Once the leadership has direction (purpose, mission, vision, values, etc…) they are ready to develop a strategic plan.  A strategic plan provides the organization with a roadmap to help navigate the changing environment in which they operate.

There is some controversy concerning the effectiveness of strategic planning.  While it can be detailed and voluminous, the development of strategies, action plans, objectives and measurements is critical is guiding your organization toward growth.

Strategic planning should answer the following four questions:

1. Where are we now?
2. Where do we want to be?
3. How will we get there?
4. How will we know how we are progressing and when we get there?

What framework and method is best for strategic planning?  Your guess is as good as ours.  One thing we are sure of is that strategy creation is a creative process and needs some structure to facilitate the process.  A systematic planning process takes into consideration several key inputs, involves key players, has a defined process, and produces short and long term objectives and timelines for accomplishing them.

Strategy Deployment

How does your organization make the plan reality?  Follow through is the key to success.  Translating short and long term strategic objectives into specific initiatives and action plans is a key success factor to making the strategy a reality.  The key elements in strategy deployment are:  action plans, measures or indicators to track progress, and performance projections for both short and long term planning time horizons.

The first step is to identify the actions and initiatives that will accomplish the overall strategic objectives developed by the Executive Management Team or the Board of Directors.  Second, identify the organizations human resource plans to support the strategic objectives.  Third, identify the measures to track progress of the initiatives and to measure the impact that the changes have on performance, and lastly, establish targets for performance improvement, which are predictions, based on the logical changes in performance if the action plans are implemented successfully.

Social Responsibility

This is much more than giving to the local charity.  Social responsibility includes proactively addressing the organization’s responsibilities to the public, ethical behavior in all transactions, and support to key communities.  To address each of these areas proactively, requires that your organization have a process to determine the requirements and expectations of the key stakeholders, a process to address those requirements, measures to track performance and identify areas for improvement, and goals and targets for improving the performance.

Strategic planning can seem like such a monumental, complex task.  At the Gem Institute, we can show you how to create valuable strategic plans, create measurements for them and get you on your way to success.  Strategic planning does not have to be complicated and we can show you how.  Attend the next seminar and learn how we created out FOCUS Strategic Scorecard…valuable information every business owner/manager should know.