oversee strategy execution across the organization. Typically, the OSM lives in the finance department—or it could be its own separate division that reports directly to the CEO.
Internal— Be sure all elements of your strategy—like strategy maps or logic models—are contained within a larger strategic plan document. (If you use strategy software , the strategic plan document will likely be contained there.) A great way to be sure your leadership team has a firm grasp on your strategy is to ensure they each have a copy of this document, and they can describe the strategy easily to someone who wasn’t involved in the creation process .
More broadly, the strategy must be communicated throughout your organization. You should be shouting it from the rooftops to keep it top-of-mind across your organization. People won’t give it a passing thought unless you engage them—so every department head should be charged with explaining how their team fits into the strategy and why it matters. For actionable tips, check out this article that highlights how you can effectively communicate your strategic plan across your organization.
External— You also need to be sure you have a plan for communicating your strategy outside the organization—with board members, partners, or customers (particularly if your organization is municipal or nonprofit). Think through how it will be shared, and which parts of it are relevant to outside parties.
In the short term—which would be your next budgeting cycle or something similar—work to structure the budget around the key components of your strategy. You don’t need to completely rewire your budget, but you do need to create direct linkages between how your resources are allocated and how those efforts support your strategy. Over time, the areas that contribute less directly to strategic goals will become clear, and you can work on gradually aligning everything you fund.
But even if your budget only extends through the fiscal year, consider how you’ll align your strategy to projects in the future. For future resource allocation, link your operations (what some refer to as the “work planning process”) to your strategy. Your expectation should be that the process of aligning your resources to your strategy can happen within year two of your strategic planning execution.
At this point, your strategy has been launched: Now you need to know whether or not you’re making progress! Here’s how to do that.
Ten years ago, you may have evaluated your strategy annually. But in today’s business environment, that’s not a feasible option. At a minimum, you should be reporting on your entire strategy on a quarterly basis, or breaking down your strategy into pieces and reporting on one of those pieces each month.
The report you use should highlight progress on your measures and projects, and how those link to your objectives. The point is to show how all these elements fit together and relate to the strategic plan as a whole.
Report on strategy progress via the quarterly or monthly review meetings you scheduled early in the process.
It’s important to note that throwing together an impromptu meeting to go over results isn’t going to get you anywhere. Instead, your strategy review meetings should be meticulously organized and accompanied by an agenda. (See this article for a sample agenda.)
Your meetings should revolve around three key issues:
Encourage candid dialogue and make sure the discussion stays focused.
You may want a facilitator for the first few meetings, and you may want to script a few open discussions where a goal owner explains why they are behind schedule (red) on their goal, and the business leader offers support, not criticism. This will generate the atmosphere you need for everyone to start reporting honestly and working together to achieve the organization’s goals.
To make strategy execution work, reporting is unavoidable. While you might be able to track your first strategy meeting in Excel or give your first presentation via PowerPoint, you’ll quickly realize you need some kind of software to track the continuous gathering of data, update your projects, and keep your leadership team on the same page.
If you want to learn more about the major areas of responsibility you should be covering in your strategy management process—and how strategy software can help with that— take a look at our ClearPoint tour .
Here are two additional helpful pieces of content as you move forward:
You’ve probably seen reference to the “Plan, Do, Check, Act” framework before. If you want to integrate this checklist, this is the time to do so. Here’s a breakdown on what it means:
Done right, strategy planning can benefit your business tremendously, but a certain degree of stick-to-itiveness is required to get the job done. (As we noted at the beginning of this guide, organizations that actually meet their strategic objectives are in the minority. Don’t worry, though, yours can be one of the success stories.) But those that develop a disciplined approach to both planning and execution have been shown to improve performance significantly.
Why is strategic planning so effective? Because it fosters healthy organizational practices that drive better outcomes. Engaging in strategic planning will benefit you in multiple ways:
Setting goals and choosing the relevant metrics to track progress toward achieving them means you always have meaningful data to reference. That naturally leads to faster, more efficient decision-making, especially when that data is readily accessible to employees at every level.
Timely, valid, and actionable information is especially valuable in situations where organizations need to react quickly, so they can make the best decisions possible for all their stakeholders.
In Chapter 3, we discussed structuring the budget around the key components of your strategy. Doing so helps ensure resources are allocated correctly, and in a way that aligns with your goals.
Tying the budget directly to goals also makes it easy to adjust when necessary, if circumstances change and new goals are prioritized over old. For example, a local government may have had a goal to develop a green infrastructure plan at the beginning of 2020, but then had to pivot with the onset of COVID-19.
To support a new goal of developing a COVID-19 response plan, they could simply review the resources used by current projects, evaluate those projects’ priorities and budget needs in comparison to the new goal, and reallocate funds as necessary.
Having a strategic plan brings your main focus points to the forefront, so you don’t have to dig into the details of everything your organization is doing. That means there’s no time wasted analyzing irrelevant and extensive data points in strategic meetings; instead, everyone stays focused on what is most important or where improvements need to be made.
Strategic planning is intended to create a single, focused vision of where an organization is headed. When that shared vision is communicated clearly and consistently, it inspires employees to take ownership over their role in the plan, and they are typically more motivated to do their best work. High engagement will directly impact your organization’s financial health and profitability.
Having helped hundreds of organizations—for-profit, nonprofit, and local governments included—navigate through the strategic planning and implementation process, we’ve seen firsthand the many challenges that arise along the way. There’s no “typical” scenario, but there are some common pitfalls that have the power to make or break your chances of success. Below are three things you should be aware of going into the process.
Don’t expect your plan to materialize after a few meetings. The initial planning activities usually unfold over the space of several months, but strategy execution itself is an ongoing process. Anticipate devoting extensive time and effort in particular to:
Data and analytics are an integral part of strategic planning. And while it may be tempting to use all your available metrics, charts, and graphs for every business decision, doing so unnecessarily can be a detriment to the decision-making process. It’s easy to find yourself drilling deeper into data when perhaps only a high-level view of the information is needed. Avoid squandering time and energy on excessive analysis by making sure the right people are focusing on the right data and actions:
Leadership should focus on organization-wide goals and progress. Teams should focus on the individual projects and daily tasks that are helping to accomplish those goals (and the data that goes with them).
Good planning is only half the battle; the lion’s share of forward progress is in executing that plan. But the execution stage is where many organizations stumble. They aren’t prepared for the work involved with follow-through, both in terms of the time commitment and the tools necessary to support performance improvement. Strategy consultants are excellent guides for plan creation, but most offer no guidance on how to carry it out; as a result, organizations are left floundering.
It’s imperative to have a system in place that will measure and monitor your progress toward goals during the execution phase. Performance management tools like ClearPoint allow organizations to track a variety of metrics related to strategic projects, helping to maintain focus over the long term. And our team of strategy implementation experts is always available to provide guidance on every aspect of execution, from setting up an efficient management process to using our reporting tools optimally.
With the right plan in place, tools to support it, and committed leadership, every organization has a good chance of seeing their strategy come to life.
You’ve made it through these steps…..
...but be sure to place a great deal of emphasis on rightsizing this process for your own organization.
Did you recently do a SWOT analysis and create new vision and mission statements? Don’t do it again.
Do you already manage with a robust set of KPIs? Use them.
Do you currently create reports for your board and management team? Modify them or use a strategy evaluation framework to make sure they’re focused and move on.
Rather than doing everything, it’s more important to realize there is overlap between these steps. Understand how they all fit into your own strategic planning process, and then move forward with the sections you’re missing.
And if you have any questions along the way, get in touch with us. We live and breathe strategic planning and are here to help!
Struggling with the execution of your strategic plans? You’re not alone. ClearPoint Strategy is here to turn your strategic planning around.
Our software is designed to address the common pitfalls in strategy execution, such as poor communication, misaligned goals, and ineffective tracking. By booking a demo with us, you’ll see firsthand how ClearPoint can enhance transparency, improve alignment, and boost execution efficiency across your organization.
Don't let your strategic efforts fail—discover how ClearPoint Strategy empowers you to be among the few who successfully achieve their strategic goals. Book your demo today and start making your strategy work for you!
Ted is a Founder and Managing Partner of ClearPoint Strategy and leads the sales and marketing teams.
Latest posts.
Published: 03 January, 2024
Social Share:
Digital Strategy
Table of Contents
Organizations use Strategic Planning to gather all their stakeholders to evaluate the collection of current circumstances and decide upon their ongoing goals and benchmarks. They decide upon long-term objectives and establish a vision for the company’s future.
The efforts behind an organization’s Strategic Planning Processes are vital to its success, and yet, while many organizations acknowledge they need to do this kind of planning, they often don’t understand how to make it a reality. In this article, we explain the reasons behind Strategic Planning and how to make your Strategic Planning Process as powerful as possible.
Strategic planning is a systematic process wherein the leaders of an organization articulate their vision for the future and delineate the goals and objectives that will guide the trajectory of the organization.
Strategic planning is a process of defining an organization’s direction and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this direction . It involves creating a long-term plan that outlines the organization’s vision, mission, values, and objectives, as well as the strategies and tactics that will be used to achieve them.
Strategy is often misunderstood, which is surprising because fundamentally it’s a pretty basic concept. Strategy is a clearly expressed direction and a verified plan on how to get there. Your Strategic Planning Process formalizes the steps you’ll take to decide on your plan. The Strategic Planning Process facilitates using a Strategic Execution Framework that articulates where you’ll invest in innovation and where you can cut costs.
As far as business development planning is concerned, your Strategic Execution Framework is a vital tool for driving innovation, but first you must define the process you’ll undertake to determine how you and your team see the future of your organization. In this article, we discuss how to create your Strategic Plan and define its relationship to other concepts and documents that direct your business and its activities.
While it’s true that every business is different and must develop their own processes, we believe there are some process of strategic planning stepsthat benefit all organizations.
Below are our recommendations for the steps to take when undergoing your Strategic Planning Process, along with the questions we suggest you answer during each specific step.
Related: Strategic Goals: Examples, Importance, Definitions and How to Set Them
1) apple strategic plan process.
These examples demonstrate how strategic planning is a dynamic and integral part of the business processes of leading companies. They highlight the importance of a well-defined vision, rigorous analysis, adaptability, and innovation in the strategic planning process.
An easy way to distinguish your company’s Tactical Planning from your Strategic Planning is to separate your wants from your HOWs.
In your Strategic Planning, you identify what you WANT for the company. These are big-picture dreams (achievable, but big ) that are your definition of success. In your Tactical Planning, you identify the HOW for reaching those dreams, including the smaller necessary steps.
Inspire specific actions | Identify general concerns and interests | |
Short term | Long term | |
Specific results to achieve | Broad but realistic goals |
Each kind of planning is vital for securing the organization’s future, but they require different sorts of attention and philosophy, and teams that are good at planning one way may not necessarily be good at the other kind of planning.
Your Strategic Planning Process will of course be deeply connected to your Business Purpose .
We like to think of Business Purpose in broad terms, choosing especially to think of a business’s role in massive transformation. Embedded within a Business Purpose is the Business Plan that directs operations and how a company delivers value to its customers.
What is the relationship between your Strategic Planning and your Business Purpose? One feeds into the other. Your Business Purpose must point to a larger impact you’ll have on the people who purchase your goods and services, and your Strategic Planning takes into account how you’ll grow and expand that Purpose as you reach more customers more successfully.
Strategic planning and business planning are two distinct processes that are often used interchangeably, but they have some key differences.
Strategic planning is a top-level process that focuses on determining the direction of an organization over the long term. It involves setting goals, determining the key resources and actions necessary to achieve those goals, and allocating those resources in a way that best serves the organization’s future. The outcome of strategic planning is typically a long-term strategic plan that outlines the organization’s vision, mission, values, and objectives.
Business planning , on the other hand, is a more tactical process that focuses on the implementation of specific initiatives and projects to support the organization’s long-term goals. Business plans typically outline the steps necessary to launch a new product, enter a new market, or achieve a specific objective. They may also include budgets, marketing plans, and other operational details.
In short, strategic planning is about setting the direction for an organization, while business planning is about implementing specific initiatives to support that direction. Both processes are important for the success of an organization and should be used in conjunction to ensure that resources are allocated effectively and that the organization is moving in the right direction.
Imagine this scenario: A warehouse full of goods sits, unsold and unmoved. A collection of brilliant people languishes at desks all day. Outside, the world spins and changes. It’s ready for what these people could do, can do, and yet nothing happens. Needs remain unmet. Progress is halted. Everyday life takes several backwards steps. This is what your business will look like without proper Strategic Planning.
Strategic Planning forces you to consider your Strategic Objectives and critically compare them to the resources you have available. As you continuously evaluate the circumstances of your business and your customers, your Strategic Plan evolves to match your goals and business capabilities.
The process involved pushes decision-makers to practice Strategic Thinking . It limits wasteful spending, especially when upper-level managers are willing to forgo pet projects in favor of operations with a broader use and appeal.
Strategic Planning is important because it directs your resources to efficiently meet your overall Business Goals. Without Strategic Planning, you are likely to waste resources, make conflicting decisions, or fail to grow your business to its greatest potential.
Most businesses find value in reviewing their Strategic Plan every three years. This allows enough time to pass that you can evaluate the success of previous plans, reflect on the achievement of your Strategic Goals, consider developments outside your organization that affect your business, and begin formulating new goals that will become the next version of your plans.
When businesses first begin, they often have too many fires burning at once. They remain focused on existing today rather than planning for tomorrow. Most entrepreneurs remember those stressful early days of starting their businesses and can understand why formalities like Strategic Plans can fall by the wayside. We believe if your business lasts longer than a year it’s important to develop a plan for the future. Think of Strategic Planning as a celebration of a first anniversary—a sign that you’re poised to continue moving forward for years to come.
However, Strategic Planning is not a one-off event that is over once the cookies are all gone and the room clears. Your Strategic Planning team should meet regularly to measure how effective the plans are at helping you reach your Strategic Goals. Ad hoc subcommittees can play a role in gathering evidence to ensure that your plans remain appropriate, especially if conditions change.
For example, we recommended a close review of Strategic Plans and Strategic Goals once the COVID-19 pandemic made it clear that business was going to be affected at least short- to mid-term. We continue to recommend teams regularly revisit their Strategic Plans with global circumstances in mind to recognize opportunities and prepare for challenges.
As we’ve mentioned, there are many benefits of Strategic Planning . Some of those benefits include:
What is a business without Strategic Planning? In most cases, it’s not much, nor is it long for the world. While it’s possible to accidentally find success without much planning, most successful businesses are a result of careful thought mixed with the urge to pounce on the opportunity.
What prepares you to pounce?
Your Strategic Planning and the processes that make it possible.
A key objective of any business strategy is to improve operational efficiencies...
Understanding the intricate levels of strategy is crucial for any organization aiming...
Learn how to overcome the 90% failure rate in innovation from a master innovator and best-selling author.
Expert tactics to boost your innovation odds.
Insights on capturing customer needs for innovation.
Tools that turn your ideas into triumphs.
First name *
Last name *
Professional E-mail *
I want to be kept up-to-date and accept the privacy statement *
By signing up, you agree to receive news and accept the privacy statement (mandatory)
Verify your e-mail address now by entering the 6-digit code we’ve just sent to your inbox
Don't receive Code? Resend code
Help us better understand our innovation Show members
Country * Please Select Afghanistan Albania Algeria Andorra Angola Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin (Dahomey) Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Brunei Brunswick and Lüneburg Bulgaria Burkina Faso (Upper Volta) Burundi Cabo Verde Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cayman Islands Central African Republic Central American Federation Chad Chile China Colombia Comoros Congo Free State Costa Rica Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czechia Democratic Republic of the Congo Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia Fiji Finland France Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Grand Duchy of Tuscany Greece Grenada Guatemala Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana Haiti Holy See Honduras Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Korea Kosovo Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Mauritania Mauritius Mexico Micronesia Moldova Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Morocco Mozambique Namibia Nassau Nauru Nepal Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria North Macedonia Norway Oman Pakistan Palau Panama Papal States Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Piedmont-Sardinia Poland Portugal Qatar Republic of Congo Republic of Korea (South Korea) Republic of the Congo Romania Russia Rwanda Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa San Marino Sao Tome and Principe Saudi Arabia Schaumburg-Lippe Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Sweden Switzerland Syria Tajikistan Tanzania Thailand Timor-Leste Togo Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Tuvalu Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela Vietnam Württemberg Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe Industry * Please Select Automotive, mobilty & transport Financial Services Chemical & agriculture Construction & Real Estate Consulting Education Energy Banking, insurance & FS FMCG Food Gov / Public Industry Health & lifestyle Logistics, Aero & Shipping Media & Entertainment Natural resources & mining Pharma & Biotech Retail & trade Tech & E-Commerce Telco Tourism design Information technology & services Management consulting Retail Pharmaceuticals International trade & development Professional training & coaching luxury goods & jewelry Automotive Insurance Mechanical or industrial engineering Company Size * XS - 1-10 S - 10-100 M - 100-1000 L - 1000-5000 XL - > 5000
Seniority * Please Select Junior Consultant Senior Consultant Manager Senior Manager Director VP SVP Partner CXO Board Member
Areas of interest * Innovation Digital Transformation Culture & Organization IT Strategy & Bus. Alignment Customer Experience
Discover the largest library of innovation & transformation tools on the entire Internet!
LOG IN VIA E-MAIL
|
Forgot password?
New to Digital Leadership? Create your account
Your e-mail address: * Your first name: *
Help us better understand the UNITE community
Our 35-page comprehensive innovation guide covers the key areas why innovation fails. While it cannot cover all the solutions (that would take books to fill), it provides you with a convenient starting point for your analysis and provides further resources and links to the corresponding UNITE models, ultimately allowing you to work towards a doubling and tripling your chances of success.
Discover the largest library of innovation & transformation tools on the internet!
Choose Your Password *
Confirm Your Password *
Already have an account? Log in
Country * Please Select Afghanistan Albania Algeria Andorra Angola Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin (Dahomey) Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Brunei Brunswick and Lüneburg Bhutan Bulgaria Burkina Faso (Upper Volta) Burundi Cabo Verde Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cayman Islands Central African Republic Central American Federation Chad Chile China Colombia Comoros Congo Free State Costa Rica Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czechia Democratic Republic of the Congo Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia Fiji Finland France Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Grand Duchy of Tuscany Greece Grenada Guatemala Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana Haiti Holy See Honduras Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Korea Kosovo Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Mauritania Mauritius Mexico Micronesia Moldova Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nassau Nauru Nepal Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria North Macedonia Norway Oman Pakistan Palau Panama Papal States Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Piedmont-Sardinia Poland Portugal Qatar Republic of Congo Republic of Korea (South Korea) Republic of the Congo Romania Russia Rwanda Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa San Marino Sao Tome and Principe Saudi Arabia Schaumburg-Lippe Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Sweden Switzerland State of Palestine Syria Tajikistan Tanzania Thailand Timor-Leste Togo Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Tuvalu Uganda Ukraine United States United Arab Emirates United Kingdom Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela Vietnam Württemberg Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe Industry * Please Select Automotive, mobilty & transport Financial Services Chemical & agriculture Construction & Real Estate Consulting Education Energy Banking, insurance & FS FMCG Food Gov / Public Industry Health & lifestyle Logistics, Aero & Shipping Media & Entertainment Natural resources & mining Pharma & Biotech Retail & trade Tech & E-Commerce Telco Tourism design Information technology & services Management consulting Retail Pharmaceuticals International trade & development Professional training & coaching luxury goods & jewelry Automotive Insurance Mechanical or industrial engineering Company Size * XS - 1-10 S - 10-100 M - 100-1000 L - 1000-5000 XL - > 5000
Most of our models and canvases are designed to be applied!
To help you personalize them to your exact business requirements, you can download fully editable versions of the UNITE models available (PowerPoint format)!
They are straightforward to work with, and you can directly incorporate them into your presentations as you need…thus saving countless hours of replication!
PS: did you know that you are also getting hi-res print-ready versions for your workshops?
Each month we host our exclusive, invitation-only webinar series where one of our industry-leading experts updates our members on the latest news, progress and concepts around business strategy, innovation and digital transformation, as well as other related topics.
You will receive the book in PDF and EPUB formats, ideal for your computer, Kindle, Tablet or other eReading device.
These sessions are your opportunity to bring any questions or challenges you’re facing and receive expert guidance on the spot.
Come and be a part of engaging discussions where your unique concerns are heard and addressed.
If you are occasionally looking for a sparring partner or you need limited support, then this option will be ideal for you. Coaching sessions are 1-2 hours where we can discuss any challenge or opportunity you are currently facing.
If you need a few more hours outside of this provision, then these could be billed transparently.
We believe support shouldn’t be limited. Because we typically find that the occasional hour just doesn’t cut it – particularly if you and your team are in the midst of a large and complex project.
Your time with Stefan is therefore unlimited (fair usage applies) – in his function as coach and sparring partner. That does mean that you will still have to do the work – we cannot take that off you, unless you hire us as consultants. But you will get valuable strategic insight and direction to make sure you are always focusing your efforts where they will lead to the best results.
We believe support shouldn’t be limited. If you generally know what you are doing but want a sparring partner to frequently raise questions to, this is the perfect choice!
In addition to your monthly 1-1 live coaching sessions with Stefan, you will also get unlimited support from him via email and WhatsApp messaging (fair usage applies). This not only allows you to get valuable strategic direction in your calls, but also gives you instant access to expert help as you work through your plans each month.
The fact that support is text-based means that we can speed up our responses to you while keeping the overall cost of support down.
As a welcome gift, you will receive the both the digital and physical version of our book “How to Create Innovation”, which covers numerous relevant resources and provides additional deep dives into our UNITE models and concepts.
The print version will be shipped out to you on sign-up. The digital version will be emailed to you, and comes in PDF and EPUB formats, ideal for your computer, Kindle, Tablet or other eReading device.
1x major or 2x smaller workshops based on the UNITE models.
All of our Professional plans offer full access to the following:
We are currently in the process of launching our brand new community., we are designing our community to specifically help you:.
Cancelling your plan will deactivate your plan after the current billing period ends. You will not be charged further, but also won’t be able to access [exclusive features/services].
Simply fill out the below form and book in a time for our initial session that works for you. This initial session is free, no strings attached, and is where we can discuss your Blueprint needs more in-depth before moving forward.
Founder of digital leadership.
Partner for it strategy & business alignment.
Speak to our team today to find the best solution for your business to grow and scale.
We are here to support you across the entire lifecycle in all topics related to #digital, #innovation, #transformation and #marketing!
Stefan F. Dieffenbacher Founder of Digital Leadership
Contact form, contact details, book a call.
Title, first name & last name * Email address * Phone number Please let us know how we can best support you! *
By clicking “Send”, I agree to Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
“Please be invited to reach out! We are happy to help and look forward to a first meeting!”
+41 (0) 44 562 42 24
Find a time on our calender that best suits you !
Founder and CEO of Digital Leadership
SCHEDULE YOUR INITIAL CALL
What is the main challenge you're currently facing in your business?
Let’s find the best solution for your business to grow and scale sustainably!
We will uncover your current business situation and goals and provide you with a bespoke solution that helps you drastically grow your business working with us.
Read the reviews and make sure that this is not a waste of time, but a super effective tool.
Schedule your free business assessment call with our founder.
On this call, we will uncover your current business situation and goals and talk about how to drive change and solve your need.
Choose the meeting type that applies to your needs and schedule a time to meet with someone from our team. We look forward to speaking with you soon!
Welcome to our scheduling page.
In a uniquely designed 60 or 90 minute session* , we will …
Based on the Blueprinting session, you will receive a tailored blueprint that aligns with your objectives, vision and goals, ensuring that your initiative is a success from start to finish.
In this session, you will be working together with Patrick Zimmermann, Associate Partner for Customer Experience
In this session, you will be working together with Dr. Andreas Rein, Partner at Digital Leadership for Culture & Org Change
In this session, you will be working together with Sascha Martini, Partner at Digital Leadership for Innovation and Digital Transformation
In this session, you will be working together with Stefan F. Dieffenbacher, Founder of Digital Leadership Stefan is a global thought leader in the innovation space
In this session, you will be working together with Adam D. Wisniewski, Partner for IT Strategy & Business Alignment
Write a personalized review! Log in
Discover how strategic planning differs from other project management approaches and learn how to draft a strategy that benefits your organization.
Webflow Enterprise gives your teams the power to build, ship, and manage sites collaboratively at scale.
Capitalize on present opportunities and prepare for the future with strategic planning.
Whether you’re starting a new business or looking to revamp your company’s existing structures, a strategic plan is crucial for success. It complements existing documents, such as mission statements and individualized project plans, and considers future opportunities and potential setbacks.
With a strategic plan suited to your specific goals, you can chart a realistic, sustainable road map that acknowledges your current organizational challenges while unlocking future possibilities. Learn how strategic planning can benefit your organization and set you up for long-term success.
Strategic planning is a continuous, systematic process for organizations to define their short- and long-term direction. It involves comprehensively assessing internal aspects, like employee development, budgets, and timelines, and external elements, such as market trends and competitors, to enable effective resource allocation so your organization can achieve business goals and scale effectively.
The strategic planning process is dynamic and requires adaptability to changing circumstances to establish a structured approach to decision-making and maintain team agility. At its core, strategic planning serves as a road map that steers an organization from its present state toward a well-defined future, ensuring sustainable growth.
As a holistic road map, a strategic plan well suited to your organization can propel your productivity. Here are a few benefits that strategic planning brings:
When creating a long-term vision, a strategic plan becomes pivotal in steering your organization toward success. However, there are other project management tools and workflows with similar goals. Here’s how strategic plans differ from those processes.
While a strategic plan outlines the organization’s long-term direction and actions to achieve overarching goals, a business plan focuses more on starting new ventures or restructuring existing ones. The strategic plan is broader in scope and encompasses long-term visions like market expansion, while the business plan might detail the steps to attract new customers and establish brand identity .
For example, a new brick-and-mortar sports apparel store might have a business plan for attracting new customers and establishing a brand identity, with a strategic plan that focuses on expanding into online sales to capture a broader audience over a three-year period.
A strategic plan outlines a comprehensive set of strategies to achieve organizational goals, while a mission or vision statement concisely communicates the organization’s core purpose. The mission statement sets the tone and direction, and the strategic plan lays out the specific initiatives, such as research and development investments and partnerships, to realize that vision.
Consider a mission statement for a security camera company — to create seamlessly integrated security systems that protect homes. Meanwhile, their strategic plan details initiatives such as product development, resource allocation, and personnel plans to achieve that mission statement.
Company objectives are specific, feasible, and measurable targets. In contrast, a strategic plan provides a broader blueprint for aligning resources and realizing those objectives. The strategic plan incorporates and supports various company objectives through detailed action plans and resource allocation.
For instance, an ecommerce platform aims to increase online sales by 15% in the first quarter. To achieve this, their marketing team creates a strategic plan prioritizing a digital marketing revamp, including optimizing the company website, driving organic traffic, and boosting search engine optimization (SEO).
Unlike strategic plans, which broadly set the direction for multiple projects and initiatives aligned with a company’s long-term goals, business cases justify individual projects and focus on a specific initiative’s viability and benefits.
For example, a business case might focus on the financial feasibility and expected outcomes of introducing a new analytics feature in a software product. In contrast, the strategic plan of this software company might include goals such as becoming a leader in data-driven solutions, where the analytics function features prominently.
Project plans are detailed documents that outline specific timelines, tasks, and budgets to complete a project. In contrast, strategic plans incorporate multiple project plans, ensuring they align with the broader goals and vision of the organization, and provide the context and framework for developing and implementing individual project plans.
For a web development team, a project plan could detail the steps for redesigning a client’s website, including milestones, resources, and deadlines. However, the strategic plan for this web development company might aim to become the go-to agency for innovative web solutions. Their strategic plan guides not just this single project but others in terms of technology adoption, client engagement strategies, and market positioning.
Discover how the right CMS can allow teams to efficiently scale rich, complex content – all without writing code.
Now that you’re familiar with strategic plans’ benefits and use cases, here are five best practices to create one tailored for your organization.
Before drafting the actual plan, it’s essential to understand your position in the market. Conduct a SWOT analysis of your industry that focuses on current market trends, client needs, and the competitive landscape. This comprehensive understanding helps you grasp where your organization stands and what unique opportunities or challenges you might face so you can establish a solid foundation for future strategies.
After understanding your market position, establish specific, attainable, and measurable objectives that align with your business’s mission and broader goals. Ensure these goals are relevant, time-bound, and fit within your organization’s resources and budget. Doing so effectively guides your efforts and provides a framework for measuring progress.
After brainstorming broad long- and short-term goals, convert them into a cohesive strategy encompassing all departments. For example, if launching a new website design is your goal, involve developers, designers, and marketers in your planning process. Assess and use each team member’s strengths and encourage cross-departmental collaboration. This step ensures that your strategy is holistic and aligns every department toward common objectives.
Implement key performance indicators (KPIs) relevant to your project. For a web development agency, these could include metrics such as website loading speed, user engagement rates, or client acquisition. You can also use data visualization tools , like Google Analytics, to gather insights and track objectives and key results.
This phase is where you translate strategy into action by allocating resources according to your pre-established goals and measure the progress against these KPIs.
Strategic plans in business are flexible. As markets and consumer demands evolve, so must your approach. Regularly review your KPIs, collect customer feedback, study market trends and industry changes, and motivate your team to be flexible when necessary.
A continuous, iterative process ensures your organization remains responsive and aware of ever-changing conditions, allowing you to effectively anticipate new hurdles, improve existing frameworks, and leverage opportunities.
Success isn’t the result of chance — it happens through careful planning and preparation. With the right tools, you maximize your resources and effectively implement your enterprise’s strategic plan.
From large-scale ecommerce websites to small businesses , Webflow transforms how you scale. Deliver optimized performance through your website, empower marketing teams with SMART goals , and foster collaboration for streamlined workflows .
Whether you’re building from the ground up or adapting to new trends, Webflow helps you manage growth effectively and take your business to the next level. Explore Webflow Enterprise for resources focused on scaling businesses with an optimized digital presence and seamless team collaboration.
Loved by designers. Trusted by enterprises. Bring Webflow in-house at your company with advanced security, custom traffic scaling, guaranteed uptime, and much more.
Get the best, coolest, and latest in design and no-code delivered to your inbox each week.
If you’ve ever been confused about strategic planning, we’ve got you covered. Discover the benefits of a strategy map and the best ways to make one.
Learn how to conduct operational planning to enhance collaboration, streamline workflows, and unlock peak productivity in all your company’s teams.
Learn the benefits of streamlining business processes and implement best practices to improve productivity and output at all organizational levels.
Discover how your organization can maximize its productivity and profitability with enterprise project management and take action today.
Learn how a product strategy fosters growth by bridging the gap between product vision and tasks, shaping web development, and meeting user needs.
Learn how the local government is using Webflow to drive job recruitment, share public resources, and deliver more visually-engaging web experiences.
Try Webflow for as long as you like with our free Starter plan. Purchase a paid Site plan to publish, host, and unlock additional features.
Strategic planning maps the initiatives and investments required to achieve long‑term strategic objectives. Here’s how to do it well.
By clicking the "Continue" button, you are agreeing to the Gartner Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
All fields are required.
Please provide the consent below
I have read, understood and accepted Gartner Separate Consent Letter , whereby I agree (1) to provide Gartner with my personal information, and understand that information will be transferred outside of mainland China and processed by Gartner group companies and other legitimate processing parties and (2) to be contacted by Gartner group companies via internet, mobile/telephone and email, for the purposes of sales, marketing and research.
By clicking the "Submit" button, you are agreeing to the Gartner Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
By clicking the "Begin Download" button, you are agreeing to the Gartner Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
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
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.
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.
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 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
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.”)
Audit Compliance Finance Human Resources Information Technology Legal
Marketing Research & Development Risk Sales Service & Support Supply Chain
Join your peers for the unveiling of the latest insights at Gartner conferences.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Starting a project without a strategy is like trying to bake a cake without a recipe — you might have all the ingredients you need, but without a plan for how to combine them, or a vision for what the finished product will look like, you’re likely to end up with a mess. This is especially true when working with a team — it’s crucial to have a shared plan that can serve as a map on the pathway to success.
Creating a strategic plan not only provides a useful document for the future, but also helps you define what you have right now, and think through and outline all of the steps and considerations you’ll need to succeed.
While there is no single approach to creating a strategic plan, most approaches can be boiled down to five overarching steps:
Each step requires close collaboration as you build a shared vision, strategy for implementation, and system for understanding performance.
Related: Learn how to hold an effective strategic planning meeting
Building a strategic plan is the best way to ensure that your whole team is on the same page, from the initial vision and the metrics for success to evaluating outcomes and adjusting (if necessary) for the future. Even if you’re an expert baker, working with a team to bake a cake means having a collaborative approach and clearly defined steps so that the result reflects the strategic goals you laid out at the beginning.
The benefits of strategic planning also permeate into the general efficiency and productivity of your organization as a whole. They include:
Next, let’s dive into how to build and structure your strategic plan, complete with templates and assets to help you along the way.
There are many brainstorming methods you can use to come up with, outline, and rank your priorities. When it comes to strategy planning, it’s important to get everyone’s thoughts and ideas out before committing to any one strategy. With the right facilitation , brainstorming helps make this process fair and transparent for everyone involved.
First, decide if you want to run a real-time rapid ideation session or a structured brainstorming . In a rapid ideation session, you encourage sharing half-baked or silly ideas, typically within a set time frame. The key is to just get out all your ideas quickly and then edit the best ones. Examples of rapid ideation methods include round robin , brainwriting , mind mapping , and crazy eights .
In a structured brainstorming session, you allow for more time to prepare and edit your thoughts before getting together to share and discuss those more polished ideas. This might involve brainstorming methods that entail unconventional ways of thinking, such as reverse brainstorming or rolestorming .
Using a platform like Mural, you can easily capture and organize your team’s ideas through sticky notes, diagrams, text, or even images and videos. These features allow you to build actionable next steps immediately (and in the same place) through color coding and tagging.
Whichever method you choose, the ideal outcome is that you avoid groupthink by giving everyone a voice and a say. Once you’ve reached a consensus on your top priorities, add specific objectives tied to each of those priorities.
Related: Brainstorming and ideation template
Whether it’s for your business as a whole, or a specific initiative, successful strategic planning involves alignment with a vision for success. You can think of it as a project-specific mission statement or a north star to guide employees toward fulfilling organizational goals.
To create a vision statement that explicitly states the ideal results of your project or company transformation, follow these four key steps:
For example, say your vision is to revolutionize customer success by streamlining and optimizing your process for handling support tickets. It’s important to have a strategy map that allows stakeholders (like the support team, marketing team, and engineering team) to know the overall objective and understand the roles they will play in realizing the goals.
This can be done in real time or asynchronously , whether in person, hybrid, or remote. By leveraging a shared digital space , everyone has a voice in the process and room to add their thoughts, comments, and feedback.
Related: Vision board template
The next step in creating a strategic plan is to conduct an assessment of where you stand in terms of your own initiatives, as well as the greater marketplace. Start by conducting a resource assessment. Figure out which financial, human, and/or technological resources you have available and if there are any limitations. You can do this using a SWOT analysis.
SWOT analysis is an exercise where you define:
For example, say you have an eco-friendly tech company and your vision is to launch a new service in the next year. Here’s what the SWOT analysis might look like:
This SWOT analysis will guide the company in setting strategic objectives and formulating a robust plan to navigate the challenges it might face.
Related: SWOT analysis template
Once you've identified your organization’s mission and current standing, start a preliminary plan document that outlines your priorities and their corresponding objectives. Priorities and objectives should be set based on what is achievable with your available resources. The SMART framework is a great way to ensure you set effective goals . It looks like this:
For instance, going back to the eco-friendly tech company, the SMART goals might be:
With strategic objectives like this, you’ll be ready to put the work into action.
Related: Project kickoff template
In this stage, individuals or units within your team can get granular about how to achieve your goals and who'll be accountable for each step. For example, the senior leadership team might be in charge of assigning specific tasks to their team members, while human resources works on recruiting new talent.
It’s important to note that everyone’s responsibilities may shift over time as you launch and gather initial data about your project. For this reason, it’s key to define responsibilities with clear short-term metrics for success. This way, you can make sure that your plan is adaptable to changing circumstances.
One of the more common ways to define tactics and metrics is to use the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) method. By outlining your OKRs, you’ll know exactly what key performance indicators (KPIs) to track and have a framework for analyzing the results once you begin to accumulate relevant data.
For instance, if our eco-friendly tech company has a goal of increasing sales, one objective might be to expand market reach for its solar-powered products. The sales team lead would be in charge of developing an outreach strategy. The key result would be to successfully launch its products in two new regions by Q2. The KPI would be a 60% conversation rate in those targeted markets.
Related: OKR planning template
Once your plan is set into motion, it’s important to actively manage (and measure) progress. Before launching your plan, settle on a management process that allows you to measure success or failure. In this way, everyone is aligned on progress and can come together to evaluate your strategy execution at regular intervals.
Determine the milestones at which you’ll come together and go over results — this can take place weekly, monthly, or quarterly, depending on the nature of the project.
One of the best ways to evaluate progress is through agile retrospectives (or retros) , which can be done in real time or asynchronously. During this process, gather and organize feedback about the key elements that played a role in your strategy.
Related: Retrospective radar template
Retrospectives are typically divided into three parts:
This structure is also sometimes called the “ rose, thorn, bud ” framework. By using this approach, team members can collectively brainstorm and categorize their feedback, making the next steps clear and actionable. Creating an action plan during a post-mortem meeting is a crucial step in ensuring that lessons learned from past projects or events are effectively translated into tangible improvements.
Another method for reviewing progress is the quarterly business review (QBR). Like the agile retrospective, it allows you to collect feedback and adjust accordingly. In the case of QBRs, however, we recommend dividing your feedback into four categories:
Strategic planners know that planning activities continue even after a project is complete. There’s always room for improvement and an action plan waiting to be implemented. Using the above approaches, your team can make room for new ideas within the existing strategic framework in order to track better to your long-term goals.
Related: Quarterly business review template
The beauty of the strategic plan is that it can be applied from the campaign level all the way up to organizational vision. Using the strategic planning framework, you build buy-in , trust, and transparency by collaboratively creating a vision for success, and mapping out the steps together on the road to your goals.
Also, in so doing, you build in an ability to adapt effectively on the fly in response to data through measurement and evaluation, making your plan both flexible and resilient.
Related: 5 Tips for Holding Effective Post-mortems
Mural unlocks collaborative strategic planning through a shared digital space with an intuitive interface, a library of pre-fab templates, and methodologies based on design thinking principles.
Outline goals, identify key metrics, and track progress with a platform built for any enterprise.
Learn more about strategic planning with Mural.
About the authors
Bryan Kitch
Tagged Topics
Related blog posts.
Figma design
Design and prototype in one place
Collaborate with a digital whiteboard
Translate designs into code
Get the desktop, mobile, and font installer apps
See the latest features and releases
Organizations
Config 2024
Register to attend in person or online — June 26–27
Creator fund
Build and sell what you love
User groups
Join a local Friends of Figma group
Learn best practices at virtual events
Customer stories
Read about leading product teams
Stories about bringing new ideas to life
Get started
Imagine you're ready to expand your thriving business to another market. Would you choose that market based on where you'd like to vacation, or just ask ChatGPT to decide for you? That wouldn’t be strategic, and it could backfire. The smart business move would be to assess risks, opportunities, regulations, competition, and the local business landscape—then use your analysis to plan your next move.
For businesses, strategic planning can make all the difference between expanding market share and closing up shop. Read on to find out how to excel at strategic planning.
Whether your organization is a startup or established business charting the way forward, a strategic plan is a vital tool for success—and you can lead the charge. Strategic planning is the process of putting your best business theories to the test in the marketplace. Your strategic planning process starts with defining a mission/vision statement and setting key goals. To achieve those goals, you create a detailed plan, or strategy map .
Once you put that strategic plan into motion, you're no longer just reacting to market forces. You're proactive, blazing your own trail to your desired destination. There’s no better way to ensure that decisions are evidence-based, forward-looking, collaborative, and aligned with your entire organization’s long-term objectives.
Think of your business as an orchestra. No matter how skilled your musicians are, if they all play a different tune, you won't like what you hear. Wouldn’t you rather start out with sheet music and a brilliant conductor? An organization can make decisions without a strategic plan in place, just like an orchestra can play without a conductor. But when individuals or departments make decisions based on opinion, guesswork, or instinct, you can end up with disorganized, inefficient use of time and resources—and that’s not music to anyone’s ears.
Roger Martin, one of the world’s leading thinkers on strategy, cautions that “a plan is not a strategy.” A plan is comfortable because you control the levers, like time and costs. But strategic planning challenges you to put strategy to the test, making “an integrative set of choices that positions you on a playing field of your choice in a way that you win .”
A strategic plan can be a competitive advantage. Harvard Business Review found that up to 67% of HR and IT departments have strategies of their own that don’t align with the larger corporate strategy. The bad news gets worse: 95% of employees don’t understand their organization’s strategy. Clear, effectively communicated strategic plans position organizations to outperform competitors struggling to articulate cohesive strategies to their employees.
With a strategic plan, you can help your organization to:
Strategic planning teams tackle key responsibilities: defining company mission/vision statements, setting goals, identifying opportunities, evaluating risks, and plotting a course to meet objectives. To achieve this ambitious agenda, your team should cover a broad spectrum of viewpoints and roles, including:
Not sure who your key stakeholders are? Check out the FigJam stakeholder analysis template to identify valuable collaborators right from the start, but make sure the group doesn’t get too big. Large groups can get bogged down in strategic planning discussions.
Your organization's strategic planning process may take slightly different steps depending on its size and needs, but most organizations follow these five basic steps.
1. Define the organization's mission, vision, and values .
These elements of strategic planning inform all of your objectives and the overall direction of the business strategy from here on out. What does your organization intend to do? What does it stand for, and why?
2. Conduct a situational analysis.
SWOT analysis is a time-tested tool to assess the opportunities and risks your organization faces. Cover internal and external factors, including your resources, competition, and changes in the market.
3. Set goals and objectives .
Pinpoint what you want to achieve, then set realistic and achievable targets. You could focus on specific objectives (“reduce customer acquisition costs by 5% next quarter”) or address broader strategic goals (“increase customer satisfaction” ) . Articulate goals and objectives clearly , and define your measurements for success.
4. Develop and launch your action plan .
Outline the steps to take, and break down steps into tasks. Then decide who is responsible for each task, and when each task needs to be completed. With every decision, aim to minimize risk and maximize opportunity to achieve your goal.
To get your strategic plan on track for success, communicate the plan to everyone in the organization. You may want to launch your plan at an all-hands meeting, or break it up into meetings with separate departments.
5. Evaluate the results.
Establish a timeline of regular assessments to check plan progres. Assign responsibilities to monitor and assess outcomes, and make course corrections as needed.
The strategic planning process involves gathering data, documents, and team input to define timelines with multiple steps and dependencies. Figma's makes this complex process easier with these collaborative strategic planning tools:
The keys to strategic planning are collaboration, effective teamwork, and comprehensive information-gathering—and Figma has you covered with online collaboration tools . Figma's easy, engaging strategic plan template gets your team started with tools for brainstorming, diagramming, and sharing data and feedback—all in one space.
Go to next section
Every business needs a great strategic plan to achieve their long term goals.
A strategy map is a visual representation of how a company can achieve their long-term goals and objectives.
While strategic planning involves big-picture thinking, tactical planning covers the nitty-gritty of turning strategy into action.
Using goal-based planning, making time, promoting communication, following up.
Every successful business has a plan and knows where it is heading in the future. Setting a plan with goals, target dates, and a purpose should be finalized before embarking on a business. Taking the time on an ongoing basis to review the company's past performance, and predict its future performance, gives it a road map to follow.
Without strategic planning , which is knowing the current state of your business and where you want it to go, most businesses will fail. A strategic plan allows you to see what is important, how to get there, the pitfalls to avoid, and the noise to ignore. Below we discuss some of the reasons why strategic planning is important and how to implement it.
The very first strategic planning most businesses do is a business plan . When you first start your business, you will likely have prepared a mission statement , a budget, and a marketing and promotion plan. The business plan is a good first step, but it needs to be reviewed and updated as the business continues and grows. If you shove it in a drawer and let dust gather on it, it won't serve as the foundation of your business, as it was meant to.
A business plan serves as the blueprint for a company's success, providing a comprehensive roadmap that outlines its objectives, strategies, and tactics for achieving growth and profitability. In some cases, a business plan is also necessary for attracting external funding and support from an outside investor or bank.
How you go about conducting strategic planning will depend on many variables, including the size of your business, the time frame included, and your personal preferences. The most common style of plan is goals-based. In this type of plan, you set goals for the business (financial and non-financial) and map out the steps needed to meet those goals.
For example, if your goal is to have $100,000 in revenues next year, the steps to get there might include bringing in five new clients a month and attending three trade shows. Whatever the goals you set for your business, they should be concrete and measurable so that you know when you reach them. Another method of strategic planning is mission-based.
When you first started your business, you likely developed a mission or values statement, outlining the purpose of your company and its overall reason for being. A mission-based strategic plan ties each part of the plan into the mission, to ensure that the company is always operating in the service of that mission.
For example, if your mission statement is to be recognized as a leader in the financial services sector and to help families become financially independent, your strategic plans should address how you will meet those goals.
It can be difficult to find the time to plan your business. Other, more pressing priorities, like trying to bring in revenue , may grab your attention; however, carving out time regularly will help you keep on top of your business.
Blocking off a few hours a day or week to focus on your plan should be part of your business operations. During that time, you can examine the prior week's financial performance and update any marketing initiatives to make sure that your business is on track with your initial plan. If it's not, then you'll need to make adjustments to get back on track.
Regardless of how often you plan, make sure that you set it in stone in your day planner. Block off the time and don't let anything else get in the way. Turn off your cell phone and, if at all possible, go somewhere away from your office to plan in order to minimize distractions.
As a business owner, you will most likely have employees. It is critical to inform them of your strategic plan so that they are on the same page and working towards the same goal as you.
Including your staff in your strategic plan will instill a feeling of responsibility in their jobs that will help ensure productivity.
For example, if you have a sales team and your strategic plan involves bringing in five new clients a month, your sales team needs to be aware of this so that they know the goal to achieve. If they don't, perhaps they would be under the assumption that bringing in two new clients a month is excellent, when in actuality, it is only 40% of your goal. Without clear communication to your employees, your business will be a boat set adrift without any course to follow.
A critical part of the planning process is reviewing your previous plan and comparing it to your actual results. Were you able to bring in five new clients last month? If not, why not? Tweak the plan going forward to account for changes in your business or the general economic climate. The more experience you get with the planning process and with the operational side of your business, the more accurately you will be able to plan.
Once you have had your business running for a while and block out time to follow up on your strategic plan, you will be able to determine where the strengths and weaknesses in your business lie. This would allow you to correct course, perhaps changing your business plan and goals slightly to focus on your strengths, while allowing you to eliminate your weakness, making your business stronger and increasing the likelihood of achieving your goals.
Strategic planning is crucial for businesses because it provides a roadmap for achieving long-term objectives, identifying opportunities, and mitigating risks. It helps align organizational resources, activities, and goals, ensuring that everyone is working towards a common vision.
The key benefits of strategic planning include improved decision-making, enhanced resource allocation, increased organizational alignment, better risk management, and the ability to seize opportunities for growth and innovation.
Without a strategic plan, organizations may struggle to maintain focus, allocate resources efficiently, or adapt to changing circumstances. They may miss opportunities for growth or become vulnerable to competitive threats. Companies with a strategy may be more likely to face challenges in sustaining long-term success.
Best practices for effective strategic planning include involving key stakeholders in the process and conducting thorough environmental scans to fully understand all aspects of a company that will be impacted. This can be done through a SWOT analysis. Once your strategy is in place, set clear and measurable objectives, regularly monitor progress, and don't be afraid to realign the strategy with new information as it comes available.
Planning out the future of your business is the best way to ensure success. Creating an initial plan and communicating that plan to your employees will ensure that everyone is working towards the same goal.
Taking out time to review your business's results and comparing them to your plan will help ensure that the right policies and procedures continue whereas those that are not benefiting the company will be removed. It may seem awkward and difficult at first to create a strategic plan, but with practice, you will be able to move your business in the right direction.
What to read next:
Playing chess without a strong opening is a guaranteed way to disadvantage yourself. Just like in chess, organizations without an adequate strategic planning process are unlikely to thrive and adapt long-term.
The strategic planning process is essential for aligning your organization on key priorities, goals, and initiatives, making it crucial for organizational success.
This article will empower you to craft and perfect your strategic planning process by exploring the following:
By the end of this article, you’ll have the knowledge needed to perfect the key elements of strategic planning. Ready? Let’s begin.
Strategic planning charts your business's course toward success. Using your organization’s vision, mission statement , and values — with internal and external information — each step of the strategic planning process helps you craft long-term objectives and attain your goals with strategic management.
The key elements of strategic planning includes a SWOT analysis, goal setting , stakeholder involvement, plus developing actionable strategies, approaches, and tactics aligned with primary objectives.
In short, the strategic planning process bridges the gap between your organization’s current and desired state, providing a clear and actionable framework that answers: Where are you now? Where do you want to be? How will you get there?
The following strategic planning components work together to create cohesive strategic plans for your business goals. Let’s take a close look at each of these:
Just as a chess player needs a gameplan to reach checkmate, a company needs a solid strategic plan to achieve its goals.
Without a strategic plan, your business will waste precious time, energy, and resources on endeavors that won’t get your company closer to where it needs to be.
Your ideal plan should cover all key strategic planning areas, while allowing you to stay present by measuring success and course-correcting or redefining the strategic direction when necessary. Ultimately, enabling your company to stay future-proof through the creation of an always-on strategy that reflects your company's mission and vision.
An always-on strategy involves continuous environmental scanning even after the strategic plan has been devised, ensuring readiness to adapt in response to quick, drastic changes in the environment.
Let’s dive deeper into the steps of the strategic planning process.
You understand the overall value of implementing a strategic planning process — now let’s put it in practice. Here's our 7-step approach to strategic planning that ensures everyone is on the same page:
The first step of the strategic planning process is understanding your organization’s core elements: vision, mission, and values. Clarifying these will align your strategic plan with your company’s definition of success. Once established, these are the foundation for the rest of the strategic planning process.
Questions to ask:
Read more: What is Mission vs. Vision
Once everyone on the same page about vision, mission, and values, it's time to scan your internal and external environment. This involves a long-term SWOT analysis, evaluating your organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
Internal strengths and weaknesses help you understand where your organization excels and what it could improve. Strengths and weaknesses awareness helps make more informed decisions with your capabilities and resource allocation in mind.
Externally, opportunities and threats in the market help you understand the power of your industry’s customers, suppliers, and competitors. Additionally, consider how broader forces like technology, culture, politics, and regulation may impact your organization.
Prioritization puts the “strategic” in strategic planning process. Your organization’s mission, vision, values, and environmental scan serve as a lens to identify top priorities. Limiting priorities ensures your organization intentionally allocates resources.
These categories can help you rank your strategic priorities:
Next, you establish goals and metrics to reflect your strategic priorities. Purpose-driven, long-term, actionable strategic planning goals should flow down through the organization, with lower-level goals contributing to higher-level ones.
One approach that can help you set and measure your aligned goals is objectives and key results (OKRs). OKRs consist of objectives, qualitative statements of what you want to achieve, and key results, 3-5 supporting metrics that track progress toward your objective.
OKRs ensure alignment at every level of the organization, with tracking and accountability built into the framework to keep everyone engaged. With ambitious, intentional goals, OKRs can help you drive the strategic plan forward.
Get an in-depth look at OKRs with our Ultimate OKR Playbook
The next step of the strategic planning process gets down to the nitty-gritty “how” — developing a clear, practical strategic plan for bridging the gap between now and the future.
To do this, you’ll need to brainstorm short- and long-term approaches to achieving the goals you’ve set, answering a couple of key questions along the way. You must evaluate ideas based on factors like:
From your approaches, you can devise a detailed action plan, which covers things like:
With a detailed action plan like this, you can move from abstract goals to concrete steps, bringing you closer to achieving your strategic objectives.
Writing and communicating your strategic plan involves everyone, ensuring each team is on the same page. Here’s a clear, concise structure you can use to cover the most important strategic planning components:
Finally, it’s time to implement your strategic plan, making sure it's up to date, creating a persistent, always-on strategy that doesn't lag behind. As you get the ball rolling, keep a close eye on your timelines, milestones, and performance targets, and whether these align with your internal and external environment.
Internally, indicators like completions, issues, and delays provide visibility into your process. If any bottlenecks, inefficiencies, or misalignment arises, take corrective action promptly — adjust the plan, reallocate resources, or provide additional training to employees.
Externally, you should monitor changes such as customer preferences, competitive pressures, economic shifts , and regulatory changes. These impact the success of your strategic action plan and may require tweaks along the way.
Remember, implementing a strategic plan isn’t a one-time task — continual evaluation is essential for an always-on strategy. It involves extending beyond planning stages and contextualizing the strategy in real-time, allowing for swift adaptations to changing circumstances to ensure your plan remains relevant.
You can use several frameworks to guide you through the strategic planning process. Some of the most influential ones include:
While strategic planning provides a roadmap for business success, it's not immune to challenges. Recognizing and addressing these is crucial for effective strategy implementation. Let's explore common issues encountered in strategic planning and strategies to overcome them.
Want a quick recap? Watch our summary below
Traditional strategic planning models often follow a linear, annual, and inflexible process that doesn't accommodate quick changes in the business landscape. Strategies formulated this way may quickly become outdated in today's fast-paced environment.
To overcome the rigidity of traditional strategic planning, your organization should integrate continuous environmental scanning processes. This includes monitoring market changes, competitor actions, and technological advancements, ensuring real-time insights inform strategic decision-making. Additionally, adopting agile methodologies allows for iterative planning, breaking down strategies into smaller, manageable components reviewed and adjusted regularly, ensuring adaptability in today's fast-paced landscape.
There's often a significant gap between the strategic objectives and their actual implementation, leading to misalignment, confusion, and inefficiency within the organization.
To bridge the gap, ensure accountability, alignment, and feedback-driven processes across the business. Linking team roles and responsibilities to lower-level objectives can fosters alignment and accountability, whereas aligning these with overarching strategic objectives ensure coherence in execution. To ensure goals are optimized on an ongoing basis, implement a feedback mechanism that continuously evaluates progress against goals, enabling regular adjustments based on market feedback and internal insights.
Traditional planning models rely on historical data and periodic reviews, which might not capture real-time changes or emerging trends accurately. This can result in misaligned strategies unsuitable for the current business landscape.
Leverage advanced analytics tools and AI-driven technologies. Invest in technologies that offer real-time tracking and reporting of key performance indicators, with dashboards and monitoring systems that provide up-to-date insights. These allow you to gather, process, and interpret real-time data for proactive decision-making that aligns with the current business landscape.
The absence of a feedback loop between strategy formulation, execution, and evaluation can impact learning and improvement. Companies might therefore struggle to refine their strategies based on real-time performance insights.
Establish a structured feedback loop encompassing strategy formulation, execution, and evaluation stages. Encourage employees to actively contribute insights on strategy execution, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and adaptation.
Navigating strategic planning goes beyond overcoming challenges. A successful strategic plan requires you to embrace a set of guiding best practices, helping you navigate the development and implementation of your strategic planning process.
With ever-changing business environments, a one-and-done approach to strategic planning is insufficient. Your strategic plan needs to be adaptable to ensure its relevancy and its ability to weather the effects of changing circumstances.
By including voices from across the organization, you can account for varying thoughts, perspectives, and experiences at each step of the strategic planning process, ensuring cross-functional alignment .
Continuous documentation of the strategic management process is crucial in capturing and communicating the key elements of strategic planning. This keeps everyone on the same page and your strategic plan up-to-date and relevant.
Root your decisions in evidence and facts rather than assumptions or opinions. This cultivates accurate insights, improves prioritization, and reduces biased (flawed) decisions.
Your strategic plan can only be successful if everyone is on board with it — company culture supports what you’re trying to achieve. Behaviors, rules, and attitudes optimize the execution of your strategic plan.
Using AI in strategic planning supports the development of an always-on strategy — amplifying strategic agility, conducting comprehensive environmental scans, and expediting planning phases. It can streamline operations, facilitate data-driven decision-making, and provide transparent insights into progress to drive accountability, engagement, and alignment with the strategic plan.
Careful strategy mapping is crucial for any organization looking to achieve its long-term goals while staying true to its mission, vision, and values. The seven steps in the strategic planning process outlined in this article provide a solid framework your organization can follow — from clarifying your organization’s purpose and developing a strategic plan, to implementing, monitoring, and revising performance. These steps will help your company meet goal measurements and create an always-on strategy that's rooted in the present.
It’s important to remember that strategic planning is not a one-time event. To stay effective and relevant, you must continuously monitor and adapt your strategy in response to changing circumstances. This ongoing process of improvement keeps your organization competitive and demonstrates your commitment to achieving your goals.
Quantive empowers modern organizations to turn their ambitions into reality through strategic agility. It's where strategy, teams, and data come together to drive effective decision-making, streamline execution, and maximize performance.
As your company navigates today’s competitive landscape, you need an Always-On Strategy to continuously bridge the gap between current and desired business outcomes. Quantive brings together the technology, expertise, and passion to transform your strategy from a static plan to a feedback-driven engine for growth.
Whether you’re a visionary start-up, a mid-market business looking to conquer, or a large enterprise facing disruption, Quantive keeps you ahead — every step of the way. For more information, visit www.quantive.com .
How top companies are closing the strategy execution gap, strategy execution in 4 steps: keys to successful strategy, 7 best practices for strategy execution, why your business needs strategy execution software, subscribe for our newsletter.
Benefits of strategic planning.
strategic planning , disciplined effort to produce decisions and actions that shape and guide an organization’s purpose and activities, particularly with regard to the future. Strategic planning is a fundamental component of organizational management and decision making in public, private, and nonprofit organizations. It is a structured approach to establishing an organization’s direction and to anticipating the future. Through strategic planning, resources are concentrated on a limited number of objectives, thereby helping an organization to focus its efforts, to ensure that its members are working toward the same goals, and to assess and adjust its direction in response to a changing environment.
The process of strategic planning is disciplined in that it raises a sequence of questions that helps organizational leadership examine experience, test assumptions, gather and incorporate information about the present, and anticipate the environment in which the organization will be working in the future. By setting priorities, strategic planning implies that some organizational decisions and actions are more important than others. Much of the strategy lies in making difficult decisions about what is most important to achieving organizational effectiveness. Typically, the strategy encompasses activity over several years and needs to be altered over the course of time.
There are a variety of perspectives, models, and approaches used in strategic planning. The way that a strategic plan is developed depends on the nature of the organization’s leadership, the culture of the organization, the complexity of the organization and its environment, and the size of the organization.
The modern concept of corporate strategic planning grew out of budget exercises carried out in the 1950s in the United States . By the mid-1960s and throughout the 1970s, strategic planning was occurring in most large corporations. During this time, the U.S. government introduced program budgeting as a way of recording detailed information on costs associated with specific activities covered by a budget. Public and nonprofit organizations recognized the usefulness of strategy formulation during the 1980s, when the notion of marketing for public and nonprofit organizations gained prominence. Most well-known models of public and nonprofit strategic planning have their roots in the Harvard policy model developed at the Harvard Business School at Harvard University in the United States. The systematic analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) is a primary strength of the Harvard model and constitutes a step in the strategic-planning model.
Strategic planning clearly defines the purpose of the organization and establishes realistic goals and objectives consistent with that mission in a defined time frame within the organization’s capacity for implementation. It communicates those goals and objectives to the organization’s constituents. Strategic planning develops a sense of ownership of the plan and ensures that the most-effective use is made of the organization’s resources by focusing the resources on key priorities. It provides a base from which progress can be measured and establishes a mechanism for informed change when needed.
The indicators to be used in assessing organizational effectiveness must be chosen from several possible areas and data gathered from several possible sampling frames. The pattern of strategy in an organization is determined not only by the plans and actions of its leaders but also by forces in its external environment. Because both organizations and environments can change over time, and because different agencies operate under different conditions, no single strategy is universally viable.
Organizations cannot be effective unless they know where they are headed. Effectiveness is not random; it begins with a clear vision, mission, and goals. Formal strategic-planning approaches establish those missions, goals, and visions. Strategic management offers a means of systematically thinking about and reviewing an organization’s direction, environment, and strategies. Strategic planning is essential and continues the process for public organizations that wish to determine their own vision and mission. But strategic planning and continuous change require committed leadership, a supportive organizational culture , an established structure for coordinating and managing the implementation process, and the ability on the part of organizational members to participate in the planning process. Participation can be a powerful device for directing the energy of participants in the public organization.
You might be using an unsupported or outdated browser. To get the best possible experience please use the latest version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Microsoft Edge to view this website. |
Updated: May 29, 2024, 5:39pm
What is an organizational structure, 4 common types of organizational structures, 3 alternative organizational structures, how to choose the best organizational structure, frequently asked questions (faqs).
Every company needs an organizational structure—whether they realize it or not. The organizational structure is how the company delegates roles, responsibilities, job functions, accountability and decision-making authority. The organizational structure often shows the “chain of command” and how information moves within the company. Having an organizational structure that aligns with your company’s goals and objectives is crucial. This article describes the various types of organizational structures, the benefits of creating one for your business and specific elements that should be included.
Employees want to understand their job responsibilities, whom they report to, what decisions they can and should make and how they interact with other people and teams within the company. An organizational structure creates this framework. Organizational structures can be centralized or decentralized, hierarchical or circular, flat or vertical.
Many companies use the traditional model of a centralized organizational structure. With centralized leadership, there is a transparent chain of command and each role has well-defined responsibilities.
Conversely, with a decentralized organizational structure, teams have more autonomy to make decisions and there may be cross-collaboration between groups. Decentralized leadership can help companies remain agile and adapt to changing needs.
A hierarchical organization structure is the pyramid-shaped organization chart many people are used to seeing. There is one role at the top of the pyramid and the chain of command moves down, with each level decreasing in responsibilities and authority.
On the other hand, a circular organization chart looks like concentric circles with company leadership in the center circle. Instead of information flowing down to the next “level,” information flows out to the next ring of management.
A vertical organizational chart has a clear chain of command with a small group of leaders at the top—or in the center, in the case of a circular structure—and each subsequent tier has less authority and responsibility. As discussed below, functional, product-based, market-based and geographical organizational structures are vertical structures.
With a flat organization structure, a person may report to more than one person and there may be cross-department responsibilities and decision-making authority. The matrix organizational structure described below is an example of a flat structure.
There are many benefits to creating an organizational structure that aligns with the company’s operations, goals and objectives. Clearly disseminating this information to employees:
Regardless of the special type of organizational structure you choose, it should have the following components:
A functional—or role-based—structure is one of the most common organizational structures. This structure has centralized leadership and the vertical, hierarchical structure has clearly defined roles, job functions, chains of command and decision-making authority. A functional structure facilitates specialization, scalability and accountability. It also establishes clear expectations and has a well-defined chain of command. However, this structure runs the risk of being too confining and it can impede employee growth. It also has the potential for a lack of cross-department communication and collaboration.
Along with the functional structure, the product- or market-based structure is hierarchical, vertical and centralized. However, instead of being structured around typical roles and job functions, it is structured around the company’s products or markets. This kind of structure can benefit companies that have several product lines or markets, but it can be challenging to scale. It can also foster inefficiency if product or market teams have similar functions, and without good communication across teams, companies run the risk of incompatibility among various product/market teams.
The geographical structure is a good option for companies with a broad geographic footprint in an industry where it is essential to be close to their customers and suppliers. The geographical structure enables the company to create bespoke organizational structures that align with the location’s culture, language and professional systems. From a broad perspective, it appears very similar to the product-based structure above.
Similar to the functional structure, the process-based structure is structured in a way that follows a product’s or service’s life cycle. For instance, the structure can be broken down into R&D, product creation, order fulfillment, billing and customer services. This structure can foster efficiency, teamwork and specialization, but it can also create barriers between the teams if communication isn’t prioritized.
With a matrix organizational structure, there are multiple reporting obligations. For instance, a marketing specialist may have reporting obligations within the marketing and product teams. A matrix structure offers flexibility, enables shared resources and fosters collaboration within the company. However, the organizational structure can be complex, so it can cause confusion about accountability and communication, especially among new employees.
Similar to the functional and product-based structure, a circular structure is also centralized and hierarchical, but instead of responsibility and decision-making authority flowing down vertically, responsibility and decision-making authority flow out from the center. A circular structure can promote communication and collaboration but can also be confusing, especially for new employees, because there is no clear chain of command.
Unlike vertical structures, this structure facilitates communication between and among all staff. It is the most complex, but it can also be the most productive. Although it can be challenging to know who has ultimate decision-making authority, it can also foster a positive company culture because employees don’t feel like they have “superiors.” This structure can also be more cost-efficient because it reduces the need for middle managers.
There is no one “right” organizational structure. When deciding which structure will work best for your company, consider the following:
A functional organizational structure is one of the most common organizational structures. If you are still determining what kind of structure to use, this organizational structure can be an excellent place to start.
An organizational chart is a graphic that depicts the organizational structure. The chart may include job titles or it can be personalized to include names and photos.
A functional—or role-based—structure is one of the most common organizational structures. The second type—the product- or market-based structure—is also hierarchical, vertical and centralized. Similar to these is the third structure—the process-based structure—which is structured in a way that follows a product’s or service’s life cycle. Lastly, the geographical structure is suitable for businesses with a broad geographic footprint.
Christine is a non-practicing attorney, freelance writer, and author. She has written legal and marketing content and communications for a wide range of law firms for more than 15 years. She has also written extensively on parenting and current events for the website Scary Mommy. She earned her J.D. and B.A. from University of Wisconsin–Madison, and she lives in the Chicago area with her family.
We’re here to help
Find guidance on Author Services
Free access
The articles in the special issue, contemporary themes in the study of public-sector strategic planning and how the articles in the special issue contribute to the themes, how and why does strategic planning ‘work’ – or not, conclusions and an agenda for future research, acknowledgements, disclosure statement, additional information.
This introduction to the special issue on strategic planning has four main parts. First comes a discussion of what makes public-sector strategic planning strategic . This discussion is meant to reduce confusion about what strategic planning is and is not. Next, we introduce in detail the five articles in the special issue and note their unique contributions to strategic planning research. Third, we provide a broad assessment of the current state of strategic planning research organized in terms of prominent themes in the literature and our assessment of how the articles address voids related to the themes. The themes are: how should strategic planning be conceptualized and defined? How should it be studied? How does strategic planning work, or not? What are the outcomes of strategic planning? What contributes to strategic planning success? Finally, we offer conclusions and an agenda for future research.
For the purposes of this special issue, we define strategic planning as a ‘deliberative, disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization (or other entity) is, what it does, and why’ (Bryson Citation 2011 , 7–9). Strategic planning that fits this definition is an increasingly common practice in governments around the world (Ferlie and Ongaro Citation 2015 ). It can be applied to organizations or parts of organizations; intra-organizational functions (e.g., finance or human resources); purpose-driven inter-organizational networks or collaborations designed to fulfil specific functions, such as transportation, health, education, or emergency services; and to places ranging from local to national to transnational (Bryson Citation 2011 ; Albrechts, Balducci, and Hillier, Citation 2016 ). Strategic planning can be and often is part of the broader practice of strategic management that links planning with implementation on an ongoing basis.
Bert George, Sebastian Desmidt, Eva Cools, and Anita Prinzie study how individuals’ styles of information processing affect both the perceived ease of use and usefulness of the strategic planning process, and how each in turn affects commitment to the strategic plan.
David Lee, Michael McGuire, and Jong Ho Kim explore empirically whether collaboratively developed strategic plans and specific plan designs make a difference in governmental efforts to reduce homelessness in US counties.
Jordan Tama explores factors that affect the purposes, design and conduct of high-level strategic planning reviews by US federal government agencies.
Åge Johnsen examines the impacts of strategic planning and management on perceived and objective performance measures in a large sample of Norwegian municipalities.
Denita Cepiku, Filippo Giordano, and Andrea Bonomi Savignon look at the planning and budgetary responses – strategic and otherwise – of fifteen Italian cities as a result of the global financial crisis that began in the United States in 2007.
Following this brief overview, we proceed in four sections. First, we discuss what makes public-sector strategic planning strategic . Our goal in this section is to reduce confusion in the literature about what strategic planning is and is not. Next, we introduce in more detail the articles in the special issue. Third, we provide a broad assessment of the current state of strategic planning research in terms of prominent themes and offer guidance on the extent to which the articles in the special issue address voids related to the themes. Finally, we offer conclusions and an agenda for future research.
The historic roots of public-sector strategic planning are mostly military and tied to statecraft, meaning the art of managing government affairs and involving the use of state power (Freedman Citation 2013 ). Starting in the 1960s, however, the development of the concepts, procedures, tools and practices of strategic planning has occurred primarily in the for-profit sector. Public-sector strategic planning got a serious start in the United States in the 1980s (e.g., Eadie Citation 1983 ) and later in other countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and elsewhere. This history has been documented by Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, and Lampel ( Citation 2009 ) and Ferlie and Ongaro ( Citation 2015 ).
In the for-profit literature, it is reasonably clear that strategic planning is undertaken to maximize enterprise-wide or sub-unit effectiveness in terms of profit, market share, and other business-related outcomes. In the public sector, achieving goal alignment, continuity of effort, and performance-related effectiveness are important reasons for undertaking strategic planning. In other words, strategic planning may be adopted in the public sector because users think it will help them decide what their organizations should be doing, why, and how (Bryson, Crosby, and Bryson Citation 2009 ).
Of course, there are other often complementary reasons why strategic planning has become an increasingly standard practice. One reason is accountability and compliance – as, for example, the law requiring US federal agencies to engage in strategic planning under the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA) and the Government Performance and Results Modernization Act of 2010 (GPRMA) (Radin Citation 2006 ; Tama Citation 2015 ). GPRA and GPRMA were congressional mandates premised on the belief that strategic planning would lead to better agency performance. Other reasons include faddishness or simple mimicry (Pfeffer and Sutton Citation 2006 ), the pressure of professional norms (DiMaggio and Powell Citation 1983 ; Tama Citation 2015 ), prior relationships and experience with potential strategic planning participants (Percoco Citation 2016 ), as well as more political reasons. These political motivations can include a desire to strengthen the control of political leaders over an organization’s units and personnel or to enhance an organization’s external legitimacy or support (Tama, this issue).
Clarification of values or objectives distinct from and usually prerequisite to empirical analysis of alternative policies.
Policy-formulation is therefore approached through means-end analysis: First the ends are isolated, then the means to achieve them are sought.
The test of a ‘good’ policy is that it can be shown to be the most appropriate means to desired ends.
Analysis is comprehensive; every important relevant factor is taken into account.
Theory [meaning pre-existing theory] is often heavily relied upon.
Selection of value goals and empirical analysis of the needed action are not distinct from one another but are closely intertwined.
Since means and ends are not distinct, [formal] means-end analysis is often inappropriate or limited.
The test of a ‘good’ policy is typically that various analysts find themselves directly agreeing on a policy (without their agreeing that it is the most appropriate means to an agreed objective).
Important possible outcomes are neglected.
Important alternative potential policies are neglected.
Important affected values are neglected.
A succession of comparisons greatly reduces or eliminates reliance on theory [and instead embodies learning by doing].
Public-sector strategic planning approaches in both theory and practice can and do range between the root and branch methods. In other words, strategic planning is not a single thing, but instead consists of a set of concepts, procedures, tools, and practices that combine in different ways to create a variety of approaches to being strategic. Formal strategic planning in some circumstances may resemble the ‘root’ method, but branch or incremental methods are very often required due to the presence of so many stakeholders with a multiplicity of goals and conflicting accountabilities, relative to commercial firms and nonprofit organizations. In this more complex environment, stakeholders disagree over how goals and strategies should be ordered. Accountabilities are also often diffuse and conflicting, in part because public managers cannot resort to the measurement elegance of ‘maximizing shareholder value’. As a result, public managers employ strategic planning approaches besides what is often called formal strategic planning (Bryson and Roering Citation 1987 ; Bryson and Edwards, Citation forthcoming ). These include, for example, logical incrementalism, which is incrementalism guided by an overall sense of strategic direction (Quinn Citation 1980 ); and a hybrid approach that combines formal strategic planning with logical incrementalism (Poister, Pasha, and Edwards, Citation 2013 ).
Close attention to the particulars of context, including the decision-making context, when designing the strategic planning approach.
Careful thinking about purposes, goals, and situational requirements (e.g., political, legal, administrative, ethical, and environmental requirements).
An initial focus on a broad agenda and later moving to a more selective action orientation.
An emphasis on systems thinking; that is, working to understand the dynamics of the overall system being planned for as it functions – or ideally should function – across space and time, including the interrelationships among constituent subsystems.
Careful attention to stakeholders, including elected, appointed, and career officials – in effect making strategic planning an approach to the practical politics of gaining legitimacy, buy-in, and credible commitments; typically multiple levels of government and multiple sectors are explicitly or implicitly involved in the process of strategy formulation and implementation.
A focus on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, as well as competitive and collaborative capabilities and advantages.
A focus on the future and how different strategies might be used to influence it.
Careful attention to implementation challenges as strategies are formulated; strategy that cannot be operationalized effectively to fit the implementation context is hardly strategic.
A clear realization that strategies are both deliberately set in advance and emergent in practice.
In short, public-sector planning is strategic when given the context participants have a clear recognition of, and desire to stabilize, what should be stabilized, while maintaining appropriate flexibility in terms of goals, policies, strategies, and processes to manage complexity, take advantage of important opportunities, and advance resilience and sustainability in the face of an uncertain future. In both theory and practice, different public-sector strategic planning approaches would have different profiles across the dimensions. (Note that the same dimensions of strategic-ness are also applicable to for-profit and not-for-profit strategic planning; what differs, as noted, is the governmental context, including the typically more complex stakeholder and accountability environments.)
The above list is informed by recent scholarship and therefore differs in important ways from Lindblom’s essentially a political root method by including an emphasis on context, stakeholders, politics, alternative future scenarios, decision making, and implementation, among other items. It is important to recognize that the effectiveness of different approaches to strategic planning will vary depending on their incorporation of the features noted above and the context of application.
The underlying hypothesis guiding research and much practice in this area is that planning by public-sector organizations that is more rather than less strategic will generally lead to better outcomes and improved performance. Two issues, however, become immediately obvious: First, how does one operationally assess the ‘strategic-ness’ of the planning, and second, what effects do different levels of ‘strategic-ness’ have on results of various kinds? Unfortunately, there is a dearth of empirical research on public-sector strategic planning and its connection with implementation and performance – especially with regard to determining the impacts, if any, that different levels of strategic-ness have in different contexts on strategy implementation and organizational performance (e.g., Bryson, Berry, and Yang Citation 2010 ; Poister, Pitts, and Edwards Citation 2010 ; Poister Citation 2010 ; George and Desmidt Citation 2014 ).
While research results are rather mixed, across a variety of methodologies and cases they generally show positive and typically reliable relationships between planning (though again, how strategic is not always clear) and strategy implementation and performance (e.g., Andrews et al. Citation 2012 ; Borins Citation 2014 ; Walker and Andrews, Citation 2015 ; Elbanna, Andrews, and Pollanen Citation 2016 ). The size of the effect varies considerably from study to study. The result is a paucity of understanding about what works, how, and why under different conditions, and the extent to which there is variance by context and circumstances. This special issue strives to address those deficiencies and move the field of theory development and practice forward.
As noted, the five articles in this special issue on strategic planning cover a wide variety of questions about factors that affect strategic planning efforts and the results of those efforts on outcomes. We discuss each in turn.
Bert George, Sebastian Desmidt, Eva Cools, and Anita Prinzie study how individuals’ different styles of information processing affect perceived ease of use and usefulness of strategic planning processes, and how each of these differences affects commitment to an organization’s strategic plan. Their data come from questionnaires filled out by a large number of planning team members from municipalities in the Flemish region of Belgium.
The authors use the three-dimensional Cognitive Style Indicator (CoSI) model of Cools and Van den Broek ( Citation 2007 ), which distinguishes between creating, knowing and planning cognitive styles. As the authors note, ‘people scoring high on the creating style tend to make decisions primarily based on intuition or gut feeling. Creators search for renewal, see problems as opportunities, and feel comfortable in situations of uncertainty and freedom’. People scoring high on the knowing style ‘have strong analytical skills, are proficient in logical reasoning and search for accuracy. Knowers like to make informed decisions on the basis of a thorough analysis of facts and logical and rational arguments’. Finally, people scoring high on the planning style are ‘attracted by structure and prefer a well-organized environment. Planners like to make decisions in a structured, systematic way and are concerned with the efficiency of the process’.
The authors hypothesize that higher scores on each cognitive style will be associated with higher perceived ease of use and usefulness of the strategic planning process. In turn, they hypothesize that perceived ease of use and usefulness of the strategic planning process will be positively related to commitment to the strategic plan. They find through structural equation analysis that a creative planning style significantly increases perceived ease of use and usefulness of the strategic planning process. A knowing style has no significant similar direct effect on either perception about strategic planning. And a planning style increases perceived usefulness of the strategic planning process, but not perceived ease of use. In turn, perceived usefulness of the strategic planning process significantly increases commitment to the plan, while perceived ease of use does not.
This article makes two very important contributions. First, little research has been done on how information processing styles affect perceptions of the strategic planning process or commitment to plans. While advocates of strategic planning emphasize the importance of the process for enhancing strategic thinking, we know little about the actual process of participants’ thinking that goes into strategic planning. This article helps fill some of that gap, and also indicates, which kinds of information processing – that is, cognitive styles – might be helpful and which are not. This also helps us better understand more about how individuals – and particularly those in leadership positions – can help or hinder strategic planning.
Second, the authors demonstrate that the creative cognitive style is highly related to more positive perceptions of strategic planning. This finding is particularly interesting given the widely held view that strategic planning is typically too formal, rigid, and analytic to be useful. If creative individuals are more likely to see strategic planning positively, this may indicate that they may be good candidates as participants in and leaders of strategic planning efforts. The authors also found that those who perceive that strategic planning is useful – those with creating and planning styles – are also more likely to be committed to planning. Rather surprisingly, the perception that strategic planning is easy to use did not affect commitment. The implication is that if commitment to a strategic plan is important, then strategic planning should be undertaken only when it can serve some useful purpose; otherwise, and unsurprisingly, any resulting strategic plan will likely have little impact. Future research should consider building on the findings presented here and incorporate additional individual and team measures related to emotional intelligence (e.g., Petrides Citation 2009 ) and political astuteness (Hartley, Alford, and Hughes Citation 2015 ).
David Lee, Michael McGuire, and Jong Ho Kim explore empirically the linkages between collaboratively developed strategic plans, plan designs, and governmental effort to reduce homelessness in US counties. Using a mixed-method, 10-year-long panel design involving 145 county-level strategic plans from 124 county governments (out of 208 relevant countries), they find three things. First, having a strategic plan, rather than not having one, can mean many more beds for homeless people. Second, a ‘more robust strategic plan’ as measured by the number of components in the plan’s design is significantly and positively associated with a greater number of beds. Third, collaboration among stakeholders increases the number of components in the design of the plan, which, as noted, leads to increases in the number of beds. In short, beds for the homeless increase with greater diversity of participation in the planning process and the resulting richer plan designs.
This article makes several major contributions, in addition to the specific findings noted above. First, in an era of increasing collaboration, collaborative strategic planning makes sense and is possible. The authors are not alone in making this point, but supporting empirical work is thin at present. The article’s solid, longitudinal, mixed-method design is appropriate and strengthens the empirical findings. Second, the authors find that the actual design and details of strategic plans matter. Perhaps that should be obvious, but remarkably there is a scarcity of evidence that it does. And third, the article shows that strategic planning can help address what are often thought of as intractable social and economic problems, in this case homelessness. This is particularly important as public management scholars learn more about the impact of collaboration on management practices and how those practices can help improve the outcomes associated with collaborative efforts.
In future research of this kind, it is important for scholars to examine the actual mechanisms that link the strategic planning processes and plans to the actual outcomes. For example, exactly how do increased collaboration and plan components work to improve performance outcomes? Lee, McGuire, and Kim’s fine contribution helps draw attention to the importance of that question.
Jordan Tama explores factors that affect the purposes, design and conduct of high-level strategic reviews by government agencies. He explores via extensive interviews and document analyses the plausibility of four propositions regarding the design and implementation of quadrennial strategic reviews in three US federal security-related agencies: the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of State. The quadrennial reviews are mandated by Congress for the first two, while the Department of State has conducted its review in the absence of a legislative mandate. Tama proposes that a review is: (1) ‘more likely to focus on the formulation of general principles if the agency relies heavily on collaboration; (2) more likely to involve intensive analytical processes if the agency is highly dependent on capital investments; (3) more likely to feature reforms designed to increase the agency’s clout if the agency has weak political influence; and (4) more likely to be carried out in a manner that suits the needs of agency officials if it is not required by law’. In general, the empirical data involving archival analysis and interviews supports the propositions, although support for the last is not as strong as for the first three.
Tama’s research is significant because it is among the few that examines in a rich, qualitative, comparative case study the effects of the context and the purposes of strategic reviews – a particular kind of strategic planning exercise – on the actual conduct of those reviews, for example, who was involved and how, kinds of analyses undertaken, etc. This study is also among the few efforts to examine the strategic planning processes of major US federal agencies and their explicitly political nature (e.g., Barzelay and Campbell Citation 2003 ). Tama’s article thus helps advance work on the practice and politics of strategic planning and demonstrates the advantages of in-depth comparative case analyses. His work also signals the need in future studies to dig deeper into uncovering the actual mechanisms that link planning processes to intermediate and longer term effects, both desired and unintended.
The article by Åge Johnsen is the first of two in this special issue to look in more detail at how strategic planning fits into an overall process of strategic management. Johnsen looks at the impacts of strategic planning and management on perceived and objective performance measures in a large sample of Norwegian municipalities. He is also concerned with the impacts of strategy content and stakeholder involvement on perceived and actual performance.
Johnsen creates a strategic planning and management index that consists of measures related to strategic planning, allocating resources and budgeting, performance assessments, and performance measurement and evaluation. He also creates an index of the impacts of strategic planning and management that factors into four components, including impacts on the management of goals, people, operations, and external relations. He makes use of strategy content measures for ‘prospectors’ and ‘defenders’ derived from Miles and Snow ( Citation 1978 ) and adapted by Andrews, Boyne, and Walker ( Citation 2006 ). Prospectors search for new opportunities and are innovators, while defenders focus on their core business and emphasize control and technical efficiency. Johnsen develops an index of stakeholder involvement that in total is weighted towards involvements of municipal elected and appointed officials. Finally, he develops indices of perceived and objective performance.
Johnsen examines five hypotheses: that higher scores on the strategic planning and management index will lead to increases in perceived and actual performance (H1 and H2), that defenders and prospectors will have good performance (H3 and H4), and that higher stakeholder involvement will lead to good performance. The results are mixed. Strategic planning and management increase perceived performance, but not objective performance as operationalized and measured. A defender strategy increases perceived performance, but not objective performance; while a prospector strategy increases neither one. Finally, increased stakeholder involvement has a positive impact on perceived management of external relations and an objective summary ‘production’ index across a wide range of municipal services. The summary index includes performance-related measures in education, health care, child care, social services, and culture services.
Johnsen offers an insightful discussion about why these results might have occurred, and especially the disjunction between impacts on perceived performance and objective performance indices. One important possibility is that very different kinds of performance are being measured. Specifically, responses about perceived performance may be measuring results affecting management processes and not actual production. Further, there clearly may be lag effects between improved management processes and actual production. Finally, and intriguingly, the causation may be reversed, in that performance may be a cause, not just a result, of improved strategic planning and management, a causal direction not tested in the study.
Johnsen makes another important contribution by expanding previous work to a context outside of the United States and United Kingdom. We cannot assume that findings about the impact of strategic planning and management are generalizable across the globe between different nations and kinds of organizations with different purposes. Johnsen’s article, for example, demonstrates that some findings for transit agencies in the US (Pasha, Poister, and Edwards Citation 2015 ) and municipalities in different areas of Great Britain (Andrews, Boyne, and Walker Citation 2006 ) do not hold for municipalities in Norway. This article also contributes to the literature by further exploring the combined impact of strategic planning, strategy content, and stakeholder involvement on organizational performance in a different context.
Finally, Johnsen’s work also draws attention to the need for future research to explore the actual mechanisms that lead to perceived and objective performance results, especially in feedback-rich environments. Research methodologies that allow for feedback effects will be needed to understand those mechanisms and the ways in which good strategic planning and management can both cause and result from performance, Simple linear models will capture only some of the reality in feedback-rich environments.
The final article by Denita Cepiku, Filippo Giordano, and Andrea Bonomi Savignon looks at connections of strategic planning with financial management by the fifteen largest Italian cities in the context of the global financial crisis that began in the United States in 2007. The authors link two existing literatures: one on the predicted effects of austerity on the type of decision-making practices cities will follow – in this case, strategic planning practices – and the other on the predicted effects of the types of strategic planning practices pursued and their effectiveness as part of a crisis management strategy.
The authors distinguish among five types of decision-making approaches. The approaches are: formal strategic planning, logical incrementalism, a blending of formal strategic planning and logical incrementalism, incrementalism (especially in the form of decremental across-the-board cuts), and simple inertia, or a continuation on the same non-strategic path as before. As noted in our discussion of what makes strategic planning strategic, the first three can count as strategic responses to the crisis, while the latter two cannot.
The literature on austerity posits three responses to financial crises: the abandonment of formal strategic planning in favour of decrementalism, a move from decremental cuts to formal strategic planning as a crisis continues, or a mixture of responses, including the two previous responses, rhetoric alone, or inertia. The literature on strategic planning posits that formal strategic planning, logical incrementalism, or an approach combining the two would produce better results than decrementalism, rhetoric alone, or inertia.
The authors analysed each city’s strategic plans and financial documents for the period 2011–2013 to determine how each city strategized following the crisis. Of the fifteen cities, one used formal strategic planning, three used logical incrementalism, none used a blended approach, seven followed an incremental approach, and four relied on inertia. Basically – and in contrast to predictions in the literature – it appears that cities did not change their planning behaviour during the crisis in that they continued to plan (or not) as they had before the crisis. As the authors note, in general ‘strategic planning is not the place where the crisis is analysed and addressed’. It was more difficult to uncover the effects on financial outcomes of the different planning approaches. The authors suggest that this is for two reasons. First, it may simply be too early to determine the impact of planning. Second, what the authors call ‘the great weight of politics’ and established patterns may make responding to the crisis in a strategic way via targeted budget cuts, investments, and tax increases simply too difficult to accomplish; as a result, incremental and inertial approaches prevail.
These authors also make significant contributions. First, they join two literatures that mostly have been disconnected. Second, they like Johnsen explore strategic planning in a different context than has been typical – in this case in the wake of the financial crisis and in Italy. Third, they like Tama bring politics much more to the fore; in doing so, they draw attention to the limits of strategic planning. And fourth, they demonstrate that ‘cities characterized by a better quality of strategic planning [as measured by the content of their strategic planning documents] seem to display a more responsible – although not a properly strategic – behaviour’ in terms of responding to the crisis, as measured by tax increases and allocations to reduce budget shortfalls, and investments likely to pay off in the future, than do cities that rely on incrementalism or inertia.
Like Lee, McGuire, and Kim, the authors show the importance of taking strategic plans seriously. Like Tama, the authors demonstrate the merits of comparative case study analyses. Like Johnsen, the authors emphasize the importance of using the right time lags to measure performance. Like the other authors’ work in the special issue, theirs draws attention to the need for future research to explore the actual mechanisms that lead from different kinds of strategic (and non-strategic) planning to different kinds of performance.
Studies of public-sector strategic planning reveal a number of themes. This section notes the themes and notes how the articles in the special issue relate to them.
The first theme concerns how strategic planning is conceptualized and defined. Often strategic planning is defined and operationalized in procedural terms. Pasha, Poister, and Edwards ( Citation 2015 , 5) are representative of this convention when they say formal (note the adjective) strategic planning is ‘a rational-comprehensive approach to strategy formulation that uses a systematic process with specific steps such as external and internal assessments, goal setting, analysis, evaluation and action planning to ensure long-term vitality and effectiveness of the organization’. Much of the negative critique of formal strategic planning has centred on the procedural approach to strategic planning. For example, Mintzberg ( Citation 1994 ; Mintzberg, Ahlstrand and Lampel, Citation 2009 , 49–84) by definition limits strategic planning to a formalized, rigid, highly analytic, staff-driven exercise. He then concludes that strategic planning, so defined, does not work very well.
As we noted earlier, strategic planning approaches can take that form, but there are many other less formal, less rigid, less highly analytic and staff-driven approaches. The critique notwithstanding, rational planning in practice – which can vary in how formal and strategic it is – has been shown to have generally positive effects on performance in a variety of studies. Indeed, Lee, McGuire, and Kim find such a positive effect for collaborative strategic planning, meaning joint strategic planning by more than one organization. Similarly, Johnsen finds that strategic planning in combination with other management practices positively impacts perceived performance outcomes, but does not find a similar impact on objective measures. In a manner complementary to that of Lee et al., Johnsen also finds that greater involvement of stakeholders leads to higher objective performance on an index that summarizes results across an array of services. Cepiku, Giordano, and Savignon also find that cities characterized by a better quality of strategic planning seem to display behaviour in response to the financial crisis that more directly addresses budget shortfalls and need for investments.
Alternatively, strategic planning may be defined in functional terms. For example, as noted in the introduction, Bryson ( Citation 2011 , 6–7) defines strategic planning as a ‘deliberative, disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that define what an organization (or other entity) does, and why it does it’. Defined in this manner, strategic planning consists of a set or family of concepts, procedures, tools, and practices meant to help decision makers and other stakeholders address what is truly important for their organizations and/or places. The set includes a variety of different approaches that vary in their purposes; formality; temporal horizon; comprehensiveness; organizational, inter-organizational, and/or geographic focus; emphasis on data and analysis; extent of participation; locus of decision-making; connection to implementation; and so on. Successful use of strategic planning is thus dependent on which approach is used, for what purposes, in what context (Bryson, Berry, and Yang Citation 2010 ; Ferlie and Ongaro Citation 2015 ).
All of the authors in this special issue either explicitly or implicitly define strategic planning in functional terms. This helpfully prompts attention to and appreciation for the differing approaches to being strategic. This advantage is particularly apparent in both George et al.’s and Cepiku et al.’s contributions. Had George et al. limited strategic planning by definition to its highly formal procedural form, they would not have hypothesized that a creative learning style would be positively associated with the ease of use and usefulness of strategic planning and subsequent increased commitment to the strategic plan. Indeed, they would have had trouble finding a good explanation for the finding. Had Cepiku et al. limited their definition of strategic planning to its highly formal procedural form, they would have missed important ways in which Italian cities acted strategically. As they noted, cities with better strategic planning – including approaches beyond formal strategic planning – appear to have experienced improved budgetary outcomes in response to the financial crisis.
An important methodological distinction is between variance studies and process studies (Poole et al. Citation 2000 ). In variance studies, public-sector strategic planning is essentially treated as a routine or practice that is a fixed object, not a generative system comprised of many interacting and changeable parts. Variance studies typically assume that strategic planning is an intermediary , to use Latour’s ( Citation 2005 , 58) term, meaning the planning itself is essentially invariant and merely the transporter of a cause from inputs to outputs. Inputs, in other words, are assumed to predict outputs fairly well as long as the ‘transporter’ is transporting (Bryson, Crosby, and Bryson Citation 2009 ).
Studies of strategic planning in government do report mixed results. As noted earlier, the majority of variance studies of public strategic planning that have used linear regression methodologies, have generally found positive, though not necessarily large, effects (e.g., Borins, Citation 2014 ; Boyne and Gould-Williams Citation 2003 ; Andrews, Boyne, and Walker Citation 2006 ; Meier et al. Citation 2007 ; Andrews et al. Citation 2012 ; and Elbanna, Andrews, and Pollanen Citation 2016 ). In this special issue the articles by George et al.; Lee, McGuire, and Kim; and Johnsen are variance studies.
Process studies, in contrast, generally assume that the key to understanding the effectiveness (or not) of strategic planning may lie in seeing it as a complex longitudinal process approach to knowing and acting (Mintzberg Citation 2007 ; Ferlie and Ongaro Citation 2015 ). In the process organizational (or multi-organizational) stakeholders engage with one another in a series of associations and performances over time to explore and ultimately agree on and implement answers to a series of Socratic questions. These include: what might or should we be doing? How might or should we do it? What purposes or goals would be served by doing it? And how can we be sure we are doing what we agreed we ought to do, and that we are achieving the effects we want? Various practices (e.g., workshops) and artefacts (e.g., mission and vision statements, background studies, strategy exercises) typically play prominent roles. In this, special issue the studies by Tama and Cepiku, Giordano, and Savignon are part variance and part process studies, but the emphasis is more on variance aspects.
Few studies of public-sector strategic planning have taken a detailed process approach (Jarzabkowski and Fenton Citation 2006 ; Jarzabkowski and Spee Citation 2009 ; Ferlie and Ongaro Citation 2015 ). Exceptions include Wheeland ( Citation 2004 ) and Bryson, Crosby, and Bryson ( Citation 2009 ). The latter authors traced strategic planning as a complex cognitive, behavioural, social, and political practice in which thinking, acting, learning, and knowing matter, and in which some associations are reinforced, others are created, and still others are dropped in the process of formulating and implementing strategies and plans. They show that terms like process steps; planners; stakeholder analyses; strategic plans; and mission, vision, goals, strategies, actions, and performance indicators are all relevant to any study of strategic planning in practice, but not as rigidly defined terms. In short, these authors sought to understand how these terms are enacted in practice and what that meant for understanding strategic planning as a way of knowing that is consequential for organizational performance.
Our view is that the field will be advanced by pursuing a range of variance and process studies. Variance studies can show in the aggregate what works and what does not, as for example in the George et al., Lee et al., and Johnsen contributions. Detailed process studies, and especially comparative, longitudinal case studies, can help show how strategic planning works. Tama’s contribution, and to a lesser extent Cepiku, et al.’s contribution help unpack the ‘how’ question by using methods that get closer to the actual practice of strategic planning on the ground, as opposed to approaches that abstract practice into variables scores against pre-defined scales. In particular, much more knowledge is needed about the actual process design features and social mechanisms that lead to strategic planning success (or not) (Mayntz Citation 2004 ; Bryson Citation 2010 ). Barzelay and Campbell ( Citation 2003 ) and Barzelay and Jacobsen ( Citation 2009 ) are among the few studies to actually focus on the importance of process design features and social mechanisms for strategic planning. Additionally, more work is needed on the roles that boundary objects (Carlile Citation 2002 , Citation 2004 ), boundary spanning practices (Quick and Feldm Citation 2014 ), strategic plans (Lee, McGuire, and Kim, this issue), and various tools and techniques (e.g., Bryson Citation 2011 ) do or can play in fostering successful strategic planning.
How strategic planning is conceptualized and studied will have a dramatic effect on assessments of how well it does or does not work, and why (Poole et al. Citation 2000 ). In variance studies, particular variables are seen as uniform and consistent causes over time that produce particular effects. This corresponds to Aristotle’s notion of efficient causation, or what causation typically means in scientific research. But planning is a purposive activity, which implies what Aristotle calls final causation, in which the end purpose (telos) of an action or process is the cause for which it is done, as in ‘rallying around a cause’ (Falcon Citation 2015 ; Pollitt Citation 2013 , 42–42). To the extent that strategic planning involves purpose-driven action (in which purposes may change over time), teleological explanations are apt. Both types of causation would appear to be very relevant to strategic planning research. Footnote 1
George et al.; Lee, McGuire, and Kim; and Johnsen pursue causal explanations as they are normally understood, meaning efficient causation – although they also recognize that purpose-driven human beings are involved. Tama and Cepiku, Giordano, and Savignon mix efficient and final causal explanations. Tama’s research in particular highlights that actors behave strategically in pursuit of their individual and organizational purposes.
Additionally, in keeping with a strong thread in the literature, all of the special issue authors see strategic planning as embedded in particular contexts. In the variance studies, context is controlled for as best it can be. After controlling for various demographic factors, George, et al. find different information processing styles affect perceptions of both ease of use and the usefulness of the strategic planning process. Perceived usefulness then has a positive impact on commitment to the strategic plan. After controlling for aspects of context, Lee, McGuire, and Kim find a significant positive link between aspects of the process of developing a strategic plan and the plan’s design and performance. Johnsen also controls for features of context and finds that the process of strategic planning and management has direct links to perceived effectiveness, but no apparent direct effect on more objective indices of performance. Tama, in his more qualitative study, finds a number of contextual contingencies that affect the purpose, design, and conduct of US federal agency quadrennial strategic reviews and the indirect results of these reviews. Aspects of context significantly affect the interpretations Cepiku, Giordano, and Savignon offer for why they find the results they do on types of planning pursued by Italian cities in response to the financial crisis and links (or not) of the planning to resource allocations.
Most studies of public-sector strategic planning have focused on performance outcomes, and especially target achievement, efficiency, and effectiveness. As noted earlier, in terms of these outcomes, strategic planning generally seems to have a beneficial effect. Some students have found that perceptions of improved performance are linked to strategic planning (e.g., Poister and Streib Citation 2005 ; Ugboro, Obeng, and Spann Citation 2010 ; Elbanna, Andrews, and Pollanen Citation 2016 ). Others have avoided common source bias and perceptions of performance by connecting secondary performance measures with survey data (e.g., Andrews et al. Citation 2009 ; Walker et al. Citation 2010 ; Poister, Edwards, and Pasha Citation 2013 ). Lee et al., in this issue find positive causal links between collaborative strategic planning and more robust strategic planning designs and performance as measured by beds available for homeless persons. Johnsen in this issue includes perceptual and objective data in his research and finds positive connections between strategic planning and management and perceptions of success, but no significant links with the objective performance data. Cepiku et al. find that Italian cities with a better quality of strategic planning seem to display a more responsible approach to budgeting in the face of the financial crisis.
Poister, Pitts, and Edwards ( Citation 2010 ) and Poister, Edwards, and Pasha ( Citation 2013 ), however, have argued persuasively that the link between strategic planning and performance needs further investigation. The mixed findings found in the research are likely due to a number of factors. First, performance in the public sector is notoriously hard to operationalize. This task can be very difficult in municipal and state governments, where departments and agencies have different purposes and different measures of performance. Beyond that, one could argue that the measurement difficulty varies by the complexity of the products and services that government is involved with. For example, measurement is easier in a service like trash collection compared to mental health services (Brown, Potoski, and Van Slyke Citation 2016 ). Second, many different types of performance outcomes should be taken into account (Poister, Aristigueta, and Hall Citation 2015 ; Bryson, Crosby, and Bloomberg Citation 2015 ). And third, there are likely to be a variety of direct and indirect links between strategic planning and performance.
Some studies have emphasized the importance of intermediate outcomes, such as participation (e.g., Lee, McGuire, and Kim in this issue), commitment to the plan (e.g., George et al., in this issue) visioning (e.g., Helling Citation 1998 ), situated learning (e.g., Vigar Citation 2006 ), and communication and conflict management strategies (e.g., Bryson and Bromiley Citation 1993 ). Additional outcomes in this issue include the results of strategic reviews in the US government agencies (Tama) and budget allocations in Italian cities (Cepiku, Giordano, and Savignon). Unfortunately, very few studies, including those in this special issue, have focused on equity, social justice, transparency, legitimacy, accountability, or the broader array of public values (Cook et al. Citation 2015 ; Beck Jorgensen and Bozeman Citation 2007 ). Clearly, attending to a range of outcomes and how they are produced would be very helpful.
Research indicates that organizations can face significant barriers before and during strategic planning that can potentially outweigh any benefits. First, public sector organizations need to build the necessary capacity to do strategic planning. The skills and resources to do strategic planning in the public sector should match the complexity of the processes and practices involved (Poister and Streib Citation 2005 ). Necessary resources include, for example, financial capacity (Boyne et al. Citation 2004 ; Wheeland Citation 2004 ), knowledge about strategic planning (Hendrick Citation 2003 ), and the capability to gather and analyse data and to judge between potential solutions (Streib and Poister Citation 1990 ).
Additionally, leadership of different kinds is needed in order to engage in effective strategic planning. Process sponsors have the authority, power, and resources to initiate and sustain the process. Process champions are needed to help manage the day-to-day process (Bryson Citation 2011 ). Transformational practices by sponsors and champions, as well as the groups they engage appear to help energize participants, enhance public service motivation, increase mission valence, and encourage performance information use (e.g., Moynihan, Pandey, and Wright Citation 2013 ), all of which are important for strategic planning.
Research in this special issue builds on these findings. George et al. find that planning participants with certain cognitive styles are more committed to the strategic planning process in Flemish municipalities. Lee et al. find that collaboration and strategic plan design contribute to better performance. Tama finds that external political support makes a big difference in how strategic reviews are designed and conducted. Johnsen integrates strategic planning with strategic management and finds the components that strategic management adds increase perceived outcomes. Finally, Cepiku et al. argue that a tradition of good management, including the use of strategic planning, helps produce more desirable results.
Broad participation generally can also improve the process, as well as the resulting plan by giving various stakeholders a sense of ownership and commitment. We know that different perspectives can enrich any analyses and the eventual implementation of the plan (Burby Citation 2003 ; Bryson Citation 2011 ). Several studies demonstrate that citizens can help throughout the process by educating government staff about issues and contributing positively to more effective decision-making about solutions (Blair Citation 2004 ). Including citizens has the additional benefit of reducing citizen cynicism about government (Kissler et al. Citation 1998 ). Similarly, employees from all levels of the organization may need to be included in strategic planning for their input and knowledge about their respective areas of the organization (Wheeland Citation 2004 ; Donald, Lyons, and Tribbey Citation 2001 ). In this issue, Johnsen’s study of Norwegian municipal governments reveals that increased stakeholder involvement – including by elected, appointed, and career officials, and external stakeholders – has positive effects on objectively measured overall organizational performance.
That said, we also know that there is great variation in how stakeholders are included, and at least two studies show that participation of key stakeholders (internal and external) often remains shallow and elitist (Vigar et al. Citation 2006 ; Vidyarthi, Hoch, and Basmajian Citation 2013 ). Moreover, inclusion and broad stakeholder participation may not always make sense (Thomas Citation 1995 ). We are not aware of any strategic planning studies indicating when it might be advisable not to include stakeholders in public-sector strategic planning. Future studies on this topic would greatly contribute to a current deficit in the broader literature.
Finally, integration with other strategic management practices can improve strategic planning’s usefulness. Poister ( Citation 2010 ) writes that integrating strategic planning and performance management more closely will likely improve performance. Johnsen’s study in this issue finds positive links between strategic planning and management and perceived organizational performance, though no significant links to objective measures of performance. In other research, Kissler et al. ( Citation 1998 ) found that this link improved the strategic planning for the US state of Ohio because planners had a better idea of where the state stood in terms of social and financial performance. Plan implementation also improved because plan progress was linked to measurable outcomes making it easier to monitor progress. However, performance is not the only area for integration. We also know that strategic planning should be integrated with budgeting, human resource management, and information technology management, although exactly how is unclear. One survey of local government practices in the United States found that many governments do some integration between strategic planning and other resource management practices but are not very sophisticated in how they do it (Poister and Streib Citation 2005 ). That said, there is evidence that strategic planning can help inform budgetary and human capital allocation (Berry and Wechsler Citation 1995 ; Cepiku et al., this issue).
Strategic planning in the public sector increasingly has been institutionalized as a fairly common practice at all levels of government in the United States and several other countries. There is also reasonable agreement on what it means to be strategic when it comes to planning, and researchers have found reasonably good evidence that public-sector strategic planning generally helps produce desirable outcomes. Yet researchers have only begun to understand why and how strategic planning can be beneficial.
Based on the state of current research, what would a strategically informed agenda for strategic planning research look like? We start with some observations. First, it is important to emphasize that public-sector strategic planning is not one thing, but is instead a set of concepts, procedures, tools, and practices that must be applied sensitively and contingently in specific situations if the presumed benefits of strategic planning are to be realized. In other words, there are a variety of generic approaches to strategic planning, the boundaries between them are not necessarily clear, and strategic planning in practice typically is a hybrid. In addition, it is unclear how best to conceptualize context and match processes to context in order to produce desirable outcomes. For example, should context be viewed as a backdrop for action or as actually constitutive of action (Ferlie and Ongaro Citation 2015 , 121–165)?
Second, because planning must attend to context in order to be strategic, approaches to strategic planning may be represented as generic in form, but in practice are likely to be highly contingent (Ferlie and Ongaro Citation 2015 , 123). Third, researchers should define strategic planning in functional rather than procedural ways, in order not to settle by definition what should be empirical questions, and so as not to be blinded to the array of approaches through which planning can be strategic. And fourth, we need a much better elaborated theory about the potential links from context to strategic planning to implementation and performance (Poister, Aristigueta, and Hall Citation 2015 ; Andrews et al. Citation 2012 ; Sandfort and Moulton Citation 2015 ).
How best can the dimensions of strategic-ness be operationalized and their effects explored?
Strategic planning is meant to foster strategic thinking, acting, and learning, so what are these, and how can we study them, their antecedents and their effects?
What are the important dimensions of internal and external context that make a difference for strategic planning, and which approaches are likely to work best, how and why, given the context? In what ways do internal and external stability or change in these dimensions make a difference?
What difference does it make whether strategic planning is applied to organizations, subunits of organizations, cross-boundary functions, collaborations, or places?
How should the approach to strategic planning vary depending on the policy field in which it is applied and kind of issue being addressed? For example, what difference does it make if the policy area is education, health, public safety, transportation, or something else (Sandfort and Moulton Citation 2015 )? What difference does it make if the issues are simple, complicated, complex, or wicked (Patton Citation 2010 )?
What kinds of resources (e.g., leadership, facilitation, staffing, technical support, political support, and competencies and skills) are needed for strategic planning to be effective?
What are the ways in which participation by internal and external stakeholders make a difference in the effectiveness of different approaches to strategic planning in different contexts? In other words, under what circumstances do different types of participation, by a range of stakeholders, and for a variety of purposes make a difference in the effectiveness of strategic planning?
What difference do the various artefacts (e.g., mission, vision, and goal statements; strategic plans; background studies; performance measurements; evaluations) related to strategic planning make in terms of the results of strategic planning processes?
What difference, if any, do various strategic planning tools (e.g., stakeholder analyses; analyses of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats; competitive forces analyses; portfolio analyses; visual strategy mapping; etc.) make to the success or not of strategic planning processes?
What are or should be the connections both theoretically and practically between the various approaches to strategic planning and the other elements of strategic management systems, such as budgeting, human resources management, information technology, performance measurement, and implementation?
To what extent, how, when, and why should politics – whether bureaucratic, partisan, or otherwise – be incorporated into strategic planning research?
Finally, researchers should use methodologies that conceptualize and operationalize strategic planning in a variety of ways. As noted, public-sector strategic planning is not a single thing, but many things. Useful findings about strategic planning have come via multiple methodologies, including cross-sectional and longitudinal quantitative research; qualitative single and comparative case studies; and content analyses of plans. These studies have conceptualized strategic planning in a variety of ways, including as questions with Likert-scale answers, and as processes, practices, artefacts, and ways of knowing (Ferlie and Ongaro Citation 2015 ). The variety of methodologies is useful, as each helps reveal different things about strategic planning. Given the increasing and widespread use of public-sector strategic planning, additional insight into exactly what works best, in which situations, and why, is likely to be helpful for advancing public purposes.
We wish to thank Stephen Osborne and the editorial board of Public Management Review for encouraging this special issue. We also wish to thank all of the people who generously volunteered to review the numerous submissions we received in response to the call for papers. They are: John Alford, Rhys Andrews, Michael Barzelay, David Berlan, Fran Berry, Eric Boyer, Trevor Brown, Jonathan Breul, Thomas Bryer, Louise Comfort, Ewan Ferlie, Carolyn Hill, Marc Holzer, Chris Horne, Paul Joyce, Phil Joyce, Gordon Kingsley, Rick Morse, Chris Mihm, Stephanie Moulton, Tina Nabatchi, Rosemary O’Leary, Edoardo Ongaro, Obed Pasha, Ted Poister, Juan Rogers, David Suarez, John Thomas, and Richard Walker. We would also like to thank Humphrey School doctoral student Danbi Seo for her help with logistics.
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
John m. bryson.
John M. Bryson is McKnight Presidential Professor of Planning and Public Affairs at the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. He works in the areas of leadership, strategic management, collaboration, and the design of engagement processes. His recent books include Public Value and Public Administration (co-edited with Barbara C. Crosby and Laura Blomberg, Georgetown University Press, 2015); Visual Strategy (with Fran Ackermann and Colin Eden, Jossey-Bass, 2014); and Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations, 4th Edition (Jossey-Bass, 2011). He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. He holds a PhD degree from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
Lauren Hamilton Edwards is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland – Baltimore County. Her research interests are in nonprofit and public management; strategic management, planning and performance, public participation and co-production, programme evaluation, and diversity and gender issues. Her articles have been published in Public Administration Review, Public Performance and Management Review, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly , and the American Review of Public Administration . She holds a PhD degree from from Georgia State University.
David M. Van Slyke is Dean of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and the Louis A. Bantle Chair in Business-Government Policy. He is an expert on public–private partnerships, public sector contracting and contract management, and policy implementation. He is a Director and Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. He authored with Trevor Brown and Matthew Potoski the recent book Complex Contracting: Government Purchasing in the Wake of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Deepwater Program (Cambridge University Press, 2013). He holds a PhD degree in Public Administration and Policy from the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy at the State University of New York at Albany. Prior to becoming an academic, he worked in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors.
1. Aristotle includes two other kinds of causation as well – material and formal – both of which may also be at work with strategic planning (Falcon Citation 2015 ; Pollitt Citation 2013 , 42–42). Material causation has to do with change growing out of the material of which something is composed. The material composition of the ‘thing’ being studied affects both the potentiality and actuality of what is produced. To the extent that strategic planning is conceptualized as a ‘thing’ – as procedural definitions of formal strategic planning seem to imply – rather than as a malleable, adaptable process comprised of multiple and changing associations, there would seem to be ‘material’ limits to what can be potentially and actually produced. Formal causation refers to the material whose pattern or form makes some ‘thing’ into a particular type or kind of thing. For example, procedural definitions of strategic planning declare by definition the form that strategic planning takes and anything else does not really count as strategic planning. In Lee, McGuire, and Kim’s work on the impacts of strategic plan design features, and also in Tama’s work involving the form of strategic reviews, and especially those that are mandated, there are hints of material and formal causation.
Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?
To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:
Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:
If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form . For more information, please visit our Permissions help page .
People also read lists articles that other readers of this article have read.
Recommended articles lists articles that we recommend and is powered by our AI driven recommendation engine.
Cited by lists all citing articles based on Crossref citations. Articles with the Crossref icon will open in a new tab.
Download citation, your download is now in progress and you may close this window.
Register now or learn more
Start selling with Shopify today
Start your free trial with Shopify today—then use these resources to guide you through every step of the process.
Use this free business plan template to write your business plan quickly and efficiently.
A good business plan is essential to successfully starting your business — and the easiest way to simplify the work of writing a business plan is to start with a business plan template.
You’re already investing time and energy in refining your business model and planning your launch—there’s no need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to writing a business plan. Instead, to help build a complete and effective plan, lean on time-tested structures created by other entrepreneurs and startups.
Ahead, learn what it takes to create a solid business plan and download Shopify's free business plan template to get started on your dream today.
This business plan outline is designed to ensure you’re thinking through all of the important facets of starting a new business. It’s intended to help new business owners and entrepreneurs consider the full scope of running a business and identify functional areas they may not have considered or where they may need to level up their skills as they grow.
That said, it may not include the specific details or structure preferred by a potential investor or lender. If your goal with a business plan is to secure funding , check with your target organizations—typically banks or investors—to see if they have business plan templates you can follow to maximize your chances of success.
Our free business plan template includes seven key elements typically found in the traditional business plan format:
This is a one-page summary of your whole plan, typically written after the rest of the plan is completed. The description section of your executive summary will also cover your management team, business objectives and strategy, and other background information about the brand.
This section of your business plan will answer two fundamental questions: “Who are you?” and “What do you plan to do?” Answering these questions clarifies why your company exists, what sets it apart from others, and why it’s a good investment opportunity. This section will detail the reasons for your business’s existence, its goals, and its guiding principles.
What you sell and the most important features of your products or services. It also includes any plans for intellectual property, like patent filings or copyright. If you do market research for new product lines, it will show up in this section of your business plan.
This section includes everything from estimated market size to your target markets and competitive advantage. It’ll include a competitive analysis of your industry to address competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. Market research is an important part of ensuring you have a viable idea.
How you intend to get the word out about your business, and what strategic decisions you’ve made about things like your pricing strategy. It also covers potential customers’ demographics, your sales plan, and your metrics and milestones for success.
Everything that needs to happen to turn your raw materials into products and get them into the hands of your customers.
It’s important to include a look at your financial projections, including both revenue and expense projections. This section includes templates for three key financial statements: an income statement, a balance sheet, and a cash-flow statement . You can also include whether or not you need a business loan and how much you’ll need.
What do financial projections look like on paper? How do you write an executive summary? What should your company description include? Business plan examples can help answer some of these questions and transform your business idea into an actionable plan.
Inside our template, we’ve filled out a sample business plan featuring a fictional ecommerce business .
The sample is set up to help you get a sense of each section and understand how they apply to the planning and evaluation stages of a business plan. If you’re looking for funding, this example won’t be a complete or formal look at business plans, but it will give you a great place to start and notes about where to expand.
A lean business plan format is a shortened version of your more detailed business plan. It’s helpful when modifying your plan for a specific audience, like investors or new hires.
Also known as a one-page business plan, it includes only the most important, need-to-know information, such as:
💡 Tip: For a step-by-step guide to creating a lean business plan (including a sample business plan), read our guide on how to create a lean business plan .
It’s tempting to dive right into execution when you’re excited about a new business or side project, but taking the time to write a thorough business plan and get your thoughts on paper allows you to do a number of beneficial things:
A business plan can be as informal or formal as your situation calls for, but even if you’re a fan of the back-of-the-napkin approach to planning, there are some key benefits to starting your plan from an existing outline or simple business plan template.
A blank page can be intimidating to even the most seasoned writers. Using an established business planning process and template can help you get past the inertia of starting your business plan, and it allows you to skip the work of building an outline from scratch. You can always adjust a template to suit your needs.
If you’ve never sat through a business class, you might never have created a SWOT analysis or financial projections. Templates that offer guidance—in plain language—about how to fill in each section can help you navigate sometimes-daunting business jargon and create a complete and effective plan.
In some cases, you may not need to complete every section of a startup business plan template, but its initial structure shows you you’re choosing to omit a section as opposed to forgetting to include it in the first place.
There are some high-level strategic guidelines beyond the advice included in this free business plan template that can help you write an effective, complete plan while minimizing busywork.
If you’re writing a business plan for yourself in order to get clarity on your ideas and your industry as a whole, you may not need to include the same level of detail or polish you would with a business plan you want to send to potential investors. Knowing who will read your plan will help you decide how much time to spend on it.
Understanding the goals of your plan can help you set the right scope. If your goal is to use the plan as a roadmap for growth, you may invest more time in it than if your goal is to understand the competitive landscape of a new industry.
Writing a 10- to 15-page document can feel daunting, so try to tackle one section at a time. Select a couple of sections you feel most confident writing and start there—you can start on the next few sections once those are complete. Jot down bullet-point notes in each section before you start writing to organize your thoughts and streamline the writing process.
Planning is key to the financial success of any type of business , whether you’re a startup, non-profit, or corporation.
To make sure your efforts are focused on the highest-value parts of your own business planning, like clarifying your goals, setting a strategy, and understanding the target market and competitive landscape, lean on a business plan outline to handle the structure and format for you. Even if you eventually omit sections, you’ll save yourself time and energy by starting with a framework already in place.
What is the purpose of a business plan.
The purpose of your business plan is to describe a new business opportunity or an existing one. It clarifies the business strategy, marketing plan, financial forecasts, potential providers, and more information about the company.
If you need help writing a business plan, Shopify’s template is one of the most beginner-friendly options you’ll find. It’s comprehensive, well-written, and helps you fill out every section.
The five essential parts of a traditional business plan include:
There are several free templates for business plans for small business owners available online, including Shopify’s own version. Download a copy for your business.
Keep up with the latest from Shopify
Get free ecommerce tips, inspiration, and resources delivered directly to your inbox.
By entering your email, you agree to receive marketing emails from Shopify.
The point of sale for every sale.
Subscribe to our blog and get free ecommerce tips, inspiration, and resources delivered directly to your inbox.
Unsubscribe anytime. By entering your email, you agree to receive marketing emails from Shopify.
Jun 12, 2024
Jun 11, 2024
Learn on the go. Try Shopify for free, and explore all the tools you need to start, run, and grow your business.
Try Shopify for free, no credit card required.
Over the past decade, the global workforce has been continually evolving because of a number of factors. An increasingly competitive business landscape, rising complexity, and the digital revolution are reshaping the mix of employees. Meanwhile, persistent uncertainty, a multigenerational workforce, and a shorter shelf life for knowledge have placed a premium on reskilling and upskilling. The shift to a digital, knowledge-based economy means that a vibrant workforce is more important than ever: research suggests that a very significant percentage of market capitalization in public companies is based on intangible assets—skilled employees, exceptional leaders, and knowledge. 1 Intangible Asset Market Value Study, Ocean Tomo.
We began in 2014 by surveying 1,500 executives about capability building. In 2016, we added 120 L&D leaders at 91 organizations to our database, gathering information on their traditional training strategies and aspirations for future programs. We also interviewed 15 chief learning officers or L&D heads at major companies.
Historically, the L&D function has been relatively successful in helping employees build skills and perform well in their existing roles. The main focus of L&D has been on upskilling. However, the pace of change continues to accelerate; McKinsey research estimates that as many as 800 million jobs could be displaced by automation by 2030.
Employee roles are expected to continue evolving, and a large number of people will need to learn new skills to remain employable. Unsurprisingly, our research confirmed our initial hypothesis: corporate learning must undergo revolutionary changes over the next few years to keep pace with constant technological advances. In addition to updating training content, companies must increase their focus on blended-learning solutions, which combine digital learning, fieldwork, and highly immersive classroom sessions. With the growth of user-friendly digital-learning platforms, employees will take more ownership of their professional development, logging in to take courses when the need arises rather than waiting for a scheduled classroom session.
Such innovations will require companies to devote more resources to training: our survey revealed that 60 percent of respondents plan to increase L&D spending over the next few years, and 66 percent want to boost the number of employee-training hours. As they commit more time and money, companies must ensure that the transformation of the L&D function proceeds smoothly.
All of these trends have elevated the importance of the learning-and-development (L&D) function. We undertook several phases of research to understand trends and current priorities in L&D (see sidebar, “Learning and development—From evolution to revolution”). Our efforts highlighted how the L&D function is adapting to meet the changing needs of organizations, as well as the growing levels of investment in professional development.
To get the most out of investments in training programs and curriculum development, L&D leaders must embrace a broader role within the organization and formulate an ambitious vision for the function. An essential component of this effort is a comprehensive, coordinated strategy that engages the organization and encourages collaboration. The ACADEMIES© framework, which consists of nine dimensions of L&D, can help to strengthen the function and position it to serve the organization more effectively.
One of L&D’s primary responsibilities is to manage the development of people—and to do so in a way that supports other key business priorities. L&D’s strategic role spans five areas (Exhibit 1). 2 Nick van Dam, 25 Best Practices in Learning & Talent Development , second edition, Raleigh, NC: Lulu Publishing, 2008.
Over the years, we have identified and field-tested nine dimensions that contribute to a strong L&D function. We combined these dimensions to create the ACADEMIES framework, which covers all aspects of L&D functions, from setting aspirations to measuring impact (Exhibit 2). Although many companies regularly execute on several dimensions of this framework, our recent research found that only a few companies are fully mature in all dimensions.
One of an L&D executive’s primary tasks is to develop and shape a learning strategy based on the company’s business and talent strategies. The learning strategy seeks to support professional development and build capabilities across the company, on time, and in a cost-effective manner. In addition, the learning strategy can enhance the company culture and encourage employees to live the company’s values.
For many organizations, the L&D function supports the implementation of the business strategy. For example, if one of the business strategies is a digital transformation, L&D will focus on building the necessary people capabilities to make that possible.
Every business leader would agree that L&D must align with a company’s overall priorities. Yet research has found that many L&D functions fall short on this dimension. Only 40 percent of companies say that their learning strategy is aligned with business goals. 6 Human Capital Management Excellence Conference 2018, Brandon Hall Group. For 60 percent, then, learning has no explicit connection to the company’s strategic objectives. L&D functions may be out of sync with the business because of outdated approaches or because budgets have been based on priorities from previous years rather than today’s imperatives, such as a digital transformation.
To be effective, L&D must take a hard look at employee capabilities and determine which are most essential to support the execution of the company’s business strategy. L&D leaders should reevaluate this alignment on a yearly basis to ensure they are creating a people-capability agenda that truly reflects business priorities and strategic objectives.
With new tools and technologies constantly emerging, companies must become more agile, ready to adapt their business processes and practices. L&D functions must likewise be prepared to rapidly launch capability-building programs—for example, if new business needs suddenly arise or staff members require immediate training on new technologies such as cloud-based collaboration tools.
L&D functions can enhance their partnership with business leaders by establishing a governance structure in which leadership from both groups share responsibility for defining, prioritizing, designing, and securing funds for capability-building programs. Under this governance model, a company’s chief experience officer (CXO), senior executives, and business-unit heads will develop the people-capability agenda for segments of the enterprise and ensure that it aligns with the company’s overall strategic goals. Top business executives will also help firmly embed the learning function and all L&D initiatives in the organizational culture. The involvement of senior leadership enables full commitment to the L&D function’s longer-term vision.
After companies identify their business priorities, they must verify that their employees can deliver on them—a task that may be more difficult than it sounds. Some companies make no effort to assess employee capabilities, while others do so only at a high level. Conversations with L&D, HR, and senior executives suggest that many companies are ineffective or indifferent at assessing capability gaps, especially when it comes to senior leaders and midlevel managers.
The most effective companies take a deliberate, systematic approach to capability assessment. At the heart of this process is a comprehensive competency or capability model based on the organization’s strategic direction. For example, a key competency for a segment of an e-commerce company’s workforce could be “deep expertise in big data and predictive analytics.”
After identifying the most essential capabilities for various functions or job descriptions, companies should then assess how employees rate in each of these areas. L&D interventions should seek to close these capability gaps.
Most corporate learning is delivered through a combination of digital-learning formats and in-person sessions. While our research indicates that immersive L&D experiences in the classroom still have immense value, leaders have told us that they are incredibly busy “from eight to late,” which does not give them a lot of time to sit in a classroom. Furthermore, many said that they prefer to develop and practice new skills and behaviors in a “safe environment,” where they don’t have to worry about public failures that might affect their career paths.
Traditional L&D programs consisted of several days of classroom learning with no follow-up sessions, even though people tend to forget what they have learned without regular reinforcement. As a result, many L&D functions are moving away from stand-alone programs by designing learning journeys—continuous learning opportunities that take place over a period of time and include L&D interventions such as fieldwork, pre- and post-classroom digital learning, social learning, on-the-job coaching and mentoring, and short workshops. The main objectives of a learning journey are to help people develop the required new competencies in the most effective and efficient way and to support the transfer of learning to the job.
An established L&D agenda consists of a number of strategic initiatives that support capability building and are aligned with business goals, such as helping leaders develop high-performing teams or roll out safety training. The successful execution of L&D initiatives on time and on budget is critical to build and sustain support from business leaders.
L&D functions often face an overload of initiatives and insufficient funding. L&D leadership needs to maintain an ongoing discussion with business leaders about initiatives and priorities to ensure the requisite resources and support.
Many new L&D initiatives are initially targeted to a limited audience. A successful execution of a small pilot, such as an online orientation program for a specific audience, can lead to an even bigger impact once the program is rolled out to the entire enterprise. The program’s cost per person declines as companies benefit from economies of scale.
A learning strategy’s execution and impact should be measured using key performance indicators (KPIs). The first indicator looks at business excellence: how closely aligned all L&D initiatives and investments are with business priorities. The second KPI looks at learning excellence: whether learning interventions change people’s behavior and performance. Last, an operational-excellence KPI measures how well investments and resources in the corporate academy are used.
Accurate measurement is not simple, and many organizations still rely on traditional impact metrics such as learning-program satisfaction and completion scores. But high-performing organizations focus on outcomes-based metrics such as impact on individual performance, employee engagement, team effectiveness, and business-process improvement.
We have identified several lenses for articulating and measuring learning impact:
Access to big data provides L&D functions with more opportunities to assess and predict the business impact of their interventions.
Just as L&D corporate-learning activities need to be aligned with the business, they should also be an integral part of the HR agenda. L&D has an important role to play in recruitment, onboarding, performance management, promotion, workforce, and succession planning. Our research shows that at best, many L&D functions have only loose connections to annual performance reviews and lack a structured approach and follow-up to performance-management practices.
L&D leadership must understand major HR management practices and processes and collaborate closely with HR leaders. The best L&D functions use consolidated development feedback from performance reviews as input for their capability-building agenda. A growing number of companies are replacing annual performance appraisals with frequent, in-the-moment feedback. 7 HCM outlook 2018 , Brandon Hall Group. This is another area in which the L&D function can help managers build skills to provide development feedback effectively.
Another example is onboarding. Companies that have developed high-impact onboarding processes score better on employee engagement and satisfaction and lose fewer new hires. 8 HCM outlook 2018 , Brandon Hall Group. The L&D function can play a critical role in onboarding—for example, by helping people build the skills to be successful in their role, providing new hires with access to digital-learning technologies, and connecting them with other new hires and mentors.
Many L&D functions embrace a framework known as “70:20:10,” in which 70 percent of learning takes place on the job, 20 percent through interaction and collaboration, and 10 percent through formal-learning interventions such as classroom training and digital curricula. These percentages are general guidelines and vary by industry and organization. L&D functions have traditionally focused on the formal-learning component.
Today, L&D leaders must design and implement interventions that support informal learning, including coaching and mentoring, on-the-job instruction, apprenticeships, leadership shadowing, action-based learning, on-demand access to digital learning, and lunch-and-learn sessions. Social technologies play a growing role in connecting experts and creating and sharing knowledge.
The most significant enablers for just-in-time learning are technology platforms and applications. Examples include next-generation learning-management systems, virtual classrooms, mobile-learning apps, embedded performance-support systems, polling software, learning-video platforms, learning-assessment and -measurement platforms, massive open online courses (MOOCs), and small private online courses (SPOCs), to name just a few.
The learning-technology industry has moved entirely to cloud-based platforms, which provide L&D functions with unlimited opportunities to plug and unplug systems and access the latest functionality without having to go through lengthy and expensive implementations of an on-premises system. L&D leaders must make sure that learning technologies fit into an overall system architecture that includes functionality to support the entire talent cycle, including recruitment, onboarding, performance management, L&D, real-time feedback tools, career management, succession planning, and rewards and recognition.
L&D leaders are increasingly aware of the challenges created by the fourth industrial revolution (technologies that are connecting the physical and digital worlds), but few have implemented large-scale transformation programs. Instead, most are slowly adapting their strategy and curricula as needed. However, with technology advancing at an ever-accelerating pace, L&D leaders can delay no longer: human capital is more important than ever and will be the primary factor in sustaining competitive advantage over the next few years.
The leaders of L&D functions need to revolutionize their approach by creating a learning strategy that aligns with business strategy and by identifying and enabling the capabilities needed to achieve success. This approach will result in robust curricula that employ every relevant and available learning method and technology. The most effective companies will invest in innovative L&D programs, remain flexible and agile, and build the human talent needed to master the digital age.
These changes entail some risk, and perhaps some trial and error, but the rewards are great.
A version of this chapter was published in TvOO Magazine in September 2016. It is also included in Elevating Learning & Development: Insights and Practical Guidance from the Field , August 2018.
Jacqueline Brassey is director of Enduring Priorities Learning in McKinsey’s Amsterdam office, where Nick van Dam is an alumnus and senior adviser to the firm as well as professor and chief of the IE University (Madrid) Center for Learning Innovation; Lisa Christensen is a senior learning expert in the San Francisco office.
Related articles.
Human resource management (HRM) is the practice of recruiting, hiring, deploying and managing an organization's employees. HRM is often referred to simply as human resources (HR). A company or organization's HR department is usually responsible for creating, putting into effect and overseeing policies governing workers and the relationship of the organization with its employees. The term human resources was first used in the early 1900s, and then more widely in the 1960s, to describe the people who work for the organization, in aggregate.
HRM is employee management with an emphasis on employees as assets of the business. In this context, employees are sometimes referred to as human capital . As with other business assets, the goal is to make effective use of employees, reducing risk and maximizing return on investment ( ROI ).
The modern term human capital management ( HCM ) is often used by large and midsize companies when discussing HR technology .
The purpose of HRM practices is to manage the people within a workplace to achieve the organization's mission and reinforce the corporate culture . When people management is done effectively, HR managers can help recruit new employees who have the skills to further the company's goals. HR professionals also aid in the training and professional development of employees to meet the organization's objectives.
A company is only as good as its employees, making HRM a crucial part of maintaining or improving the health of the business. Additionally, HR managers monitor the state of the job market to help the organization stay competitive. This could include ensuring compensation and benefits are competitive, events are planned to keep employees from burning out and job roles are adapted based on the market.
HR professionals manage the day-to-day execution of HR-related functions. Typically, human resources is a standalone department within an organization.
HR departments vary in the size, structure and nature of their individual positions. For small organizations, one HR generalist might perform a broad array of functions. Larger organizations have several HR professionals who handle specialized roles , such as recruiting, immigration and visas, talent management, employee benefits and compensation. Though these HR positions are specialized, job functions might still overlap.
Amazon is an example of a large company with multiple types of specialized HR positions. The company's career website lists the following HR job titles:
HRM can be broken down into the following four category objectives:
More specific objectives of HRM include the following:
HRM is typically broken into pre-employment and employment phases, as well as more specific subsections, with an HR manager assigned to each one. Areas of HRM oversight include the following:
HR managers benefit from having skills and experience in a range of areas. The most essential HRM skills that professionals should possess include the following:
Almost all areas of HRM have sophisticated software that automates HR processes to varying degrees, along with other features, such as analytics. For example, job candidate recruiting has seen enormous growth in the number of software tools and management systems that match employers and job candidates. Those systems also manage other steps in the hiring process, such as interviewing and vetting.
HRM software is often provided as on-premises systems. However, nearly every area of HR tech has moved to cloud-based software-as-a-service platforms.
There are several vendors in the HRM market, including ADP, BambooHR, HROne, Isolved, Paycom, Paylocity, Personio, Rippling, SAP and Workday.
A bachelor's degree is typically required for a career in human resource management . Some colleges offer HRM degrees that provide a career path into an entry-level HR position. Another way to land a job in HR is to complete an undergraduate course of study in a related field, such as business administration.
Several years of experience in operations-heavy roles can be valuable when making a career transition to an HR position. For those lacking a relevant undergraduate degree or translatable work experience, there are HR-specific master's degree programs to help build the necessary knowledge, skills and qualifications.
Modern human resource management can be traced back to the 18th century. The British Industrial Revolution gave rise to large factories and created an unprecedented spike in demand for workers.
With many of these laborers putting in long hours -- often clocking 16-hour workdays -- it became apparent that worker satisfaction and happiness had a strong positive correlation with productivity. Seeking to maximize ROI, worker satisfaction programs were introduced. Factory conditions, safety concerns and workers' rights also began getting attention in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries.
HR departments within organizations began appearing in the 20th century. They were often known as personnel management departments that dealt with legal compliance requirements and implemented worker satisfaction and safety programs. Following WWII, the U.S. Army's training programs were used as a model in some companies that started to make employee training a point of emphasis.
Personnel departments took on the human resources label in the 1970s. The primary factor that differentiates HR from personnel management is the way technology began to be used to improve communication and access to employee information.
Job opportunities for careers in HRM remain strong. Companies are recognizing the strategic difference a good human resource department can make and are investing in them accordingly. As a result, HR jobs are growing in demand.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), HRM job titles are expected to grow 5% in the U.S. between 2022 to 2023 . Salary prospects remain strong; the median annual salary for an HR manager was approximately $130,000 in May 2022, according to the BLS. For HR specialist positions, median salaries were more than $64,000 at that same time.
Small businesses might have limited resources and a smaller workforce compared to larger companies, making HRM more difficult to implement. However, HRM principles and capabilities can be advantageous for small businesses in the following ways:
Human resource management is key to enterprise success. Learn how to choose the perfect HR software system .
Dig deeper on talent management.
SAP showcases new Business AI applications and continues to make the case for S/4HANA Cloud as the future of SaaS-based ERP ...
SAP acquires the digital adoption platform vendor in a bid to expand its portfolio of applications that helps customers moving ...
On the first day of Sapphire, SAP focused on business AI and the criticality of its GenAI assistant. But analysts say the ...
With its Cerner acquisition, Oracle sets its sights on creating a national, anonymized patient database -- a road filled with ...
Oracle plans to acquire Cerner in a deal valued at about $30B. The second-largest EHR vendor in the U.S. could inject new life ...
The Supreme Court ruled 6-2 that Java APIs used in Android phones are not subject to American copyright law, ending a ...
The longtime BI and data integration vendor's tools enable C40 Cities, a climate leadership consortium of nearly 100 cities, to ...
With trusted data as a foundation, the longtime analytics and data integration vendor has been pragmatic in its creation of an ...
The longtime analytics vendor's latest new features include data integration capabilities targeting data quality and a GenAI ...
Implementing an ECM system is not all about technology; it's also about the people. A proper rollout requires feedback from key ...
Incorporating consulting services and flexible accommodations for different LLMs, developer-focused Contentstack offers its own ...
As SharePoint 2019 approaches its end of life, users can expect reduced support. Migration to newer platforms like SharePoint ...
Identifying the ESG issues that are important to the business and to both internal and external stakeholders can help ...
A thorough audit can rate corporate strategies according to key environmental, social and governance metrics and ensure that ESG ...
The social factors of ESG have become more prominent. Here's what they involve and how companies can take tangible actions to ...
Newsletters
Data and digital health
The European Health Report 2021 »
74th session of the WHO Regional Committee for Europe
WHO/Europe has updated its guidance for assessing and strengthening health information systems. The latest version of the support tool helps countries evaluate the current state of their systems, define a strategic vision, prepare an improvement plan and monitor progress.
“In the WHO European Region, as elsewhere, the cornerstone of effective public health interventions is our ability to understand health trends, identify disparities and target resources where they are most needed,” said Dr Natasha Azzopardi-Muscat, Director of WHO/Europe’s Division of Country Health Policies and Systems.
“Robust data and health information systems are the foundation upon which countries build health strategies and policies. The updated WHO/Europe support tool is designed to help Member States reinforce their health information systems and safeguard the health of all people in our Region,” she added.
Health information systems can be defined as infrastructures for the monitoring of health activities, population health outcomes and policies with a significant impact on health. They encompass the people, institutions, interinstitutional relationships, legislation, values, technologies and standards that contribute to data processing. The data generated by a health information system supports evidence-informed decision-making at every level of a health system.
In other words, health information systems are comprised of all the resources, stakeholders, activities and outputs that enable evidence-informed health policy-making.
In order to be effective, health information systems need clear and reliable data. A lack of data standardization (such as the definitions, calculations and formats of the data), delays in receiving data, lack of integration and interoperability between different data and information systems, and lack of trained people to manage and use the data are among the main reasons why countries struggled to effectively leverage health information systems in support of the COVID-19 pandemic response.
Dr David Novillo Ortiz, WHO/Europe’s Regional Adviser for Data and Digital Health, explained, “While often overlooked and under-resourced, health information systems are the backbone of countries’ ability to monitor, evaluate and respond to health challenges. Investing in their development, both financially and in terms of human resources, is not an option but a necessity. By building health information systems fit for modern challenges, countries can ensure that everyone can benefit from equitable and accessible health care.”
The 2024 version of the WHO support tool incorporates the latest insights, building on the first version published in 2015 and the second in 2021. The updates are based on around 20 health information system assessments carried out since 2015, which indicated a great need for capacity-building to support strategic development. Key challenges faced by countries include the limited use of existing health information for policy-making and poorly functioning intersectoral coordination mechanisms.
The updated support tool comes with several add-on modules that target specific parts or functions of national health information systems. They focus on emergency response information management systems, geographic information systems, long-term care and migration health data.
The add-on modules complement the existing modules, which look at health data governance, health information for the WHO General Programme of Work and the WHO European Programme of Work, human resources for health, infectious disease surveillance, and noncommunicable diseases monitoring.
The tool comprises 2 main parts:
The recommended mode of application of the tool is an external assessment by a WHO team and a subsequent country-led process of health information system strategy development, for which WHO can provide technical support. Nevertheless, national authorities and other users may also use the guidance to arrange a self-assessment of a health information system.
Using this tool in May 2024, WHO experts conducted a health information system joint review in Czechia in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and the Institute of Health Information and Statistics. The insights will support the efforts of the Ministry of Health and WHO to strengthen data collection, analysis and use in health policy. In addition, outcomes of the review will inform a tailored training on population health monitoring, to be organized by WHO in Czechia later this year.
Supporting Member States in improving health information is an important focus of WHO’s work under the current General Programme of Work and European Programme of Work. Developing evidence-based technical guidance and recommendations to support decision-making in digital health is also at the core of WHO’s Digital Health Action Plan for the European Region 2023–2030. WHO/Europe is partnering with the European Commission to strengthen health information systems across all 53 Member States of the Region.
Support tool to strengthen health information systems (2024)
Support tool to strengthen health information systems: guidance for health information system assessment and strategy development, second edition. Web Annex: assessment item sheets
Regional digital health action plan for the WHO European Region 2023–2030 (2022)
WHO’s General Programme of Work
Digital health
WHO in Czechia
COMMENTS
Strategic planning is a process in which organizational leaders determine their vision for the future as well as identify their goals and objectives for the organization. The process also includes establishing the sequence in which those goals should fall so that the organization is enabled to reach its stated vision .
Strategic planning is defined as a pivotal organizational endeavor, meticulously charting the mission, goals, and objectives over a strategic timeframe, typically spanning 2-5 years. This comprehensive roadmap takes into meticulous consideration the current organizational landscape, navigating through the intricacies of prevailing legislation ...
Strategic planning is the art of creating specific business strategies, implementing them, and evaluating the results of executing the plan, in regard to a company's overall long-term goals or desires. It is a concept that focuses on integrating various departments ...
Strategic planning is the ongoing organizational process of using available knowledge to document a business's intended direction. This process is used to prioritize efforts, effectively allocate resources, align shareholders and employees on the organization's goals, and ensure those goals are backed by data and sound reasoning. It's ...
Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to attain strategic goals.. Furthermore, it may also extend to control mechanisms for guiding the implementation of the strategy. Strategic planning became prominent in corporations during the 1960s and remains an important aspect of strategic management.
A strategic plan is a tool to define where your organization wants to go and what actions you need to take to achieve those goals. Strategic planning is the process of creating a plan in order to hit your strategic objectives. Strategic management includes the strategic planning process, but also goes beyond it. In addition to planning how you ...
Strategic planning is a helpful organizational process that, if executed effectively, can increase the likelihood that a company will successfully meet its goals. Additional benefits of strategic planning include: Building consensus and engagement of all stakeholders. Establishing systems of accountability.
What Is Strategic Planning? Strategic planning is the ongoing organizational process of using available knowledge to document a business's intended direction. This process is used to prioritize efforts, effectively allocate resources, align shareholders and employees, and ensure organizational goals are backed by data and sound reasoning.
More specifically, the definition of strategic planning is the development of an organization's purpose and goals, beyond the immediate future, and actions to achieve those goals. The best way to understand strategic planning is to learn how it's done. Read on and we'll walk you through the entire process. The 5 Steps Of Strategic Planning
Strategic planning is an organizational activity that aims to achieve a group's goals. The process helps define a company's objectives and investigates both internal and external happenings that might influence the organizational path.
Estimated Duration. Determine organizational readiness. Owner/CEO, Strategy Director. Readiness assessment. Establish your planning team and schedule. Owner/CEO, Strategy Leader. Kick-Off Meeting: 1 hr. Collect and review information to help make the upcoming strategic decisions. Planning Team and Executive Team.
Why Strategic Planning Fails. There are also plenty of organizations that do take steps to fulfill the requirements of strategic planning, yet still fail to see results. These strategies fail for many reasons, including: Lack of communication: This is a big one.Research shows that 95% of most companies' employees don't understand their organization's strategy, and 85% of executive ...
The outcome of strategic planning is typically a long-term strategic plan that outlines the organization's vision, mission, values, and objectives. Business planning, on the other hand, is a more tactical process that focuses on the implementation of specific initiatives and projects to support the organization's long-term goals.
Strategic planning is a continuous, systematic process for organizations to define their short- and long-term direction. It involves comprehensively assessing internal aspects, like employee development, budgets, and timelines, and external elements, such as market trends and competitors, to enable effective resource allocation so your ...
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 ...
Determine your priorities and objectives. Define responsibilities. Measure and evaluate results. Each step requires close collaboration as you build a shared vision, strategy for implementation, and system for understanding performance. Related: Learn how to hold an effective strategic planning meeting.
Strategic planning is the process of putting your best business theories to the test in the marketplace. Your strategic planning process starts with defining a mission/vision statement and setting key goals. To achieve those goals, you create a detailed plan, or strategy map. Once you put that strategic plan into motion, you're no longer just ...
Strategic planning is the process of defining your business's direction and outlining a path toward a preferred future. The goal of a strategic plan is to capture an organization's mission and core principles — to envision the fulfillment of these ideals. Strategic planning is both conceptual and practical, as it presents both high-level ...
Goals, Priorities and Strategies. Outlines the goals, priorities, and strategies to meet the mission. 3 -4 overarching goals aligned with mission. Priorities, activities, objectives, strategies are in more depth, have more specificity - each goal could have a few different objectives / strategies associated with it.
1. Clarify the company's vision. One of the first steps in strategic planning is defining the vision, values and mission for the organization. The vision is the long-term objective of the business, and you should base it on ambitious but realistic goals. Values are beliefs that create the foundation for the company, and affect every part of ...
Strategic planning is crucial for a business as it creates a map for a business to follow and course correct when need be. The first part of a strategic plan is the business plan, which outlines ...
Conduct an environmental scan. Define strategic priorities. Develop goals and metrics. Derive a strategic plan. Write and communicate your strategic plan. Implement, monitor, and revise. 1. Clarify your vision, mission, and values. The first step of the strategic planning process is understanding your organization's core elements: vision ...
strategic planning, disciplined effort to produce decisions and actions that shape and guide an organization's purpose and activities, particularly with regard to the future.Strategic planning is a fundamental component of organizational management and decision making in public, private, and nonprofit organizations. It is a structured approach to establishing an organization's direction ...
Functional/Role-Based Structure. A functional—or role-based—structure is one of the most common organizational structures. This structure has centralized leadership and the vertical ...
Overview For the purposes of this special issue, we define strategic planning as a 'deliberative, disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization (or other entity) is, what it does, and why' (Bryson Citation 2011, 7-9).Strategic planning that fits this definition is an increasingly common practice in governments around the world ...
Our free business plan template includes seven key elements typically found in the traditional business plan format: 1. Executive summary. This is a one-page summary of your whole plan, typically written after the rest of the plan is completed. The description section of your executive summary will also cover your management team, business ...
The strategic role of L&D. One of L&D's primary responsibilities is to manage the development of people—and to do so in a way that supports other key business priorities. L&D's strategic role spans five areas (Exhibit 1). 2. Attract and retain talent. Traditionally, learning focused solely on improving productivity.
Strategic planning. HRM aligns HR strategies with business goals, ensuring every HR initiative contributes to the company's strategic plans. Scalability. As small businesses grow, their HR needs evolve. HRM practices can scale to accommodate changing workforce requirements and the demands of new organizational structures.
Air Force & Space Force announce sweeping changes to maintain superiority amid Great Power Competition. The United States faces a time of consequence marked by significant shifts in the strategic environment. To remain ready, the U.S. Air Force must change. In early 2024, the Department of the Air Force unveiled sweeping plans for reshaping ...
News release. Reading time: 3 min (776 words) WHO/Europe has updated its guidance for assessing and strengthening health information systems. The latest version of the support tool helps countries evaluate the current state of their systems, define a strategic vision, prepare an improvement plan and monitor progress.