Why does one need a strategic plan in place for the organization? This article discusses the benefits of strategic planning and provides plenty of help to get you started with your own strategic plan. The steps discussed here will help you develop your organization's strategic plan.

Features:
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1) Site Updates
2) Article - Strategic Planning Steps

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Feature Article - Steps of Strategic Planning

We are proud to present this article, which has been lost for some time. It was one of our most popular site articles prior to its disappearance.

Strategic Planning - The Steps

It's pretty clear that an organization that has no clue about where it is going and what it intends to accomplish is likely to wander around aimlessly. In good times, strategic planning helps generate common purpose, and ensure that resources are allocated consistent with priority goals. Tough times increase the importance of having a common vision and purpose, goals ordered by priority, and strategies aimed at achieving these goals.

In this article, we are going to look at how to get a strategic plan in place, and what it should look like.

Quick Overview

There is some disagreement about the nature of strategic planning; what time period it should cover, and what components it should contain, and where strategic, medium term and short term planning begin and end. We are going to sidestep these issues, not because they are unimportant, but because they are issues of terminology.

Here, when we refer to strategic planning we are talking about "... a process by which the members of an organization envision its future and develop the necessary procedures and operations to achieve that future" (Pfeiffer).

In practical terms, this means deciding on a role and mission, establishing overarching goals, and determining how to best meet those goals. Other steps in strategic planning merely provide mechanisms for ensuring that these parts are workable, and appropriate.

The Steps:

Define Organizational Values & Shared Vision

Organizational values clarification involves people in determining what is important to them. The following are examples of value statements:

. great service
. sense of kinship
. teamwork
. being the best we can

A shared vision refers to a picture (as graphic as possible) as to what the organization will look like at the end of the period to which the strategic plan applies. No limits should be applied to generating the vision...a brainstorming process is ideal.

Examine Your Role & Mission Statement

Your role and mission statement is a relatively short statement of your organization's purpose. It outlines what is, and what is not within your domain. Often people will include some statements about what the organization values (from the values clarification step).

For a role and mission statement to be useful, it must be adhered to in decision making. If activities are undertaken that are not "permitted" within the role and mission statement, that tells people that it isn't worth the paper it is written on. Abide by it, or change it if necessary, but never violate it!

Scan The Environment

The environmental scan is an enabling step.

Knowledge gained from the scan is used to ensure that the goals you set later on will be reflective of the world outside your organization. For example, setting goals that require large amounts of extra funding, when it is likely that economic conditions will preclude this funding is simply a waste of time. The scan will let you know this. It is the link to the realities, and trends in your environment and in your discipline.

Do A Service Audit

You can't plan for the future, without knowing your current status. The service audit tells you what you have done well, and what you have done less effectively. It identifies problems that have occurred in the past, thereby red-flagging them for future action. Identifying current levels of service allow you to work to improve continuously.

Setting Strategic Goals

Strategic goals are statements regarding what you want to accomplish during the period. Information from the environmental scan and the service audit are considered when formulating these goals.

As with your role and mission statement, these goals are used for ongoing decision making about projects. If the project does not fall under a goal, then, theoretically, it should not be undertaken.

Strategic goals are somewhat general. Examples include:

. decreasing client complaints
. increase throughput (number of forms processed)
. lower overhead by 10%

Define Key Results Areas

Your key result areas are the functions, that, when carried out effectively, will allow you to reach your strategic goals. They are the different "service arms" of your organization. For example, the following key result areas could be generated for an organization involved in driver licensing:

Finance & Administration
License Renewal
Communication & Marketing
Vehicle Inspection
Driver Examining

In larger organizations (ie. department or division), these key result areas could reflect the structure of its branches.

Do An Internal Audit

An internal audit examines whether your organization is set-up tochieve it's strategic goals. It's purpose is to identify factors within your organization that may impede your ability to achieve your goals. For example, lack of expertise, poor organizational structuring or communication, and lack of personnel. If you discover potential barriers, then you need to plan to eliminate them, or alter your strategic goals to reflect unalterable restraints.

Establish Organizational Objectives

Organizational objectives are the more specific things that need to get done, so that the strategic goals are achieved. They tend to be more specific and/or project oriented.

Establish Individual Objectives

If we are talking about strategic planning at the departmental level, individual objectives would be the objectives for the smaller units within the department (eg. division, branch). If we are talking about strategic planning occurring within a branch, then these objectives would refer to objectives for the individuals within that branch.

It is important, regardless of level, that it be clear who is responsible for the achievement of these objectives.

Establish Action Plans

Now we are actually into operational planning. How will these objectives be reached? What steps will be involved, and when do we want them done?

Establish Evaluation Criteria

We need to know when we succeed, and it is important to specify any criteria to measure our achievement of our goals. If you establish success criteria, then during the next planning cycle, you use them to undertake your services audit.

Simply, the question you can ask, for each of your goals and objectives is: How will we know that we have succeeded?

Conclusion

There are a number of steps in this planning approach, and each of these steps can be somewhat complicated. Most organizations don't do all of them, and while we don't recommend that, we need to face the fact that it is difficult to find the time to undertake this process perfectly. What we do recommend is that you may want to modify the model to make it more practical within the context of your organization.

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