STRATEGIC PLANNING

What is Strategic Planning?

Strategic planning is an organizational management activity that is used to set priorities, focus energy and resources, strengthen operations, ensure that employees and other stakeholders are working toward common goals, establish agreement around intended outcomes/results, and assess and adjust the organization’s direction in response to a changing environment. It is a disciplined effort that produces fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, who it serves, what it does, and why it does it, with a focus on the future. Effective strategic planning articulates not only where an organization is going and the actions needed to make progress, but also how it will know if it is successful.

What is a Strategic Plan?

A strategic plan is a document used to communicate with the organization the organizations goals, the actions needed to achieve those goals and all of the other critical elements developed during the planning exercise.

What is Strategic Management?  What is Strategy Execution?

Strategic management is the comprehensive collection of ongoing activities and processes that organizations use to systematically coordinate and align resources and actions with mission, vision and strategy throughout an organization. Strategic management activities transform the static plan into a system that provides strategic performance feedback to decision making and enables the plan to evolve and grow as requirements and other circumstances change.  Strategy Execution is basically synonymous with Strategy Management and amounts to the systematic implementation of a strategy.

What is the strategic planning process?

In the simplest terms, the strategic planning process is the method that organizations use to develop plans to achieve overall, long-term goals.

It helps you determine your mission, vision, and goals. The strategic planning process is broader—it helps you create a roadmap for which strategic objectives you should put effort into achieving and which initiatives will be less helpful to the business. The strategic planning process steps are outlined below.

Strategic planning process steps

To start the strategic planning process, follow these steps.

1. Determine your strategic position

This preparation phase sets the stage for all work going forward. You need to know where you are to determine where you need to go and how you will get there.

Get the right stakeholders involved from the start, considering both internal and external sources. Identify key strategic issues by talking with executives at your company, pulling in customer insights, and collecting industry and market data to get a clear picture of your position in the market and in the minds of your customers. .

It can also be helpful to review—or create, if you don’t have them already—your company’s mission and vision statements to give yourself and your team a clear image of what success looks like for your business. In addition, you should review your company’s core values to remind yourself about how your company will go about achieving these objectives.

SWOT Analysis Template

As a framework for your initial analysis, use a SWOT diagram., With input from executives, customers, and external market data, you can quickly categorize your findings as Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) to clarify your current position.

To get started, you can use Lucidchart’s free SWOT analysis template to document your organization’s internal strengths and weaknesses, along with external opportunities (ways your organization can grow in order to fill needs that the market does not currently fill) and threats (your competition).

As you synthesize this information, your unique strategic position in the market will become clear, and you can start solidifying a few key strategic objectives. Often, these objectives are set with a three- to five-year horizon in mind.

2. Develop a strategic plan

Once you have identified your current position in the market and have identified potential strategic objectives in line with your company mission and vision,, you’re ready to develop your strategic plan.

To develop your plan, prioritize your objectives by asking important questions such as:

• Which of these initiatives will have the greatest impact when it comes to achieving our company mission/vision and improving our position in the market?
• What types of impact are most important (e.g. customer acquisition vs. revenue)?
• How will the competition react?
• Which initiatives are most urgent?
• What will we need to do to accomplish our goals?
• How will we measure our progress and determine whether we achieved our goals?

Once you and your team have prioritized your long-term objectives, you must determine what specific goals or initiatives you will need to achieve, in order to successfully reach your objectives. Use SMART goals to determine a timeline and identify the resources needed to achieve the goals, as well as key performance indicators (KPIs) to make your success measurable.

As you decide which goals to focus on, determine which initiatives you will not focus on. Truly strategic choices usually involve a trade-off in opportunity cost. For example, your company may decide to not put as much funding behind customer support, so that it can put more funding into creating an intuitive user experience.

Be prepared to use your values, mission statement, and established priorities to say “no” to initiatives that won’t enhance your long-term strategic position.

3. Execute and manage the plan

Once you have the plan, you’re ready to implement it. First, communicate the plan to the organization by sharing relevant documentation. Then, the actual work begins.

Lucidchart is useful for mapping processes and turning your broader strategy into a concrete plan. For example, to clearly communicate team responsibilities, you can use swimlanes to illustrate the completion process and ownership for each step of the way.

Set up regular reviews with individual contributors and their superiors and determine check-in points to make sure you’re on track.

4. Review and revise the plan

The final stage of the plan—to review and revise—gives you an opportunity to reevaluate your priorities and course-correct based on past successes or failures. On a quarterly basis, determine which KPIs your team has met and how you can continue to meet them, adapting your plan as necessary.

On an annual basis, it’s important to reevaluate your priorities and strategic position to ensure that you stay on track for success in the long run. Over time, you may find that your mission and vision need to change—an annual evaluation is a good time to consider those changes, prepare a new plan, and implement again.

Master the strategic planning process steps

As you continue to implement the strategic planning process, repeating each step regularly, you will start to make measurable progress toward achieving your company’s vision. Instead of always putting out fires, reacting to the competition, or focusing on the latest hot-button initiative, you’ll be able to maintain a long-term perspective and make decisions that will keep you on the path to success for years to come.