Have you seen people get into trouble confusing strategy with mission, goals, network, or vision? Do you have advice for how leaders can best establish strategic direction for their organizations? You have 1 free article s left this month. You are reading your last free article for this month.
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Read more on Strategy or related topics Decision making and problem solving and Strategic planning. The Measures of Success are not the periodic numerical goals, but rather those indicators that will remain important on an ongoing basis even if the numbers change, such as Customer Retention, Growth, Employee Satisfaction, and the like.
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Reo Leslie October 9, at am. You will know when you achieve an objective. They are action items, often with start and end dates. Use the goal example from earlier: Increase total revenue by 5 percent in three product areas by the third quarter of In this example, your objectives could be:. Breaking down the process further, some strategic planners use the terms strategies and tactics to label ways to achieve objectives.
Using these terms, strategies describe an approach or method you will use to achieve an objective. A tactic is a specific activity or project that achieves the strategy, which, in turn, helps achieve the objective.
After you come up with your goals and objectives, you need to figure out who will do what, how you will market what they do, and how you will pay for what you need to do. To achieve all the goals outlined in your strategic plan, you need the right people in place. Include a section in your strategic plan where you talk about the capacity of your organization.
Do you have the team members to accomplish the objectives you have outlined in order to reach your goals? If not, you may need to hire personnel. The operations plan maps out your initiatives and shows you who is going to do what, when, and how.
This helps transform your goals and objectives into a reality. A summary of it should go into your strategic plan. If you need assistance writing a comprehensive implementation plan for your organization, this article can guide you through the process. A marketing plan describes how you attract prospects and convert them into customers. For more information about writing marketing plans, this article can help. Then there are finances.
We would all like to accomplish every goal, but sometimes we do not have enough money to do so. A financial plan can help you set your priorities. Check out these templates to help you get started with a financial plan. In order to know if you are reaching the goals you outline in your strategic plan, you need performance indicators. These indicators will show you what success looks like and ensure accountability. Sadly, strategic plans have a tendency to fail when nobody periodically assesses progress.
Key performance indicators KPIs can show you how your business is progressing. KPIs can be both financial and nonfinancial measures that help you chart your progress and take corrective measures if actions are not unfolding as they should.
Other terms similar to KPIs include performance measures and performance indicators. Performance indicators are not always financial, but they must be quantifiable. For example, tracking visitors to a website, customers completing a contact form, or the number of proposals that close with deals are all performance indicators that keep you on track toward achieving your goals.
Stockmal also says performance indicators cannot focus on only one thing at the detriment of another. Some performance indicators can go into your strategic plan, but you might want to set other goals for your organization. A KPI dashboard can help you set up and track your performance and for more information about setting up a KPI dashboard, this article can help.
While writing your strategic plan, you should think about how to share it. A plan is no good if it sits on a shelf and nobody reads it. Decide who should get a physical copy of the entire plan. This could include management, the board of directors, owners, and more.
Do your best to keep it from your competitors. If you distribute it outside of your company, you might want to attach a confidentiality waiver. Post the plan on the employee intranet, along with key highlights and a way to track progress.
If you hold a meeting, make sure you and other key planners are prepared to handle the feedback and discussion that will arise. You should be able to defend your plan and reinforce its key areas. You can use posters or other visual methods to post around the office. As mentioned, strategic planning is a process and involves a team.
As with any team activity, there will be challenges. Sometimes the consensus can take priority over what is clear. Peer pressure can be a strong force, especially if a boss or other manager is the one making suggestions and people feel pressured to conform. Some people might feel reluctant to give any input because they do not think it matters to the person who ultimately decides what goes into the plan. Team troubles can also occur when one or more members does not think the plan is important or does not buy into the process.
Team leaders need to take care of these troubles before they get out of hand. Pay attention to your company culture and the readiness you have as a group, and adapt the planning process to fit accordingly.
You need to find the balance between the process and the final product. The planning process takes time. Many organizations do not give themselves enough time to plan properly, and once you finish planning, writing the document or presentation also takes time, as does implementation.
One symptom of this is not aligning the plan to fit the capacity or finances of the company. Stockmal explains that many organizations often focus too much on the future and reaching their goals that they forget what made them a strong company in the first place. Be careful with the information you gather. Do not take shortcuts in the research phase — that will lead to bad information coming out further in the process.
Also, do not ignore negative information you may learn. Overcoming adversity is one way for companies to grow. Be wary of cutting and pasting either from plans from past years or from other similar organizations. Every company is unique.
And while this may sound obvious, do not ignore what your planning process tells you. Your research might show you should not go in a direction you might want to.
The strategic planning process will differ based on your organization, but the basic concepts will stay the same. Whether you are a nonprofit, a school, or a for-profit entity, strategic plans will look at where you are and how you will get to where you want to go. In addition to a SWOT analysis and other sections that go into any strategic plan, a nonprofit needs to keep an eye on changing factors, such as funding.
Some funding sources have finite beginnings and endings. Strategic planning is often continuous for nonprofits. A nonprofit has to make the community care about its cause. For a nonprofit, however, conveying that message needs to be part of the strategic plan. Coming up with an evaluation method and KPIs can sometimes be difficult for a nonprofit, since they are often focused on goals other than financial gain. Excel Smartsheet.
Writing a strategic plan for a school can be difficult because of the variety of stakeholders involved, including students, teachers, other staff, and parents. Strategic planning in a school is different from others because there are no markets to explore, products to produce, clients to woo, or adjustable timelines. Schools often have set boundaries, missions, and budgets.
Even with the differences, the same planning process and structure should be in place for schools as it is for other types of organizations. There is no set time period for a strategic plan, but five years can be a sweet spot. In some cases, yearly planning might keep you continually stuck in the planning process, while 10 years might be too far out. In addition to the basic sections that go into any strategic plan, when forecasting five years into the future, put one- and three-year checkpoints into the plan so you can track progress intermittently.
While five years is often the strategic planning sweet spot, some organizations choose to create three-year plans. Looking too far ahead can be daunting, especially for a new or changing company. In a three-year plan, the goals and objectives have a shorter timeframe and you need to monitor them more frequently.
Build those checkpoints into the plan. You want to make sure the plans align. The steps in creating a plan for a department are the same as for an overall strategic plan, but the mission statement, vision, SWOT analysis, goals, objectives, and so on are specific to only the people in your department. Look at each person separately and consider their core competencies, strengths, capabilities, and weaknesses. Assign people who will be responsible for certain tasks and tactics necessary to achieve your goals.
If you have access to a plan from a previous year, see how your department did in meeting its goals. Adjust the new plan accordingly. Expect to make changes. A strategic plan is for the big picture, not for a particular project for an organization. Instead of a strategic plan, this area would fall under project management. If you have a failing project and need to turn it around, this article might help.
You can also create a strategic plan to help guide both your professional and personal life. The key is to include what is important to you. This process takes time and reflection. Be prepared for what you discover about yourself. Because you will be looking at your strengths and weaknesses, you might see things you do not like. It is important to be honest with yourself. A SWOT analysis on yourself will give you some honest feedback if you let it.
Begin with looking at your life as it is now. Are you satisfied? What do you want to do more or less? What do you value most in your life? Go deeper than saying family, happiness, and health.
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