mset strategic business plan

Strategic Business Plan

Vice President of Business Development (MSET)

• Job Category: Sales, Business Development & Related

Travel: Yes, 25% of the time

Clearance: Able to Obtain Secret

• Req ID: 2024-9076

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Job Summary:

Akima, LLC and its operating companies represent an uncommonly broad array of specialized talents, technologies, and domain expertise, powering some of the most visible and demanding programs across all of government and industry. Driven by national priorities, Akima companies successfully support their customers at every critical point across a program’s lifecycle – from strategy, design, and development through operations, management, migration, and sustainment.

We are currently seeking a dynamic and innovative Vice President of Business Development for the Mission Systems, Engineering, & Technology (MSET) Group. This role demands a self-starting, highly motivated individual who will spearhead our efforts to expand our client base, retain expiring programs, penetrate new markets, and ultimately secure vital new business. This includes a focus on digital solutions (i.e., enterprise IT, IT infrastructure, cloud migration, command and control, etc.), mission operations and intelligence support (i.e., C4ISR, J2 and J3 environments, etc.), specialized staff augmentation, and systems engineering and integration across Defense and Federal Civilian sectors.

Reporting to the Chief Growth Officer and functionally matrixed to the MSET Group President, the Vice President of Business Development will play a pivotal role in steering our growth trajectory. You will lead a diverse team of Business Development and Capture professionals develop, qualify, and prosecute an aggressive new business pipeline aligned with MSET’s strategic objectives that drives delivery of annual sales plans commitments.

We're seeking candidates with a proven track record in Federal acquisition, a knack for nurturing growth opportunities, and a demonstrated ability to deliver tangible results. If you’re ready to make a significant impact and drive our company forward, we invite you to join us on this exciting journey.

Responsibilities

Job Responsibilities:

Overseeing and assisting business development, capture, and operations personnel through all phases of the business winning lifecycle. This includes, but is not limited to, positioning activities, teaming arrangements, win strategy development, proposal preparation, and oral presentations consistent with established corporate processes.

Providing individual contributions in any phase, as needed, to meet growth objectives.

Serving as a subject matter expert for all aspects of the Akima Competitive Win Plan (ACWP).

Performing initial analysis of proposed or actual requests for capabilities and/or proposals to determine technical, schedule, and content reasonableness and profitability.

Collaborating with other members of the company to design, develop, review, and publish proposal documents.

Leveraging a high level of business acumen, preparing and leading pipeline and gate reviews, monitoring and controlling sales G&A and B&P budgets, and leading MSET's gross margin sold productivity.

Participating in the development of annual and long-range strategic business plans. Interfacing with Group and company leads to determine applicable Federal market areas and scopes of services for future adjacent growth.

Supporting corporate and senior business development leadership in staying abreast of and preparing for new growth opportunities. This may include representing Akima in industry groups, professional societies, at conferences and trade events, and other outreach and networking events. Drive Group-level requirements for marketing and tradeshow strategies.

Establishing and nurturing close relationships with existing and prospective customers. Developing and maintaining internal and external relationships with key stakeholders that support growth of the portfolio.

Developing and maintaining intelligence on clients and competitors to preserve and growth Akima’s market share.

Ensuring pipeline data accuracy for all opportunities assigned under this position. Managing the opportunity pipeline process with probability of win calculations, revenue projections, and direct input to the company budget and forecasting process.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

Bachelor’s degree (master’s degree preferred) in a relevant discipline from an accredited university.

10-15 years of progressive experience in business development within the Federal contracting environment, preferrable with a portion of this experience based in the 8(a) and small business sector of the Federal market.

Proven personnel leadership track record at the project level or higher, demonstrating success in business development, government program/project management, and general management responsibilities.

Experience in Federal digital solutions, mission operations and intelligence support, specialized staff augmentation, and/or systems engineering and integration markets.

Proven ability to develop business at executive and mid-levels, with knowledge of decision makers, strategic direction, and major programs in the subject market space.

Successful track record developing business in new markets and winning services contracts.

Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to communicate effectively at all levels of the organization.

Capable of developing and delivering effective sales presentations.

Excellent proposal development skills.

Proven ability to develop and execute sales strategies leveraging partnerships with vendors and other industry partners.

Ability to lead and collaborate with cross-functional teams.

Proficient in Microsoft Office Suite, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Detail-oriented with the ability to multi-task.

Ability to obtain or possess a Secret security clearance.

Job: Sales, Business Development & Related

Organization: Akima

Work Type: Hybrid

ReqID: 2024-9076

Work Where it Matters

Akima is not just another global enterprise and federal contractor. As an Alaska Native Corporation (ANC), our mission and purpose extend beyond our exciting federal projects as we support our shareholder communities in Alaska. At Akima, the work you do every day makes a difference in the lives of our 15,000 Iñupiat shareholders, a group of Alaska natives from one of the most remote and harshest environments in the United States.

For our shareholders, Akima provides support and employment opportunities and contributes to the survival of a culture that has thrived above the Arctic Circle for more than 10,000 years.

For our government customers, Akima delivers agile solutions in the core areas of facilities, maintenance, and repair; information technology; logistics; protective services; systems engineering; mission support; furniture, fixtures & equipment (FF&E); and construction.

As an Akima employee, you will be surrounded by a challenging, yet supportive work environment that is committed to innovation and diversity, two of our most important values. You will also have access to our comprehensive benefits and competitive pay in addition to growth opportunities and excellent retirement options.

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Featured Reads

• Business strategy |
• 7 strategic planning models, plus 8 fra ...

7 strategic planning models, plus 8 frameworks to help you get started

Strategic planning is vital in defining where your business is going in the next three to five years. With the right strategic planning models and frameworks, you can uncover opportunities, identify risks, and create a strategic plan to fuel your organization’s success. We list the most popular models and frameworks and explain how you can combine them to create a strategic plan that fits your business.

A strategic plan is a great tool to help you hit your business goals . But sometimes, this tool needs to be updated to reflect new business priorities or changing market conditions. If you decide to use a model that already exists, you can benefit from a roadmap that’s already created. The model you choose can improve your knowledge of what works best in your organization, uncover unknown strengths and weaknesses, or help you find out how you can outpace your competitors.

In this article, we cover the most common strategic planning models and frameworks and explain when to use which one. Plus, get tips on how to apply them and which models and frameworks work well together. 

Strategic planning models vs. frameworks

First off: This is not a one-or-nothing scenario. You can use as many or as few strategic planning models and frameworks as you like. 

When your organization undergoes a strategic planning phase, you should first pick a model or two that you want to apply. This will provide you with a basic outline of the steps to take during the strategic planning process.

During that process, think of strategic planning frameworks as the tools in your toolbox. Many models suggest starting with a SWOT analysis or defining your vision and mission statements first. Depending on your goals, though, you may want to apply several different frameworks throughout the strategic planning process.

For example, if you’re applying a scenario-based strategic plan, you could start with a SWOT and PEST(LE) analysis to get a better overview of your current standing. If one of the weaknesses you identify has to do with your manufacturing process, you could apply the theory of constraints to improve bottlenecks and mitigate risks. 

Now that you know the difference between the two, learn more about the seven strategic planning models, as well as the eight most commonly used frameworks that go along with them.

1. Basic model

The basic strategic planning model is ideal for establishing your company’s vision, mission, business objectives, and values. This model helps you outline the specific steps you need to take to reach your goals, monitor progress to keep everyone on target, and address issues as they arise.

If it’s your first strategic planning session, the basic model is the way to go. Later on, you can embellish it with other models to adjust or rewrite your business strategy as needed. Let’s take a look at what kinds of businesses can benefit from this strategic planning model and how to apply it.

Small businesses or organizations

Companies with little to no strategic planning experience

Organizations with few resources 

Write your mission statement. Gather your planning team and have a brainstorming session. The more ideas you can collect early in this step, the more fun and rewarding the analysis phase will feel.

Identify your organization’s goals . Setting clear business goals will increase your team’s performance and positively impact their motivation.

Outline strategies that will help you reach your goals. Ask yourself what steps you have to take in order to reach these goals and break them down into long-term, mid-term, and short-term goals .

Create action plans to implement each of the strategies above. Action plans will keep teams motivated and your organization on target.

Monitor and revise the plan as you go . As with any strategic plan, it’s important to closely monitor if your company is implementing it successfully and how you can adjust it for a better outcome.

2. Issue-based model

Also called goal-based planning model, this is essentially an extension of the basic strategic planning model. It’s a bit more dynamic and very popular for companies that want to create a more comprehensive plan.

Organizations with basic strategic planning experience

Businesses that are looking for a more comprehensive plan

Conduct a SWOT analysis . Assess your organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats with a SWOT analysis to get a better overview of what your strategic plan should focus on. We’ll give into how to conduct a SWOT analysis when we get into the strategic planning frameworks below.

Identify and prioritize major issues and/or goals. Based on your SWOT analysis, identify and prioritize what your strategic plan should focus on this time around.

Develop your main strategies that address these issues and/or goals. Aim to develop one overarching strategy that addresses your highest-priority goal and/or issue to keep this process as simple as possible.

Update or create a mission and vision statement . Make sure that your business’s statements align with your new or updated strategy. If you haven’t already, this is also a chance for you to define your organization’s values.

Create action plans. These will help you address your organization’s goals, resource needs, roles, and responsibilities. 

Develop a yearly operational plan document. This model works best if your business repeats the strategic plan implementation process on an annual basis, so use a yearly operational plan to capture your goals, progress, and opportunities for next time.

Allocate resources for your year-one operational plan. Whether you need funding or dedicated team members to implement your first strategic plan, now is the time to allocate all the resources you’ll need.

Monitor and revise the strategic plan. Record your lessons learned in the operational plan so you can revisit and improve it for the next strategic planning phase.

The issue-based plan can repeat on an annual basis (or less often once you resolve the issues). It’s important to update the plan every time it’s in action to ensure it’s still doing the best it can for your organization.

You don’t have to repeat the full process every year—rather, focus on what’s a priority during this run.

3. Alignment model

This model is also called strategic alignment model (SAM) and is one of the most popular strategic planning models. It helps you align your business and IT strategies with your organization’s strategic goals. 

You’ll have to consider four equally important, yet different perspectives when applying the alignment strategic planning model:

Strategy execution: The business strategy driving the model

Technology potential: The IT strategy supporting the business strategy

Competitive potential: Emerging IT capabilities that can create new products and services

Service level: Team members dedicated to creating the best IT system in the organization

Ideally, your strategy will check off all the criteria above—however, it’s more likely you’ll have to find a compromise. 

Here’s how to create a strategic plan using the alignment model and what kinds of companies can benefit from it.

Organizations that need to fine-tune their strategies

Businesses that want to uncover issues that prevent them from aligning with their mission

Companies that want to reassess objectives or correct problem areas that prevent them from growing

Outline your organization’s mission, programs, resources, and where support is needed. Before you can improve your statements and approaches, you need to define what exactly they are.

Identify what internal processes are working and which ones aren’t. Pinpoint which processes are causing problems, creating bottlenecks , or could otherwise use improving. Then prioritize which internal processes will have the biggest positive impact on your business.

Identify solutions. Work with the respective teams when you’re creating a new strategy to benefit from their experience and perspective on the current situation.

Update your strategic plan with the solutions. Update your strategic plan and monitor if implementing it is setting your business up for improvement or growth. If not, you may have to return to the drawing board and update your strategic plan with new solutions.

4. Scenario model

The scenario model works great if you combine it with other models like the basic or issue-based model. This model is particularly helpful if you need to consider external factors as well. These can be government regulations, technical, or demographic changes that may impact your business.

Organizations trying to identify strategic issues and goals caused by external factors

Identify external factors that influence your organization. For example, you should consider demographic, regulation, or environmental factors.

Review the worst case scenario the above factors could have on your organization. If you know what the worst case scenario for your business looks like, it’ll be much easier to prepare for it. Besides, it’ll take some of the pressure and surprise out of the mix, should a scenario similar to the one you create actually occur.

Identify and discuss two additional hypothetical organizational scenarios. On top of your worst case scenario, you’ll also want to define the best case and average case scenarios. Keep in mind that the worst case scenario from the previous step can often provoke strong motivation to change your organization for the better. However, discussing the other two will allow you to focus on the positive—the opportunities your business may have ahead.

Identify and suggest potential strategies or solutions. Everyone on the team should now brainstorm different ways your business could potentially respond to each of the three scenarios. Discuss the proposed strategies as a team afterward.

Uncover common considerations or strategies for your organization. There’s a good chance that your teammates come up with similar solutions. Decide which ones you like best as a team or create a new one together.

Identify the most likely scenario and the most reasonable strategy. Finally, examine which of the three scenarios is most likely to occur in the next three to five years and how your business should respond to potential changes.

5. Self-organizing model

Also called the organic planning model, the self-organizing model is a bit different from the linear approaches of the other models. You’ll have to be very patient with this method. 

This strategic planning model is all about focusing on the learning and growing process rather than achieving a specific goal. Since the organic model concentrates on continuous improvement , the process is never really over.

Large organizations that can afford to take their time

Businesses that prefer a more naturalistic, organic planning approach that revolves around common values, communication, and shared reflection

Companies that have a clear understanding of their vision

Define and communicate your organization’s cultural values . Your team can only think clearly and with solutions in mind when they have a clear understanding of your organization's values.

Communicate the planning group’s vision for the organization. Define and communicate the vision with everyone involved in the strategic planning process. This will align everyone’s ideas with your company’s vision.

Discuss what processes will help realize the organization’s vision on a regular basis. Meet every quarter to discuss strategies or tactics that will move your organization closer to realizing your vision.

6. Real-time model

This fluid model can help organizations that deal with rapid changes to their work environment. There are three levels of success in the real-time model: 

Organizational: At the organizational level, you’re forming strategies in response to opportunities or trends.

Programmatic: At the programmatic level, you have to decide how to respond to specific outcomes or environmental changes.

Operational: On the operational level, you will study internal systems, policies, and people to develop a strategy for your company.

Figuring out your competitive advantage can be difficult, but this is absolutely crucial to ensure success. Whether it’s a unique asset or strength your organization has or an outstanding execution of services or programs—it’s important that you can set yourself apart from others in the industry to succeed.

Companies that need to react quickly to changing environments

Businesses that are seeking new tools to help them align with their organizational strategy

Define your mission and vision statement. If you ever feel stuck formulating your company’s mission or vision statement, take a look at those of others. Maybe Asana’s vision statement sparks some inspiration.

Research, understand, and learn from competitor strategy and market trends. Pick a handful of competitors in your industry and find out how they’ve created success for themselves. How did they handle setbacks or challenges? What kinds of challenges did they even encounter? Are these common scenarios in the market? Learn from your competitors by finding out as much as you can about them.

Study external environments. At this point, you can combine the real-time model with the scenario model to find solutions to threats and opportunities outside of your control.

Conduct a SWOT analysis of your internal processes, systems, and resources. Besides the external factors your team has to consider, it’s also important to look at your company’s internal environment and how well you’re prepared for different scenarios.

Develop a strategy. Discuss the results of your SWOT analysis to develop a business strategy that builds toward organizational, programmatic, and operational success.

Rinse and repeat. Monitor how well the new strategy is working for your organization and repeat the planning process as needed to ensure you’re on top or, perhaps, ahead of the game. 

7. Inspirational model

This last strategic planning model is perfect to inspire and energize your team as they work toward your organization’s goals. It’s also a great way to introduce or reconnect your employees to your business strategy after a merger or acquisition.

Businesses with a dynamic and inspired start-up culture

Organizations looking for inspiration to reinvigorate the creative process

Companies looking for quick solutions and strategy shifts

Gather your team to discuss an inspirational vision for your organization. The more people you can gather for this process, the more input you will receive.

Brainstorm big, hairy audacious goals and ideas. Encouraging your team not to hold back with ideas that may seem ridiculous will do two things: for one, it will mitigate the fear of contributing bad ideas. But more importantly, it may lead to a genius idea or suggestion that your team wouldn’t have thought of if they felt like they had to think inside of the box.

Assess your organization’s resources. Find out if your company has the resources to implement your new ideas. If they don’t, you’ll have to either adjust your strategy or allocate more resources.

Develop a strategy balancing your resources and brainstorming ideas. Far-fetched ideas can grow into amazing opportunities but they can also bear great risk. Make sure to balance ideas with your strategic direction. 

Now, let’s dive into the most commonly used strategic frameworks.

8. SWOT analysis framework

One of the most popular strategic planning frameworks is the SWOT analysis . A SWOT analysis is a great first step in identifying areas of opportunity and risk—which can help you create a strategic plan that accounts for growth and prepares for threats.

SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Here’s an example:

9. OKRs framework

A big part of strategic planning is setting goals for your company. That’s where OKRs come into play. 

OKRs stand for objective and key results—this goal-setting framework helps your organization set and achieve goals. It provides a somewhat holistic approach that you can use to connect your team’s work to your organization’s big-picture goals.  When team members understand how their individual work contributes to the organization’s success, they tend to be more motivated and produce better results

10. Balanced scorecard (BSC) framework

The balanced scorecard is a popular strategic framework for businesses that want to take a more holistic approach rather than just focus on their financial performance. It was designed by David Norton and Robert Kaplan in the 1990s, it’s used by companies around the globe to: 

Communicate goals

Align their team’s daily work with their company’s strategy

Prioritize products, services, and projects

Monitor their progress toward their strategic goals

Your balanced scorecard will outline four main business perspectives:

Customers or clients , meaning their value, satisfaction, and/or retention

Financial , meaning your effectiveness in using resources and your financial performance

Internal process , meaning your business’s quality and efficiency

Organizational capacity , meaning your organizational culture, infrastructure and technology, and human resources

With the help of a strategy map, you can visualize and communicate how your company is creating value. A strategy map is a simple graphic that shows cause-and-effect connections between strategic objectives. 

The balanced scorecard framework is an amazing tool to use from outlining your mission, vision, and values all the way to implementing your strategic plan .

You can use an integration like Lucidchart to create strategy maps for your business in Asana.

11. Porter’s Five Forces framework

If you’re using the real-time strategic planning model, Porter’s Five Forces are a great framework to apply. You can use it to find out what your product’s or service’s competitive advantage is before entering the market.

Developed by Michael E. Porter , the framework outlines five forces you have to be aware of and monitor:

Threat of new industry entrants: Any new entry into the market results in increased pressure on prices and costs. 

Competition in the industry: The more competitors that exist, the more difficult it will be for you to create value in the market with your product or service.

Bargaining power of suppliers: Suppliers can wield more power if there are less alternatives for buyers or it’s expensive, time consuming, or difficult to switch to a different supplier.

Bargaining power of buyers: Buyers can wield more power if the same product or service is available elsewhere with little to no difference in quality.

Threat of substitutes: If another company already covers the market’s needs, you’ll have to create a better product or service or make it available for a lower price at the same quality in order to compete.

Remember, industry structures aren’t static. The more dynamic your strategic plan is, the better you’ll be able to compete in a market.

12. VRIO framework

The VRIO framework is another strategic planning tool designed to help you evaluate your competitive advantage. VRIO stands for value, rarity, imitability, and organization.

It’s a resource-based theory developed by Jay Barney. With this framework, you can study your firmed resources and find out whether or not your company can transform them into sustained competitive advantages. 

Firmed resources can be tangible (e.g., cash, tools, inventory, etc.) or intangible (e.g., copyrights, trademarks, organizational culture, etc.). Whether these resources will actually help your business once you enter the market depends on four qualities:

Valuable : Will this resource either increase your revenue or decrease your costs and thereby create value for your business?

Rare : Are the resources you’re using rare or can others use your resources as well and therefore easily provide the same product or service?

Inimitable : Are your resources either inimitable or non-substitutable? In other words, how unique and complex are your resources?

Organizational: Are you organized enough to use your resources in a way that captures their value, rarity, and inimitability?

It’s important that your resources check all the boxes above so you can ensure that you have sustained competitive advantage over others in the industry.

13. Theory of Constraints (TOC) framework

If the reason you’re currently in a strategic planning process is because you’re trying to mitigate risks or uncover issues that could hurt your business—this framework should be in your toolkit.

The theory of constraints (TOC) is a problem-solving framework that can help you identify limiting factors or bottlenecks preventing your organization from hitting OKRs or KPIs . 

Whether it’s a policy, market, or recourse constraint—you can apply the theory of constraints to solve potential problems, respond to issues, and empower your team to improve their work with the resources they have.

14. PEST/PESTLE analysis framework

The idea of the PEST analysis is similar to that of the SWOT analysis except that you’re focusing on external factors and solutions. It’s a great framework to combine with the scenario-based strategic planning model as it helps you define external factors connected to your business’s success.

PEST stands for political, economic, sociological, and technological factors. Depending on your business model, you may want to expand this framework to include legal and environmental factors as well (PESTLE). These are the most common factors you can include in a PESTLE analysis:

Political: Taxes, trade tariffs, conflicts

Economic: Interest and inflation rate, economic growth patterns, unemployment rate

Social: Demographics, education, media, health

Technological: Communication, information technology, research and development, patents

Legal: Regulatory bodies, environmental regulations, consumer protection

Environmental: Climate, geographical location, environmental offsets

15. Hoshin Kanri framework

Hoshin Kanri is a great tool to communicate and implement strategic goals. It’s a planning system that involves the entire organization in the strategic planning process. The term is Japanese and stands for “compass management” and is also known as policy management. 

This strategic planning framework is a top-down approach that starts with your leadership team defining long-term goals which are then aligned and communicated with every team member in the company. 

You should hold regular meetings to monitor progress and update the timeline to ensure that every teammate’s contributions are aligned with the overarching company goals.

Stick to your strategic goals

Whether you’re a small business just starting out or a nonprofit organization with decades of experience, strategic planning is a crucial step in your journey to success. 

If you’re looking for a tool that can help you and your team define, organize, and implement your strategic goals, Asana is here to help. Our goal-setting software allows you to connect all of your team members in one place, visualize progress, and stay on target.

Related resources

How Asana streamlines strategic planning with work management

How to create a CRM strategy: 6 steps (with examples)

What is management by objectives (MBO)?

Write better AI prompts: A 4-sentence framework

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6 Ways to Bring Strategy into Your Work Every Day

• David Lancefield

Small decisions about where to focus and what to do throughout your day may feel inconsequential, but their impacts accumulate.

Business leaders are expected to be strategic, and while organizational obstacles can prevent you from translating intent into strategic actions, so can your personal limitations and practices. It doesn’t have to be this way. Even when it feels like the odds are stacked against you, you have more choices than you may realize. Small decisions about where to focus and what to do throughout your day may feel inconsequential, but their impacts accumulate. Master those small decisions and before you know it, you’ll overcome the obstacles as you pursue your strategy with greater clarity, determination, and ultimately success. The author presents six ways to incorporate strategy into your daily practices.

Being strategic — that is, making a coherent set of choices to help you pursue an ambition or goal — is a nonnegotiable skill for business leaders. But it can be hard to practice, and strategies are notoriously hard to design and deliver. Sometimes we blame organizational obstacles. For example, micromanagement dampens enthusiasm for trying something new. Incentives encourage us to stick to the status quo. Poor communication makes it hard to know where to focus.

• David Lancefield is a  catalyst, strategist, and coach  for leaders. He’s advised more than 40 CEOs and hundreds of executives, was a senior partner at Strategy&, and is a guest lecturer at the London Business School. Find him on LinkedIn (@davidclancefield) or at  davidlancefield.com , where you can sign up for his free “Mastering Big Moments”  workbook .

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Strategic Planning: How to Write a Strategic Plan That Works

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.

See ClearPoint Strategy in action! Click here to watch a quick DEMO on the software

“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:

• Preparing for strategic planning
• Creating your strategic plan
• Putting your strategic plan into practice

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.

What is Strategic Planning and Why is It Important?

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.

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 leadership teams spend less than one hour per month discussing strategy.
• Poor research around customer trends, organizational threats, and market opportunities : Companies tend to spend more time on internal issues (resolving conflicts and reconciling budgets) than they do analyzing important external information.
• Lack of management support : Organizations neglect to rally support for middle managers, who are key to making sure strategy is executed on a daily basis.
• Ineffective or inefficient performance evaluations : Organizations dedicate all their time to coming up with a plan, but either forget to follow through by tracking progress or have no organized, reliable way to track performance data.
• Lack of clear priorities : Organizations try to do too much at once and/or fail to identify the right activities that will help them achieve their strategy.
• Insufficient resources : Companies don’t acquire new resources, or shift existing resources, to support identified priorities.
• Disjointed departmental goals and activities : There’s no alignment of departmental goals with organizational strategy. Without everyone working together, goals become more difficult to reach.

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.

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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.

Set up your strategy review meetings

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:

• Monthly , where you review progress on projects and initiatives
• Quarterly , where you review progress on strategy and discuss key action items
• Annually , where you review year-to-date performance and adjust the strategy as needed

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.

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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.

• If you refresh your strategic plan every year, you might be able to work through this process in 4-5 weeks .
• If you’ve never done strategic planning before, 6 months could be more realistic.

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.

- Gather the inputs to your Strategic Plan

Get appropriate background information for your strategic plan.

Now it’s time to dig into your internal and external information.

• Internal inputs : Do you know if one branch of your business is growing faster than another? If so, does this mean you’ll focus more energy on the faster growing area, or shift to help the underperforming areas? These are key questions you’ll have to assess. ‍
• External inputs : You may find that parts of your business have shifted, or outside factors are playing a role in where your business is headed. For example, in the late 1990s, the music industry evolved from albums to streaming, impacting many businesses who were associated with the industry. Or if you’re in the manufacturing industry and do a great deal of business overseas, political unrest or a trade dispute between your country and the foreign one you operate in could impact your strategy.

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:

• Discuss the above findings with your leadership team and managers to see what their thoughts are about the future of the business.
• Talk with board members, customers, and industry experts to see what they think your organization is doing well and what needs improvement. These suggestions could deal with anything from operations to company culture.

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.

• What are your organization’s strong points?
• What are your organization’s weak points?
• Where are your biggest opportunities in the future?
• What are the largest threats to your business?

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...

• You have a team of people who can help you with the strategic planning process.
• You have the raw material for strategy evaluation, including internal and external data.
• You can organize your raw data into a SWOT analysis, Porter’s Five Forces, or another strategy planning framework as you begin to create your strategic plan.

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.

2. Creating your strategic plan

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.

- Confirm your mission and vision statements.

Mission & vision.

If you haven’t created formal mission and vision statements, this is the time to do so.

• Your mission statement describes what your company does and how it is different from other organizations in your competitive space
• Your vision statement describes a future state of what your organization wants to achieve over time.

Where the mission is timeless, your vision is time-bound and more tangible.

‍ Two tools that will help build your mission and vision statements:

• OAS statement : OAS stands for Objective, Advantage, Scope. Talking through these concepts as they apply to your organization will help formulate a vision that is tangible and interactive. Note that while this exercise may be helpful to you, it is optional. You can read more about creating your OAS statement here .
• Strategic shifts: A second tool some people find helpful is called Strategic Shifts. These are exercises for the leadership team to help them define today’s strategic priorities vs. tomorrow’s . For example, your leadership team may say, “We want to shift from central control to autonomy when it comes to our decision-making capability.” If the whole team can get on the same page with these shifts, it can help tremendously once you define your objectives, measures, and projects.

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.

- Build out your five-year plan

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

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:

• Financial goals —“What financial goals do we have that will impact our organization?”
• Customer goals —“What things are important to our customers, which will in turn impact our financial standing?”
• Process goals —“What do we need to do well internally, to meet our customer goals, that will impact our financial standing?”
• People (or learning and growth) goals —“What skills, culture, and capabilities do we need to have in our organization to execute on the process that would make our customers happy and ultimately impact our financial standing?”

For an in-depth look at how your organization could use the BSC, check out this Full & Exhaustive Balanced Scorecard Example .

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Theory Of Change (TOC)

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:

• Identify a long-term goal.
• Conduct “backwards mapping” to identify the preconditions necessary to achieve that goal.
• Identify the interventions that your initiative will perform to create these preconditions.
• Develop indicators for each precondition that will be used to assess the performance of the interventions.
• Write a narrative that can be used to summarize the various moving parts in your theory.

Objectives & Key Results (OKR)

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.

• Objectives are goals.
• Key results are quantitative measures that define whether goals have been reached.

Claim your FREE Excel OKR template to set and achieve key objectives here

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:

• Objectives are high-level organizational goals. The typical BSC has 10-15 strategic objectives .

Examples include:

• Increase Market Share Through Current Customers (Financial)
• Be Service Oriented (Customer)
• Achieve Order Fulfillment Excellence Through On-Line Process Improvement (Internal)
• Align Incentives And Rewards With Employee Roles For Increased Employee Satisfaction (Learning & Growth)
• Measures help you understand if you’re accomplishing your objectives strategically. They force you to question things like, “How do I know that I’m becoming an internationally recognized brand?” Note that while your measures might change, your objectives will remain the same. You may select 1-2 measures per objective, so you are aiming to come up with 15-25 measures at the enterprise level.
• Cost Of Goods Sold
• Customer Satisfaction & Retention
• Percentage Of Product Defects
• Percentage Of Response To Open Positions
• Initiatives are key action programs developed to achieve your objectives. You’ll see initiatives referred to as “projects,” “actions,” or “activities outside of the Balanced Scorecard.” Most organizations will have 0-2 initiatives underway for every objective (with a total of 5-15 strategic initiatives).
• Develop Quality Management Program
• Install ERP System
• Revamp Supply Chain Process
• Develop Competencies Mode

- Create your strategy map or graphic strategic model

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.

Get your FREE eBook with Balance Scorecard strategy maps for better strategic visualization

Now that you’ve created your strategic vision...

• You have a fully-defined mission and vision to use as you move forward with your strategy implementation process.
• You have chosen a strategic framework that will hold your five-year strategic plan.
• You have defined objectives, measures, and projects, and you know how they work together.
• You have a graphic representation of your strategic model.

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.

3. Putting your strategic plan into practice

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.

- Launch your strategy

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.

Create your internal and external strategy communication plan

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.

Align your resources to your strategy

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.

- Evaluate your strategy

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.

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Create reports to highlight your results

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.

Hold regular strategy meetings

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:

• What is your organization trying to accomplish? This may include reiterating your mission and vision to add context around the conversation.
• Are you making progress toward these goals? You might review key metrics and the status of initiatives and milestones.
• What actions need to be taken to continue making progress? If metrics are off-track, for example, what can be done to get back on course.

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.

Deploy strategy reporting software (if you haven’t already)

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:

• Plan refers to creating your strategic plan.
• Do refers to making progress on or executing on the plan.
• Check refers to the reporting and monitoring process.
• Act refers to taking action through projects, work plans, or the budgeting process to continue to manage and execute on the strategy.

The Benefits Of Strategic Planning (& Challenges You Should Be Aware Of)

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:

1. You have quality data available to support better decisions

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.

2. You allocate resources more effectively

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.

3. You maintain focus

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.

4. You improve communication and build employee engagement.

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.

3 Things To Consider Before You Embark On A Strategic Plan

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.

1. Everything about strategic planning takes time

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:

• Choosing the appropriate planning model . Before you can even begin to articulate your strategy, you need to choose a strategy framework that fits your organization’s needs. All models can be customized to suit the way your business works, but this is a key decision that will shape all your efforts going forward.
• Creating a plan that everyone agrees on. It’s crucial for your leadership team to support the plan’s objectives if you want it to be adopted. Making sure everyone on the team has been heard and gaining a consensus is a time-consuming process.
• Getting “buy-in” for the plan. Research shows that, on average, 95% of an organization’s employees don’t understand its strategy—there’s no surer way to guarantee failure than to neglect communicating your goals to your employees. You must continuously keep your strategy top-of-mind in a creative and meaningful way over the long term to gain the buy-in you need to succeed.

2. There is a danger of “analysis paralysis”

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).

3. Having a plan doesn’t mean your organization will execute on it

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.

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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!

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What are strategic planning tools.

Strategic planning tools are methodologies and frameworks that help organizations formulate, implement, and monitor their strategic plans. Common strategic planning tools include:

- SWOT Analysis: Identifies strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. - PESTEL Analysis: Examines political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal factors. - Balanced Scorecard: Links strategic objectives to performance metrics across financial, customer, internal processes, and learning and growth perspectives. - Porter’s Five Forces: Analyzes competitive forces within an industry to understand its attractiveness. - Scenario Planning: Envisions different future scenarios to plan for uncertainties. - Gap Analysis : Identifies the gap between current performance and desired goals.

What are strategic planning techniques?

Strategic planning techniques are methods used to develop and implement strategies effectively. These include:

- Visioning: Creating a clear, compelling vision of the future state. - Benchmarking: Comparing performance against industry leaders or best practices. - Stakeholder Analysis: Identifying and understanding the needs and influences of stakeholders. - Environmental Scanning: Systematically analyzing external and internal environments. - Strategy Mapping: Visualizing the relationships between different strategic objectives and actions. - Resource Allocation: Determining the best use of resources to achieve strategic goals.

How can strategic planning improve the performance of an organization?

Strategic planning can improve the performance of an organization by:

- Providing Direction: Clarifies the long-term vision and mission, guiding all organizational activities. - Aligning Resources: Ensures that resources are allocated efficiently and effectively to priority areas. - Enhancing Coordination: Fosters better communication and collaboration across departments. - Facilitating Decision-Making: Supports informed, data-driven decisions aligned with strategic goals. - Tracking Progress: Establishes benchmarks and performance metrics to monitor progress and make necessary adjustments. - Encouraging Innovation: Promotes creative thinking and innovation to achieve competitive advantage.

What is strategic planning in healthcare?

Strategic planning in healthcare involves developing long-term goals and strategies to improve healthcare delivery, patient outcomes, and operational efficiency. It includes:

- Assessing Needs: Evaluating patient demographics, healthcare trends, and community needs. - Setting Objectives: Defining specific goals related to patient care, quality, and efficiency. - Resource Management: Allocating resources such as staff, technology, and funding to meet healthcare goals. - Implementing Policies: Developing and implementing policies and procedures to enhance healthcare services. - Monitoring Outcomes: Continuously tracking performance metrics to ensure goals are being met and to identify areas for improvement.

Why is strategic planning important in business?

Strategic planning is important in business because it:

- Provides Clarity and Focus: Establishes clear goals and priorities, aligning efforts toward achieving them. - Enhances Competitiveness: Helps businesses identify opportunities and threats, enabling them to stay competitive. - Improves Resource Allocation: Ensures that resources are used efficiently to achieve the most significant impact. - Fosters Long-Term Thinking: Encourages a forward-looking approach, preparing the organization for future challenges and opportunities. - Increases Accountability: Sets clear expectations and performance metrics, holding individuals and teams accountable for results. - Drives Growth and Innovation: Supports the development of new products, services, and processes to drive growth and innovation.

Ted Jackson

Ted is a Founder and Managing Partner of ClearPoint Strategy and leads the sales and marketing teams.

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Phase 3: How to Build a Strategy in 6 Steps

Previously, you addressed where you are and where you are going. Now, you will focus on how you will get there. Use your SWOT to stay grounded and realistic as you build a roadmap from where you are today to where you want to be.  As you develop your strategy and set your goals, make strategic choices about what to do and not to do. Remember that being strategic is about making those hard choices. A mark of a good strategic plan is one that is clear and focused (not too many goals and objectives ), as well as balanced – telling a strategy story about how your whole organization is linked and aligned to drive key performance indicators. Spend some time uncovering your competitive advantages based on an understanding of your strategic position. Your competitive advantages are the essence of your strategic plan because strategy is about being different. It is deliberately choosing to perform activities differently or to perform different activities than competitors to deliver value to your customers. Eliminate any confusion around semantics by using these definitions:

• Strategies:  The route you intend to take and the general methods you intend to use to reach the top of that specific mountain.
• Long-Term Strategic Objectives/Priorities:  Intermediate objectives to the top of the mountain. If you have a 5-year vision, these would be 3- to 4-year intermediate objectives on the way up the mountain.
• Short-Term Goals and Actions:  Specific moves for climbing the sections of rock and ice that confront you right now. These would be analogous to detailed annual plans for getting things done this year on the way to the 3-year objective.

Phase Duration

Question to ask.

• What is our base for competing and delivering value?
• What are we best at? What makes us unique?
• What are the “big rocks” – strategic objectives – we need to reach our vision?
• What must we accomplish over the next 1 to 3 years to achieve these?
• What are we not going to do?
• What strategic questions must we still address?
• How will we measure our success?

Data Needed

• SWOT, competitive advantages list, customer data
• Carry over goals from last planning period
• End of year scorecards/KPI data

Outcomes / Deliverables

• Drafted competitive advantages
• Organization-wide strategies
• Long-term strategic objectives
• Short- and mid-term organization-wide goals
• Financial projections

Action Grid

*To access the worksheets under “Tools & Techniques” please refer to our Strategic Planning Kit for Dummies .

OnStrategy is the leader in strategic planning and performance management. Our cloud-based software and hands-on services closes the gap between strategy and execution. Learn more about OnStrategy here .

Use Your SWOT to Set Priorities

• Build on your strengths
• Shore up your weaknesses
• Capitalize on your opportunities
• Manage your threats

If your team wants to take the next step in the SWOT analysis, apply the TOWS Strategic Alternatives Matrix to help you think about the options that you could pursue. To do this, match external opportunities and threats with your internal strengths and weaknesses, as illustrated in the matrix below:

TOWS Strategic Alternatives Matrix

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.

Define Long-Term Strategic Objectives

Long-Term Strategic Objectives– Using the information gathered in your SWOT, for each of the following areas develop at least one objective, but no more than five to seven.

• The  “Financial”  perspective indicates whether the company’s strategy, implementation, and execution are contributing to top and bottom line improvement include the following: Cash flow, Sales growth, Market share, and ROE.
• The  “Customer”  perspective is focused primarily on creating value and differentiation when acquiring, retaining or servicing the customer. This driver deals primarily with gaining and growing customers and market share.
• Focusing on  “Internal Processes”  in operations has the greatest impact on customer satisfaction. Positive long-term results rely on defining the competencies needed to maintain market leadership and maximizing the effectiveness of those internal systems.
• The  “People/Learning”  perspective relies on an organization’s commitment to its greatest resource—people. This area focuses on creating value by developing an environment that fosters learning, innovation, and prioritizing on its “human asset.” The premise is that people drive the other three elements to achieve the organization’s goals.

Keep in mind that the strategic objectives establish should connect your mission to your vision. These objectives are long-term (think 3-5 years), continuous strategic areas that get you moving from your mission to achieving your vision. Ask yourself what the key activities are that you need to perform in order to achieve your vision. We encourage you to create strategic objectives in four key areas – Financial/Mission, Customer, Internal/Operational, and People/Learning. *The Balanced Scorecard was introduced by Robert Kaplan, a Harvard Business School professor, and David Norton, the founder and president of Balanced Scorecard Collaborative, Inc., in the early 1990s as a new way to work with business strategy. Today, over half of the Fortune 1000 companies in North America are using the Balanced Scorecard, which has become the hallmark of a well-run organization.

Financial Strategic Objectives:

• To establish a financially stable and profitable company.
• Shift revenue mix majority of product sales to service sales.
• Profitability: Maintain margins at XX%.

Customer Strategic Objectives:

• Introduce current products to two new markets.
• Increase loyalty, customer satisfaction, referral volume.

Internal Processes Strategic Objectives:

• To achieve order fulfillment excellence through on-line process improvement.
• Improve or institute a sales process, increase close rate, increase lead generation.
• Improve brand management through consistent use of…

People & Learning:

• To provide employee with challenging and rewarding work.
• HR Mgmt: Hire and onboarding processes.
• Knowledge Mgmt: Structured training (sales, IT, management, ownership).

Setting Organization-Wide Goals and Measures

Org-Wide Goals and Measures — Once you have formulated your strategic objectives, you should translate them into goals and measures that can be clearly communicated to your planning team (team leaders and/or team members). You want to set goals that convert the strategic objectives into specific performance targets. Effective goals clearly state what, when, how, and who, and they are specifically measurable. They should address what you need to do in the short-term (think 1-3 years) to achieve your strategic objectives. For maximum effectiveness, goals must state how much of what kind of performance and by when it is to be accomplished. This is where it pays off to think SMART when creating goals . Remember this simple acronym to guarantee your goals are:

• Specific:  Goals need to be specific. Try to answer the questions of How much and What kind with each goal you write.
• Measurable:  Goals must be stated in quantifiable terms, or they are only good intentions. Measurable goals facilitate management planning, implementation, and control. For example, a measure might be “# of new customers” or “% complete” and a target might be “500” or “100%”, respectively.
• Attainable:  While goals must provide a stretch that inspires people to aim higher, they must also be achievable, or they are a set-up for failure. Set goals you know you, your organization, and your employees can realistically reach.
• Responsible person:  Goals must be assigned to a person or a department. But just because a person is assigned a goal doesn’t mean that she is solely responsible for its achievement; they just need to be the point person who will ensure the goal is achieved.
• Time specific:  With reference to time, your goals must include a timeline of when they should be accomplished.

Financial 1-Year Goals:

• Increase our billable hours by 10% over the next 12 months. (Measure: # billable hours / Target: 1.2%)
• Achieve sales growth of 10% per year. (Measure: Monthly sales / Target: 1.2%)

Customer 1-Year Goals:

• Realize 10% of the company’s annual sales from the small business market by end of the next year. (Measure: # of small business clients / Target: 100)
• Reach a 15% annual increase in new customers by end of year 2012. (Measure: % increase in new customers / Target: 15%)

Internal Processes 1-Year Goals:

• Reduce the time lapse between order data and delivery from 6 days to 4 days by this June. (Measure: # of days to process each order / Target: 4 days)
• Reduce the number of returns due to shipping errors from 3% to 2%. (Measure: # of returns due to shipping errors / Target: 2%)

People & Learning 1-Year Goals:

• Reduce turnover among sales managers by 10% by the end of the year. (Measure: Employee turnover / Target: 10%)
• Hire and train a human relations director by the end of the year. (Measure: Director hired / Target: 100%)

Select KPIs

To help monitor your strategic plan, one of the best tools around is the Balanced Scorecard, developed by Kaplan and Norton from Harvard . The scorecard is to be used as both a measurement and management tool to assist in fulfilling your organization’s vision. With it, you can actively track progress toward your goals. Begin by asking “What are the key performance measures we need to track in order to monitor if we are achieving our goals?” These KPIs include the key goals that you want to measure that will have the most impact in moving your organization forward. The scorecard has four categories of measures:

• Financial/Mission — How do we look to our stakeholders? These measures indicate whether your organization’s strategy, implementation, and execution are contributing to bottom line and top line improvement.
• Customer/Constituent — How do we provide value? These measures are customized to each of the targeted groups you serve.
• Internal/Operational — Which processes must we excel at? These measures focus on internal programs and activities that have an impact on customer/constituent satisfaction. They focus on internal processes needed to sustain your competitive advantage.
• People/Learning — To excel at our processes, how must we learn and improve? These measures identify the infrastructure that your organization must build to create long-term growth and improvement. It includes your ability to attract essential staff, innovate, improve and learn.

An Example Strategy Scorecard:

Steps to Build Your Strategy Scorecard:

• Identify the right measures. Most of your goals should have measures associated with each one. If not, pick a measure to track the goal.
• Establish increments that mesh with the targets. Make sure to get the right time frame and size of measures. For example, if you’re target is a 10% increase in sales over the year, break the target down to a monthly number. Try to use the same increments for all your measures. If you are reporting monthly, then use monthly measures.
• Identify the data source. Clearly identify where the monthly number is coming from and who is responsible for reporting on it. Be sure that the measures are easily accessible.
• Input numbers monthly. Enter numbers every month for each measure.
• See the big picture. The primary purpose of key indicators is to give you a big-picture look at the organization with a relatively small amount of information. If you are not seeing the big picture, change the measures. A great way to get a visual is to produce a chart or graph for each measure.
• Take action. Taking action means doing it in a timely manner. The whole point of using a scorecard is to make adjustments, now, on time, before it’s too late. Your strategy meetings should easily facilitate this process.

A List of Common Measures:

Cascade Your Strategies to Operations

By the time organizations get to cascading their strategy, many are tired and worn out from all of the work leading up to this point. But don’t stop yet! Cascading action items and to-dos for each short-term goal is where the rubber meets the road – literally. Moving from big ideas to action happens when strategy is translated from the organizational level to the individual.

Here we widen the circle of the people who are involved in the planning as functional area managers and individual contributors develop their short-term goals and actions to support the organizational direction. But before you take that action, determine if you are going to develop a set of plans that cascade directly from the strategic plan, or instead if you have existing operational, business or account plans that should be synced up with organizational goals. A pitfall is to develop multiple sets of goals and actions for directors and staff to manage. Fundamentally, at this point you have moved from planning the strategy to planning the operations; from strategic planning to annual planning. That said, the only way strategy gets executed is to align resources and actions from the bottom to the top to drive your vision.

PHASE DURATION

Questions to ask.

• How are we going to get there at a functional level?
• Who must do what by when to accomplish and drive the organizational goals?
• What strategic questions still remain and need to be solved?
• Coming year organizational goals, measures and targets
• Sales projections
• Product projections
• Department/functional goals, actions, measures and targets for the next 12-24 months
• Individual team member action plans

Cascading Goals to Departments and Team Members

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.

Pull together your action plan for each short-term goal.

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. In the OnStrategy system, all the strategic objectives cascade down to the team member action items. For example in the image below (3-tier plan), strategic objective 1 cascades down to organization-wide goal 1.1, then department goal 1.1.1, then team member goal 1.1.1.1, which is supported finally by the team member action item 1.1.1.1.1. In a 2-tier plan, the department goal would be the team member goal and the team member goal an action.

Examples of Cascading Goals:

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Essential Guide to the Strategic Planning Process

By Joe Weller | April 3, 2019 (updated March 26, 2024)

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In this article, you’ll learn the basics of the strategic planning process and how a strategic plan guides you to achieving your organizational goals. Plus, find expert insight on getting the most out of your strategic planning.

Included on this page, you'll discover the importance of strategic planning , the steps of the strategic planning process , and the basic sections to include in your strategic plan .

What Is 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. Strategic planning also helps identify adjustments that you might need to make to reach your goal. Strategic planning became popular in the 1960s because it helped companies set priorities and goals, strengthen operations, and establish agreement among managers about outcomes and results.

Strategic planning can occur over multiple years, and the process can vary in length, as can the final plan itself. Ideally, strategic planning should result in a document, a presentation, or a report that sets out a blueprint for the company’s progress.

By setting priorities, companies help ensure employees are working toward common and defined goals. It also aids in defining the direction an enterprise is heading, efficiently using resources to achieve the organization’s goals and objectives. Based on the plan, managers can make decisions or allocate the resources necessary to pursue the strategy and minimize risks.

Strategic planning strengthens operations by getting input from people with differing opinions and building a consensus about the company’s direction. Along with focusing energy and resources, the strategic planning process allows people to develop a sense of ownership in the product they create.

“Strategic planning is not really one thing. It is really a set of concepts, procedures, tools, techniques, and practices that have to be adapted to specific contexts and purposes,” says Professor John M. Bryson, McKnight Presidential Professor of Planning and Public Affairs at the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota and author of Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations: A Guide to Strengthening and Sustaining Organizational Achievement . “Strategic planning is a prompt to foster strategic thinking, acting, and learning, and they all matter and they are all connected.”

What Strategic Planning Is Not

Strategic planning is not a to-do list for the short or long term — it is the basis of a business, its direction, and how it will get there.

“You have to think very strategically about strategic planning. It is more than just following steps,” Bryson explains. “You have to understand strategic planning is not some kind of magic solution to fixing issues. Don’t have unrealistic expectations.”

Strategic planning is also different from a business plan that focuses on a specific product, service, or program and short-term goals. Rather, strategic planning means looking at the big picture.

While they are related, it is important not to confuse strategic planning with strategic thinking, which is more about imagining and innovating in a way that helps a company. In contrast, strategic planning supports those thoughts and helps you figure out how to make them a reality.

Another part of strategic planning is tactical planning , which involves looking at short-term efforts to achieve longer-term goals.

Lastly, marketing plans are not the same as strategic plans. A marketing plan is more about introducing and delivering a service or product to the public instead of how to grow a business. For more about marketing plans and processes, read this article .

Strategic plans include information about finances, but they are different from financial planning , which involves different processes and people. Financial planning templates can help with that process.

Why Is Strategic Planning Important?

In today’s technological age, strategic plans provide businesses with a path forward. Strategic plans help companies thrive, not just survive — they provide a clear focus, which makes an organization more efficient and effective, thereby increasing productivity.

“You are not going to go very far if you don’t have a strategic plan. You need to be able to show where you are going,” says Stefan Hofmeyer, an experienced strategist and co-founder of Global PMI Partners . He lives in the startup-rich environment of northern California and says he often sees startups fail to get seed money because they do not have a strong plan for what they want to do and how they want to do it.

Getting team members on the same page (in both creating a strategic plan and executing the plan itself) can be beneficial for a company. Planners can find satisfaction in the process and unite around a common vision. In addition, you can build strong teams and bridge gaps between staff and management.

“You have to reach agreement about good ideas,” Bryson says. “A really good strategy has to meet a lot of criteria. It has to be technically workable, administratively feasible, politically acceptable, and legally, morally, and ethically defensible, and that is a pretty tough list.”

By discussing a company’s issues during the planning process, individuals can voice their opinions and provide information necessary to move the organization ahead — a form of problem solving as a group.

Strategic plans also provide a mechanism to measure success and progress toward goals, which keeps employees on the same page and helps them focus on the tasks at hand.

When Is the Time to Do Strategic Planning?

There is no perfect time to perform strategic planning. It depends entirely on the organization and the external environment that surrounds it. However, here are some suggestions about when to plan:

If your industry is changing rapidly

When an organization is launching

At the start of a new year or funding period

In preparation for a major new initiative

If regulations and laws in your industry are or will be changing

“It’s not like you do all of the thinking and planning, and then implement,” Bryson says. “A mistake people make is [believing] the thinking has to precede the acting and the learning.”

Even if you do not re-create the entire planning process often, it is important to periodically check your plan and make sure it is still working. If not, update it.

What Is the Strategic Planning Process?

Strategic planning is a process, and not an easy one. A key is to make sure you allow enough time to complete the process without rushing, but not take so much time that you lose momentum and focus. The process itself can be more important than the final document due to the information that comes out of the discussions with management, as well as lower-level workers.

“There is not one favorite or perfect planning process,” says Jim Stockmal, president of the Association for Strategic Planning (ASP). He explains that new techniques come out constantly, and consultants and experienced planners have their favorites. In an effort to standardize the practice and terms used in strategic planning, ASP has created two certification programs .

Level 1 is the Strategic Planning Professional (SPP) certification. It is designed for early- or mid-career planners who work in strategic planning. Level 2, the Strategic Management Professional (SMP) certification, is geared toward seasoned professionals or those who train others. Stockmal explains that ASP designed the certification programs to add structure to the otherwise amorphous profession.

The strategic planning process varies by the size of the organization and can be formal or informal, but there are constraints. For example, teams of all sizes and goals should build in many points along the way for feedback from key leaders — this helps the process stay on track.

Some elements of the process might have specific start and end points, while others are continuous. For example, there might not be one “aha” moment that suddenly makes things clear. Instead, a series of small moves could slowly shift the organization in the right direction.

“Don’t make it overly complex. Bring all of the stakeholders together for input and feedback,” Stockmal advises. “Always be doing a continuous environmental scan, and don’t be afraid to engage with stakeholders.”

Additionally, knowing your company culture is important. “You need to make it work for your organization,” he says.

There are many different ways to approach the strategic planning process. Below are three popular approaches:

Goals-Based Planning: This approach begins by looking at an organization’s mission and goals. From there, you work toward that mission, implement strategies necessary to achieve those goals, and assign roles and deadlines for reaching certain milestones.

Issues-Based Planning: In this approach, start by looking at issues the company is facing, then decide how to address them and what actions to take.

Organic Planning: This approach is more fluid and begins with defining mission and values, then outlining plans to achieve that vision while sticking to the values.

“The approach to strategic planning needs to be contingent upon the organization, its history, what it’s capable of doing, etc.,” Bryson explains. “There’s such a mistake to think there’s one approach.”

For more information on strategic planning, read about how to write a strategic plan and the different types of models you can use.

Who Participates in the Strategic Planning Process?

For work as crucial as strategic planning, it is necessary to get the right team together and include them from the beginning of the process. Try to include as many stakeholders as you can.

Below are suggestions on who to include:

Senior leadership

Strategic planners

Strategists

People who will be responsible for implementing the plan

People to identify gaps in the plan

Members of the board of directors

“There can be magic to strategic planning, but it’s not in any specific framework or anybody’s 10-step process,” Bryson explains. “The magic is getting key people together, getting them to focus on what’s important, and [getting] them to do something about it. That’s where the magic is.”

Hofmeyer recommends finding people within an organization who are not necessarily current leaders, but may be in the future. “Sometimes they just become obvious. Usually they show themselves to you, you don’t need to look for them. They’re motivated to participate,” he says. These future leaders are the ones who speak up at meetings or on other occasions, who put themselves out there even though it is not part of their job description.

At the beginning of the process, establish guidelines about who will be involved and what will be expected of them. Everyone involved must be willing to cooperate and collaborate. If there is a question about whether or not to include anyone, it is usually better to bring on extra people than to leave someone out, only to discover later they should have been a part of the process all along. Not everyone will be involved the entire time; people will come and go during different phases.

Often, an outside facilitator or consultant can be an asset to a strategic planning committee. It is sometimes difficult for managers and other employees to sit back and discuss what they need to accomplish as a company and how they need to do it without considering other factors. As objective observers, outside help can often offer insight that may escape insiders.

Hofmeyer says sometimes bosses have blinders on that keep them from seeing what is happening around them, which allows them to ignore potential conflicts. “People often have their own agendas of where they want to go, and if they are not aligned, it is difficult to build a strategic plan. An outsider perspective can really take you out of your bubble and tell you things you don’t necessarily want to hear [but should]. We get into a rhythm, and it’s really hard to step out of that, so bringing in outside people can help bring in new views and aspects of your business.”

An outside consultant can also help naysayers take the process more seriously because they know the company is investing money in the efforts, Hofmeyer adds.

No matter who is involved in the planning process, make sure at least one person serves as an administrator and documents all planning committee actions.

What Is in a Strategic Plan?

A strategic plan communicates goals and what it takes to achieve them. The plan sometimes begins with a high-level view, then becomes more specific. Since strategic plans are more guidebooks than rulebooks, they don’t have to be bureaucratic and rigid. There is no perfect plan; however, it needs to be realistic.

There are many sections in a strategic plan, and the length of the final document or presentation will vary. The names people use for the sections differ, but the general ideas behind them are similar: Simply make sure you and your team agree on the terms you will use and what each means.

One-Page Strategic Planning Template

“I’m a big fan of getting a strategy onto one sheet of paper. It’s a strategic plan in a nutshell, and it provides a clear line of sight,” Stockmal advises.

You can use the template below to consolidate all your strategic ideas into a succinct, one-page strategic plan. Doing so provides you with a high-level overview of your strategic initiatives that you can place on your website, distribute to stakeholders, and refer to internally. More extensive details about implementation, capacity, and other concerns can go into an expanded document.

Download One-Page Strategic Planning Template Excel | Word | Smartsheet

The most important part of the strategic plan is the executive summary, which contains the highlights of the plan. Although it appears at the beginning of the plan, it should be written last, after you have done all your research.

Of writing the executive summary, Stockmal says, “I find it much easier to extract and cut and edit than to do it first.”

For help with creating executive summaries, see these templates .

Other parts of a strategic plan can include the following:

Description: A description of the company or organization.

Vision Statement: A bold or inspirational statement about where you want your company to be in the future.

Mission Statement: In this section, describe what you do today, your audience, and your approach as you work toward your vision.

Core Values: In this section, list the beliefs and behaviors that will enable you to achieve your mission and, eventually, your vision.

Goals: Provide a few statements of how you will achieve your vision over the long term.

Objectives: Each long-term goal should have a few one-year objectives that advance the plan. Make objectives SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, and time-based) to get the most out of them.

Budget and Operating Plans: Highlight resources you will need and how you will implement them.

Monitoring and Evaluation: In this section, describe how you will check your progress and determine when you achieve your goals.

One of the first steps in creating a strategic plan is to perform both an internal and external analysis of the company’s environment. Internally, look at your company’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as the personal values of those who will implement your plan (managers, executives, board members). Externally, examine threats and opportunities within the industry and any broad societal expectations that might exist.

You can perform a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis to sum up where you are currently and what you should focus on to help you achieve your future goals. Strengths shows you what you do well, weaknesses point out obstacles that could keep you from achieving your objectives, opportunities highlight where you can grow, and threats pinpoint external factors that could be obstacles in your way.

You can find more information about performing a SWOT analysis and free templates in this article . Another analysis technique, STEEPLE (social, technological, economic, environmental, political, legal, and ethical), often accompanies a SWOT analysis.

Basics of Strategic Planning

How you navigate the strategic planning process will vary. Several tools and techniques are available, and your choice depends on your company’s leadership, culture, environment, and size, as well as the expertise of the planners.

All include similar sections in the final plan, but the ways of driving those results differ. Some tools are goals-based, while others are issues- or scenario-based. Some rely on a more organic or rigid process.

Hofmeyer summarizes what goes into strategic planning:

Understand the stakeholders and involve them from the beginning.

Agree on a vision.

Hold successful meetings and sessions.

Summarize and present the plan to stakeholders.

Identify and check metrics.

Make periodic adjustments.

Items That Go into Strategic Planning

Strategic planning contains inputs, activities, outputs, and outcomes. Inputs and activities are elements that are internal to the company, while outputs and outcomes are external.

Remember, there are many different names for the sections of strategic plans. The key is to agree what terms you will use and define them for everyone involved.

Inputs are important because it is impossible to know where you are going until you know what is around you where you are now.

Companies need to gather data from a variety of sources to get a clear look at the competitive environment and the opportunities and risks within that environment. You can think of it like a competitive intelligence program.

Data should come from the following sources:

Interviews with executives

A review of documents about the competition or market that are publicly available

Primary research by visiting or observing competitors

Studies of your industry

The values of key stakeholders

This information often goes into writing an organization’s vision and mission statements.

Activities are the meetings and other communications that need to happen during the strategic planning process to help everyone understand the competition that surrounds the organization.

It is important both to understand the competitive environment and your company’s response to it. This is where everyone looks at and responds to the data gathered from the inputs.

The strategic planning process produces outputs. Outputs can be as basic as the strategic planning document itself. The documentation and communications that describe your organization’s strategy, as well as financial statements and budgets, can also be outputs.

The implementation of the strategic plan produces outcomes (distinct from outputs). The outcomes determine the success or failure of the strategic plan by measuring how close they are to the goals and vision you outline in your plan.

It is important to understand there will be unplanned and unintended outcomes, too. How you learn from and adapt to these changes influence the success of the strategic plan.

During the planning process, decide how you will measure both the successes and failures of different parts of the strategic plan.

Sharing, Evaluating, and Monitoring the Progress of a Strategic Plan

After companies go through a lengthy strategic planning process, it is important that the plan does not sit and collect dust. Share, evaluate, and monitor the plan to assess how you are doing and make any necessary updates.

“[Some] leaders think that once they have their strategy, it’s up to someone else to execute it. That’s a mistake I see,” Stockmal says.

The process begins with distributing and communicating the plan. Decide who will get a copy of the plan and how those people will tell others about it. Will you have a meeting to kick off the implementation? How will you specify who will do what and when? Clearly communicate the roles people will have.

“Before you communicate the plan [to everyone], you need to have the commitment of stakeholders,” Hofmeyer recommends. Have the stakeholders be a part of announcing the plan to everyone — this keeps them accountable because workers will associate them with the strategy. “That applies pressure to the stakeholders to actually do the work.”

Once the team begins implementation, it’s necessary to have benchmarks to help measure your successes against the plan’s objectives. Sometimes, having smaller action plans within the larger plan can help keep the work on track.

During the planning process, you should have decided how you will measure success. Now, figure out how and when you will document progress. Keep an eye out for gaps between the vision and its implementation — a big gap could be a sign that you are deviating from the plan.

Tools are available to assist with tracking performance of strategic plans, including several types of software. “For some organizations, a spreadsheet is enough, but you are going to manually enter the data, so someone needs to be responsible for that,” Stockmal recommends.

Remember: strategic plans are not written in stone. Some deviation will be necessary, and when it happens, it’s important to understand why it occurred and how the change might impact the company's vision and goals.

Deviation from the plan does not mean failure, reminds Hofmeyer. Instead, understanding what transpired is the key. “Things happen, [and] you should always be on the lookout for that. I’m a firm believer in continuous improvement,” he says. Explain to stakeholders why a change is taking place. “There’s always a sense of re-evaluation, but do it methodically.”

Build in a schedule to review and amend the plan as necessary; this can help keep companies on track.

What Is Strategic Management?

Strategic planning is part of strategic management, and it involves the activities that make the strategic plan a reality. Essentially, strategic management is getting from the starting point to the goal effectively and efficiently using the ongoing activities and processes that a company takes on in order to keep in line with its mission, vision, and strategic plan.

“[Strategic management] closes the gap between the plan and executing the strategy,” Stockmal of ASP says. Strategic management is part of a larger planning process that includes budgeting, forecasting, capital allocation, and more.

There is no right or wrong way to do strategic management — only guidelines. The basic phases are preparing for strategic planning, creating the strategic plan, and implementing that plan.

No matter how you manage your plan, it’s key to allow the strategic plan to evolve and grow as necessary, due to both the internal and external factors.

“We get caught up in all of the day-to-day issues,” Stockmal explains, adding that people do not often leave enough time for implementing the plan and making progress. That’s what strategic management implores: doing things that are in the plan and not letting the plan sit on a shelf.

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When teams have clarity into the work getting done, there’s no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time.  Try Smartsheet for free, today.

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Who Kamala Harris picks for her running mate will show where her campaign sees its path to victory

• Kamala Harris' likely running-mate contenders come from key states like Pennsylvania and Arizona.
• Political experts say Harris' choice will signal her campaign strategy.
• They said it would reveal whether Harris plans to target the Rust Belt, Sun Belt, or broader appeal.

Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign is choosing her running mate, and her pick will provide insight into her battle plan for November.

Govs. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania , Roy Cooper of North Carolina , and Andy Beshear of Kentucky , as well as Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona , are among the names being floated .

Although most prospective candidates share a similar demographic — white, male, and younger than President Joe Biden — they come from different states that could be pivotal in securing an electoral victory.

Five experts on American politics told Business Insider that Harris' choice would likely reveal her campaign's early strategy — building a path to 270 electoral votes through the Sun Belt or Rust Belt , or by creating a dynamic ticket with broad national appeal.

Shapiro would signal a Pennsylvania-first strategy. Cooper would show Harris on the attack.

Pennsylvania plays a big role in the calculus of winning the Electoral College. With 20 electoral votes, winning the battleground state would likely be a crucial part of both former President Donald Trump's and Harris' campaigns.

"Pennsylvania is the center of the political universe," Thomas Gift, the director of UCL's Centre on US Politics, said in an email to BI.

"Not only will its 20 electoral votes loom large for both candidates, but its demographics — as one political strategist put it, Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, with Alabama in between — mean that how it tips will likely be a bellwether for how Trump and Harris perform in other states," he added.

Choosing Shapiro, the state's governor, could significantly bolster Harris' ticket there, Gift said.

Chuck Rocha, a political consultant and Democratic strategist, told BI that selecting Shapiro would show the campaign is "very serious about doubling down in the Rust Belt states."

"I think it's showing that they want to protect the blue wall ," Rocha said, referring to traditionally Democratic states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

Related stories

It's hard to imagine Harris losing Pennsylvania but achieving wins in Georgia and Arizona, Rocha said, so picking Shapiro would "definitely show the head nod to Pennsylvania."

Kevin Fahey, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Nottingham, agreed but told BI that a Shapiro pick may indicate some trepidation in Harris' campaign.

"It would be a signal that the Harris campaign realizes that they're in very deep trouble in the Upper Midwest and the Rust Belt area and they have to cling on to Pennsylvania," he said.

Fahey added that it may indicate a strategy to "eke out a win" in Michigan, lose Wisconsin, and try to "claw back" Arizona.

He said that choosing Cooper of North Carolina , a more challenging state to win, or Beshear of Kentucky, which Democrats are unlikely to gain, would demonstrate a different approach.

"They'd be saying: 'We want to go on the attack. We think we can pursue a few more states and open up the map,'" he said.

Beshear — charisma over geography

Fahey said choosing someone like Beshear would be an "outside-the-box choice" because it wouldn't help geographically but that "he might help demographically."

Kentucky is a safe Republican state. The last time it voted for a Democrat in a presidential election was 1996. In 2020, Trump beat Biden there by about 26 points.

But Fahey said choosing Beshear, who is 49 and one of America's most popular governors , would show that the campaign is trying to project a "youthful" energy and a charisma that may have national appeal — a strategy that would prioritize national numbers over a state-centric approach.

Plus, he's already been an attack dog against Trump's running mate, Sen. JD Vance , going after him for his Appalachian credentials .

Kelly could signal a strategy of doubling down on Western appeal

David Barker, the director of American University's Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, told BI that the Harris campaign would now be calculating where its strengths lie — is it in the South, the West, or the Rust Belt?

He said Harris, who has presumed appeal in the Western swing states of Arizona and Nevada, given their proximity to her home state of California, would, in effect, be doubling down on her "Western appeal" by selecting Kelly, who represents Arizona.

Barker said the strategic calculations he suspects they'd be making include whether such a choice would sew up things in those states or be redundant.

But he said that picking Kelly not only would signal that Arizona is in play but also would indicate that the campaign views him as having a broader national appeal.

"That is, would Kelly do better in the Midwest than Shapiro would in the West, etc.? My guess is that the answer to that question is yes," he said.

Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told BI that a Kelly pick would signal thinking about the bigger picture.

Burden said that Harris' path to victory would involve needing to win the blue-wall states Trump won in 2016 — Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan — and that Kelly could still be a boon to the ticket outside Arizona.

"He is not beloved in his home state but has managed to attract Hispanic votes that could be helpful in other states," Burden said.

On top of that, he added: "His record as an astronaut and his wife's tragic shooting are also unique factors that no other VP pick would bring."

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New regulatory license for social media platforms in Malaysia to fight cyber offences

Malaysia will require social media services to apply for a license if they have more than 8 millon users in the country from August 1, in an attempt to combat increasing cyber offences, said the government.

Whether your industry faces challenges from geopolitical strife, fallout from a global pandemic or rising aggression in the cybersecurity space, the threat vector for modern enterprises is undeniably powerful. Disaster recovery strategies provide the framework for team members to get a business back up and running after an unplanned event.

Worldwide, the popularity of disaster recovery strategies is understandably increasing. Last year, companies spent USD 219 billion on  cybersecurity  and solutions alone, a 12% increase from 2022,  according to a recent report by the International Data Corporation (IDC)  (link resides outside ibm.com).

A disaster recovery strategy lays out how your businesses will respond to a number of unplanned incidents. Strong disaster recovery strategies consist of disaster recovery plans (DR plans), business continuity plans (BCPs) and incident response plans (IRPs). Together, these documents help ensure businesses are prepared to face a variety of threats including power outages,  ransomware  and  malware  attacks, natural disasters and many more.

What is a disaster recovery plan (DRP)?

Disaster recovery plans (DRPs) are detailed documents describing how companies will respond to different types of disasters. Typically, companies either build DRPs themselves or outsource their disaster recovery process to a third-party DRP vendor. Along with business continuity plans (BCPs) and incident response plans (IRPs), DRPs play a critical role in the effectiveness of disaster recovery strategy.

What are business continuity plans and incident response plans?

Like DRPs, BCPs and IRPs are both parts of a larger disaster recovery strategy that a business can rely on to help restore normal operations in the event of a disaster. BCPs typically take a broader look at threats and resolution options than DRPs, focusing on what a company needs to restore connectivity. IRPs are a type of DRP that focuses exclusively on  cyberattacks  and threats to IT systems. IRPs clearly outline an organization’s real-time emergency response from the moment a threat is detected through its mitigation and resolution. 

Why having a disaster recovery strategy is important

Disasters can impact businesses in different ways, causing all kinds of complex problems. From an earthquake that affects physical infrastructure and worker safety to a cloud services outage that closes off access to sensitive data storage and customer services, having a sound disaster recovery strategy helps ensure businesses will recover quickly. Here are some of the greatest benefits of building a strong disaster recovery strategy:

• Maintaining business continuity:  Business continuity and  business continuity disaster recovery (BCDR)  help ensure organizations return to normal operations after an unplanned event, providing data protection, data backup and other critical services.
• Reducing costs:  According to  IBM’s recent Cost of Data Breach Report , the average cost of a data breach in 2023 was USD 4.45 million—a 15% increase over the last 3 years. Enterprises without disaster recovery strategies in place are risking costs and penalties that could far outweigh the money saved by not investing in the solution.
• Incurring less downtime:  Modern enterprises rely on complex technologies like cloud-based infrastructure solutions and cellular networks. When an unplanned incident disrupts business operations, it can cost millions. Additionally, the high-profile nature of cyberattacks, lengthy downtime, or human-error-related interruptions can cause customers and investors to flee.
• Maintaining compliance:  Businesses that operate in heavily regulated sectors like healthcare and personal finance face heavy fines and penalties for data breaches because of the critical nature of the data they manage. Having a strong disaster recovery strategy helps shorten response and recovery processes after an unplanned incident, which is critical in sectors where the amount of financial penalty is often tied to the duration of the breach.

How disaster recovery strategies work

The strongest disaster recovery strategies prepare businesses to face a wide variety of threats. A strong template for restoring normal operations can help build investor and customer confidence and increase the likelihood you will recover from whatever threats your business faces. Before we get into the actual components of disaster recovery strategies, let’s look at a few key terms.

• Failover /failback:  Failover is a widely used process in IT disaster recovery where operations are moved to a secondary system when a primary one fails due to a power outage, cyberattack or other threat. Failback is the process of switching back to the original system once normal processes have been restored. For example, a business could failover from its  data center  onto a secondary site where a redundant system will kick in instantly. If executed properly, failover/failback can create a seamless experience where a user/customer isn’t even aware they are being moved to a secondary system.
• Recovery time objective  (RTO):  RTO refers to the amount of time it takes to restore business operations after an unplanned incident. Establishing a reasonable RTO is one of the first things businesses need do when they’re creating their disaster recovery strategy.  
• Recovery point objective  (RPO):  Your business’ RPO is the amount of data it can afford to lose and still recover. Some enterprises constantly copy data to a remote data center to ensure continuity. Others set a tolerable RPO of a few minutes (or even hours) and know they will be able to recover from whatever was lost during that time.
• Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS):  DRaaS  is an approach to disaster recovery that’s been gaining popularity due to a growing awareness around the importance of data security. Companies that take a DRaaS approach to disaster recovery are essentially outsourcing their disaster recovery plans (DRPs) to a third party. This third party hosts and manages the necessary infrastructure for recovery, then creates and manages response plans and ensures a swift resumption of business-critical operations.  According to a recent report by Global Market Insights (GMI)  (link resides outside ibm.com), the market size for DRaaS was USD 11.5 billion in 2022 and was poised to grow by 22% in the years ahead.

Five steps to creating a strong disaster recovery strategy

Disaster recovery planning starts with a deep analysis of your most critical business processes—known as business impact analysis (BIA) and risk assessment (RA). While every business is different and will have unique requirements, there are several steps you can take regardless of your size or industry that will help ensure effective disaster recovery planning.

Step 1: Conduct a business impact analysis

Business impact analysis (BIA) is a careful assessment of every threat your company faces, along with the possible outcomes. Strong BIA looks at how threats might impact daily operations, communication channels, worker safety and other critical parts of your business. Examples of a few factors to consider when conducting BIA include loss of revenue, length and cost of downtime, cost of reputational repair (public relations), loss of customer or investor confidence (short and long term), and any penalties you might face because of compliance violations caused by an interruption.

Step 2: Perform a risk analysis

Threats vary greatly depending on your industry and the type of business you run. Conducting sound risk analysis (RA) is a critical step in crafting your strategy. You can assess each potential threat separately by considering two things——the likelihood it will occur and its potential impact on business operations. There are two widely used methods for this: qualitative and quantitative risk analysis. Qualitative risk analysis is based on perceived risk and quantitative analysis is performed using verifiable data.

Step 3: Create your asset inventory

Disaster recovery relies on having a complete picture of every asset your enterprise owns. This includes hardware, software, IT infrastructure, data and anything else that’s critical to your business operations. Here are three widely used labels for categorizing your assets:

• Critical:  Only label assets critical if they are required for normal business operations.
• Important:  Assign this label to assets your business uses at least once a day and, if disrupted, would have an impact on business operations (but not shut them down entirely).
• Unimportant:  These are assets your business uses infrequently that are not essential for normal business operations.

Step 4: Establish roles and responsibilities 

Clearly assigning roles and responsibilities is arguably the most important part of a disaster recovery strategy. Without it, no one will know what to do in the event of a disaster. While actual roles and responsibilities vary greatly according to company size, industry and type of business, there are a few roles and responsibilities that every recovery strategy should contain:

• Incident reporter:  An individual who is responsible for communicating with stakeholders and relevant authorities when disruptive events occur and maintaining up-to-date contact information for all relevant parties.
• Disaster recovery plan manager:  Your DRP manager ensures disaster recovery team members perform the tasks they’ve been assigned and that the strategy you put in place runs smoothly. 
• Asset manager:  You should assign someone the role of securing and protecting critical assets when a disaster strikes and reporting back on their status throughout the incident.

Step 5: Test and refine

To ensure your disaster recovery strategy is sound, you’ll need to practice it constantly and regularly update it according to any meaningful changes. For example, if your company acquires new assets after the formation of your DRP strategy, they will need to be folded into your plan to ensure they are protected going forward. Testing and refinement of your disaster recovery strategy can be broken down into three simple steps:

• Create an accurate simulation:  When rehearsing your DRP, try to create an environment as close to the actual scenario your company will face without putting anyone at physical risk.
• Identify problems:  Use the DRP testing process to identify faults and inconsistencies with your plan, simplify processes and address any issues with your backup procedures.
• Test your disaster recovery procedures:  Seeing how you’ll respond to an incident is vital, but it’s just as important to test the procedures you’ve put in place for restoring critical systems once the incident is over. Test how you’ll turn networks back on, recover any lost data and resume normal business operations. 

Disaster recovery solutions

Modern enterprises rely more than ever on technology to serve their customers. Even minor outages can cause critical downtime and impact customer and investor confidence. The IBM FlashSystem Cyber Recovery Guarantee is designed for anyone who purchases a new FlashSystem Array with IBM Storage expert care and IBM Storage Insights Pro.

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