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Strategic Planning

Strategic planning determines where an organization is going over the next 1-5 years, how it’s going to get there and how it’ll know if it got there. Executives drive the focus of a strategic plan, and the strategic plan is really the first step in creating, articulating, and driving throughout the organization, a strategic advantage to help you WIN in the market. 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, culture of the organization, complexity of the organization’s environment, size of the organization, expertise of planners, etc.

There are a variety of strategic planning models, including:

  • Goal-based
    Goals-based planning is probably the most common and starts with focus on the organization’s mission (and vision and/or values), goals to work toward the mission, strategies to achieve the goals, and action planning (who will do what and by when).
  • Issues-based
    Issues-based strategic planning often starts by examining issues facing the organization, strategies to address those issues, and action plans.
  • Organic
    Organic strategic planning might start by articulating the organization’s vision and values and then action plans to achieve the vision while adhering to those values. This often takes place where no prior plan exists
  • Scenario Planning (some would assert that scenario planning is more a technique than model) Quite often, an organization’s strategic planners already know much of what will go into a strategic plan (this is true for business planning, too). However, development of the strategic plan greatly helps to clarify the organization’s plans and ensure that key leaders are all “on the same script”. Far more important than the strategic plan document, is the strategic planning process itself.

Our phased modular approach can work from end to end, or, we can work with on a particular step in the process. The key to a great plan is not the “3 ring binder” but rather do we have all resources aligned to the key strategic outcomes.