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Strategic Planning |
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Strategic Planning - $29.95 BUY NOW Develop action
plans to achieve your organizational mission & vision. Examples of tools
included are: SWOT, Vision & Mission Statement, Voice of the Customer, Historical
Pattern Recognition, Product & Process Analysis, etc. |
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Strategic Planning Planning
is the process of determining your business/organization’s long-term vision
or goals and how to fulfill them. Its purpose is to provide a framework
for decision making on what short/long-term actions are important for
achieving organizational success. The agenda follows an eight task process that uses planning tools, techniques and questions commonly asked by skilled planners. Since every situation is different, it is not recommended that you answer every question or complete every template. Use only the ones that best fit your planning needs. |
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Task 1: Describe your business/organization’s current purpose and
mission. |
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Task 2: Assess the current business environment, market trends, and
strengths & weaknesses. |
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Task 3: Decide what is critical to work on - NOW. |
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Task 4: Decide where you want your business to be in 2-5 years and
write a Strategic Goal Statement. |
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Task 5: Identify a Preferred Future |
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Task 6: Develop alternative strategies to reach your Strategic Goal |
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Task 7: Pick the strategic alternative you want to implement. |
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Task 8: Map out action plans for: alignment with
current organizational work efforts, and, movement towards strategic goals. |
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Task 1: Describe your organization’s current purpose and mission. |
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Purpose: The critical starting
point for any planning initiative is to have an accurate understanding of the
current situation because it provides the foundation from which all change
will be based. NOTE: This is a high level or whole-picture understanding. |
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Task 2: Assess the current environment, trends, strengths &
weaknesses. |
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Purpose: The value of looking at trends only becomes known after the fact.
Maybe nothing new will be discovered but maybe a future problem or
opportunity will be recognized. In general, it is better to anticipate
potential problems/opportunities and plan for them rather than simply waiting
and reacting to them. In the long run the companies
(and individuals) that thrive the most are the ones that best analyze trends
and prepare for change with strategic plans. |
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Task 3: Decide what is critical to work on - NOW. |
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Purpose: Select the future problem/opportunity that
is worthy of attention and planning People often do not look beyond the current situation and don’t
realize their time may be better spent working on other problems or
opportunities. The objective here is
to put scarce resources (time, manpower and money)
to work on the future problem or opportunity that yields the highest return
and benefit. now. |
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Task 4: Decide where you want your organization to be in 2-5
years. |
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Purpose: Planning is a much more difficult process than problem solving.
How well organizations and individuals fare in the future is largely
determined by what they plan now. This
step is to identify a concern about the future and establish a future
(strategic) goal. |
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Task
5: Identify a Preferred Future |
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Purpose: Write a preferred/desired future statement or
where the current state “should be” going. Writing a preferred futures
statement represents a shift away from traditional planning. The thinking
shifts to focusing on ideal future situation and then starting to take
actions to get there. The objective is to look beyond the “likely” future and
identify the “preferable” future. |
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Task 6: Develop alternative strategies on how to reach your Strategic
Goal |
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Purpose: The objective of this
step is to generate alternative scenarios (ideas) on how to reach the future.
Change, in fact, can be simply defined as a gap between the current state and
a future/Strategic Goal state. If change is a gap between these two states,
then planning is the process of determining the steps needed to transform the
current state into the future one. |
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Task 7: Pick the strategic alternative(s) you want to implement |
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Purpose: Deciding which alternative
solution to implement goes beyond just selecting the solution that best
resolves the problem. Development of evaluation criteria in other areas
should be considered. Also consider using more than one decision-making process
in selecting the scenario to build the plan upon. Note: A poor
decision-making process can negate any and all
innovative gain up to this point. |
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Task 8: Map out actions that align work efforts
with strategic goals. |
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Purpose: The objective of this step is to outline a plan of action for what kinds of future
oriented actions need to be taken now.
Planning means creating specific current action
steps that will lead to meeting likely future effects. It also includes future
contingency plans to cover the actions needed in the future when the
potential problem/opportunity happens? |
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