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What is strategic planning? A 5-step guide

Strategic planning is a process through which business leaders map out their vision for their organization’s growth and how they’re going to get there. In this article, we'll guide you through the strategic planning process, including why it's important, the benefits and best practices, and five steps to get you from beginning to end.

Strategic planning is a process through which business leaders map out their vision for their organization’s growth and how they’re going to get there. The strategic planning process informs your organization’s decisions, growth, and goals.

Strategic planning helps you clearly define your company’s long-term objectives—and maps how your short-term goals and work will help you achieve them. This, in turn, gives you a clear sense of where your organization is going and allows you to ensure your teams are working on projects that make the most impact. Think of it this way—if your goals and objectives are your destination on a map, your strategic plan is your navigation system.

In this article, we walk you through the 5-step strategic planning process and show you how to get started developing your own strategic plan.

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What is strategic planning?

Strategic planning is a business process that helps you define and share the direction your company will take in the next three to five years. During the strategic planning process, stakeholders review and define the organization’s mission and goals, conduct competitive assessments, and identify company goals and objectives. The product of the planning cycle is a strategic plan, which is shared throughout the company.

What is a strategic plan?

A strategic plan is the end result of the strategic planning process. At its most basic, it’s a tool used to define your organization’s goals and what actions you’ll take to achieve them.

Typically, your strategic plan should include: 

Your company’s mission statement

Your organizational goals, including your long-term goals and short-term, yearly objectives

Any plan of action, tactics, or approaches you plan to take to meet those goals

What are the benefits of strategic planning?

Strategic planning can help with goal setting and decision-making by allowing you to map out how your company will move toward your organization’s vision and mission statements in the next three to five years. Let’s circle back to our map metaphor. If you think of your company trajectory as a line on a map, a strategic plan can help you better quantify how you’ll get from point A (where you are now) to point B (where you want to be in a few years).

When you create and share a clear strategic plan with your team, you can:

Build a strong organizational culture by clearly defining and aligning on your organization’s mission, vision, and goals.

Align everyone around a shared purpose and ensure all departments and teams are working toward a common objective.

Proactively set objectives to help you get where you want to go and achieve desired outcomes.

Promote a long-term vision for your company rather than focusing primarily on short-term gains.

Ensure resources are allocated around the most high-impact priorities.

Define long-term goals and set shorter-term goals to support them.

Assess your current situation and identify any opportunities—or threats—allowing your organization to mitigate potential risks.

Create a proactive business culture that enables your organization to respond more swiftly to emerging market changes and opportunities.

What are the 5 steps in strategic planning?

The strategic planning process involves a structured methodology that guides the organization from vision to implementation. The strategic planning process starts with assembling a small, dedicated team of key strategic planners—typically five to 10 members—who will form the strategic planning, or management, committee. This team is responsible for gathering crucial information, guiding the development of the plan, and overseeing strategy execution.

Once you’ve established your management committee, you can get to work on the planning process. 

Step 1: Assess your current business strategy and business environment

Before you can define where you’re going, you first need to define where you are. Understanding the external environment, including market trends and competitive landscape, is crucial in the initial assessment phase of strategic planning.

To do this, your management committee should collect a variety of information from additional stakeholders, like employees and customers. In particular, plan to gather:

Relevant industry and market data to inform any market opportunities, as well as any potential upcoming threats in the near future.

Customer insights to understand what your customers want from your company—like product improvements or additional services.

Employee feedback that needs to be addressed—whether about the product, business practices, or the day-to-day company culture.

Consider different types of strategic planning tools and analytical techniques to gather this information, such as:

A balanced scorecard to help you evaluate four major elements of a business: learning and growth, business processes, customer satisfaction, and financial performance.

A SWOT analysis to help you assess both current and future potential for the business (you’ll return to this analysis periodically during the strategic planning process). 

To fill out each letter in the SWOT acronym, your management committee will answer a series of questions:

What does your organization currently do well?

What separates you from your competitors?

What are your most valuable internal resources?

What tangible assets do you have?

What is your biggest strength? 

Weaknesses:

What does your organization do poorly?

What do you currently lack (whether that’s a product, resource, or process)?

What do your competitors do better than you?

What, if any, limitations are holding your organization back?

What processes or products need improvement? 

Opportunities:

What opportunities does your organization have?

How can you leverage your unique company strengths?

Are there any trends that you can take advantage of?

How can you capitalize on marketing or press opportunities?

Is there an emerging need for your product or service? 

What emerging competitors should you keep an eye on?

Are there any weaknesses that expose your organization to risk?

Have you or could you experience negative press that could reduce market share?

Is there a chance of changing customer attitudes towards your company? 

Step 2: Identify your company’s goals and objectives

To begin strategy development, take into account your current position, which is where you are now. Then, draw inspiration from your vision, mission, and current position to identify and define your goals—these are your final destination. 

To develop your strategy, you’re essentially pulling out your compass and asking, “Where are we going next?” “What’s the ideal future state of this company?” This can help you figure out which path you need to take to get there.

During this phase of the planning process, take inspiration from important company documents, such as:

Your mission statement, to understand how you can continue moving towards your organization’s core purpose.

Your vision statement, to clarify how your strategic plan fits into your long-term vision.

Your company values, to guide you towards what matters most towards your company.

Your competitive advantages, to understand what unique benefit you offer to the market.

Your long-term goals, to track where you want to be in five or 10 years.

Your financial forecast and projection, to understand where you expect your financials to be in the next three years, what your expected cash flow is, and what new opportunities you will likely be able to invest in.

Step 3: Develop your strategic plan and determine performance metrics

Now that you understand where you are and where you want to go, it’s time to put pen to paper. Take your current business position and strategy into account, as well as your organization’s goals and objectives, and build out a strategic plan for the next three to five years. Keep in mind that even though you’re creating a long-term plan, parts of your plan should be created or revisited as the quarters and years go on.

As you build your strategic plan, you should define:

Company priorities for the next three to five years, based on your SWOT analysis and strategy.

Yearly objectives for the first year. You don’t need to define your objectives for every year of the strategic plan. As the years go on, create new yearly objectives that connect back to your overall strategic goals . 

Related key results and KPIs. Some of these should be set by the management committee, and some should be set by specific teams that are closer to the work. Make sure your key results and KPIs are measurable and actionable. These KPIs will help you track progress and ensure you’re moving in the right direction.

Budget for the next year or few years. This should be based on your financial forecast as well as your direction. Do you need to spend aggressively to develop your product? Build your team? Make a dent with marketing? Clarify your most important initiatives and how you’ll budget for those.

A high-level project roadmap . A project roadmap is a tool in project management that helps you visualize the timeline of a complex initiative, but you can also create a very high-level project roadmap for your strategic plan. Outline what you expect to be working on in certain quarters or years to make the plan more actionable and understandable.

Step 4: Implement and share your plan

Now it’s time to put your plan into action. Strategy implementation involves clear communication across your entire organization to make sure everyone knows their responsibilities and how to measure the plan’s success. 

Make sure your team (especially senior leadership) has access to the strategic plan, so they can understand how their work contributes to company priorities and the overall strategy map. We recommend sharing your plan in the same tool you use to manage and track work, so you can more easily connect high-level objectives to daily work. If you don’t already, consider using a work management platform .  

A few tips to make sure your plan will be executed without a hitch: 

Communicate clearly to your entire organization throughout the implementation process, to ensure all team members understand the strategic plan and how to implement it effectively. 

Define what “success” looks like by mapping your strategic plan to key performance indicators.

Ensure that the actions outlined in the strategic plan are integrated into the daily operations of the organization, so that every team member's daily activities are aligned with the broader strategic objectives.

Utilize tools and software—like a work management platform—that can aid in implementing and tracking the progress of your plan.

Regularly monitor and share the progress of the strategic plan with the entire organization, to keep everyone informed and reinforce the importance of the plan.

Establish regular check-ins to monitor the progress of your strategic plan and make adjustments as needed. 

Step 5: Revise and restructure as needed

Once you’ve created and implemented your new strategic framework, the final step of the planning process is to monitor and manage your plan.

Remember, your strategic plan isn’t set in stone. You’ll need to revisit and update the plan if your company changes directions or makes new investments. As new market opportunities and threats come up, you’ll likely want to tweak your strategic plan. Make sure to review your plan regularly—meaning quarterly and annually—to ensure it’s still aligned with your organization’s vision and goals.

Keep in mind that your plan won’t last forever, even if you do update it frequently. A successful strategic plan evolves with your company’s long-term goals. When you’ve achieved most of your strategic goals, or if your strategy has evolved significantly since you first made your plan, it might be time to create a new one.

Build a smarter strategic plan with a work management platform

To turn your company strategy into a plan—and ultimately, impact—make sure you’re proactively connecting company objectives to daily work. When you can clarify this connection, you’re giving your team members the context they need to get their best work done. 

A work management platform plays a pivotal role in this process. It acts as a central hub for your strategic plan, ensuring that every task and project is directly tied to your broader company goals. This alignment is crucial for visibility and coordination, allowing team members to see how their individual efforts contribute to the company’s success. 

By leveraging such a platform, you not only streamline workflow and enhance team productivity but also align every action with your strategic objectives—allowing teams to drive greater impact and helping your company move toward goals more effectively. 

Strategic planning FAQs

Still have questions about strategic planning? We have answers.

Why do I need a strategic plan?

A strategic plan is one of many tools you can use to plan and hit your goals. It helps map out strategic objectives and growth metrics that will help your company be successful.

When should I create a strategic plan?

You should aim to create a strategic plan every three to five years, depending on your organization’s growth speed.

Since the point of a strategic plan is to map out your long-term goals and how you’ll get there, you should create a strategic plan when you’ve met most or all of them. You should also create a strategic plan any time you’re going to make a large pivot in your organization’s mission or enter new markets. 

What is a strategic planning template?

A strategic planning template is a tool organizations can use to map out their strategic plan and track progress. Typically, a strategic planning template houses all the components needed to build out a strategic plan, including your company’s vision and mission statements, information from any competitive analyses or SWOT assessments, and relevant KPIs.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. business plan?

A business plan can help you document your strategy as you’re getting started so every team member is on the same page about your core business priorities and goals. This tool can help you document and share your strategy with key investors or stakeholders as you get your business up and running.

You should create a business plan when you’re: 

Just starting your business

Significantly restructuring your business

If your business is already established, you should create a strategic plan instead of a business plan. Even if you’re working at a relatively young company, your strategic plan can build on your business plan to help you move in the right direction. During the strategic planning process, you’ll draw from a lot of the fundamental business elements you built early on to establish your strategy for the next three to five years.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. mission and vision statements?

Your strategic plan, mission statement, and vision statements are all closely connected. In fact, during the strategic planning process, you will take inspiration from your mission and vision statements in order to build out your strategic plan.

Simply put: 

A mission statement summarizes your company’s purpose.

A vision statement broadly explains how you’ll reach your company’s purpose.

A strategic plan pulls in inspiration from your mission and vision statements and outlines what actions you’re going to take to move in the right direction. 

For example, if your company produces pet safety equipment, here’s how your mission statement, vision statement, and strategic plan might shake out:

Mission statement: “To ensure the safety of the world’s animals.” 

Vision statement: “To create pet safety and tracking products that are effortless to use.” 

Your strategic plan would outline the steps you’re going to take in the next few years to bring your company closer to your mission and vision. For example, you develop a new pet tracking smart collar or improve the microchipping experience for pet owners. 

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. company objectives?

Company objectives are broad goals. You should set these on a yearly or quarterly basis (if your organization moves quickly). These objectives give your team a clear sense of what you intend to accomplish for a set period of time. 

Your strategic plan is more forward-thinking than your company goals, and it should cover more than one year of work. Think of it this way: your company objectives will move the needle towards your overall strategy—but your strategic plan should be bigger than company objectives because it spans multiple years.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. a business case?

A business case is a document to help you pitch a significant investment or initiative for your company. When you create a business case, you’re outlining why this investment is a good idea, and how this large-scale project will positively impact the business. 

You might end up building business cases for things on your strategic plan’s roadmap—but your strategic plan should be bigger than that. This tool should encompass multiple years of your roadmap, across your entire company—not just one initiative.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. a project plan?

A strategic plan is a company-wide, multi-year plan of what you want to accomplish in the next three to five years and how you plan to accomplish that. A project plan, on the other hand, outlines how you’re going to accomplish a specific project. This project could be one of many initiatives that contribute to a specific company objective which, in turn, is one of many objectives that contribute to your strategic plan. 

What’s the difference between strategic management vs. strategic planning?

A strategic plan is a tool to define where your organization wants to go and what actions you need to take to achieve those goals. Strategic planning is the process of creating a plan in order to hit your strategic objectives.

Strategic management includes the strategic planning process, but also goes beyond it. In addition to planning how you will achieve your big-picture goals, strategic management also helps you organize your resources and figure out the best action plans for success. 

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Strategic Planning

The art of formulating business strategies, implementing them, and evaluating their impact based on organizational objectives

What is Strategic Planning?

Strategic planning is the art of creating specific business strategies, implementing them, and evaluating the results of executing the plan, in regard to a company’s overall long-term goals or desires. It is a concept that focuses on integrating various departments (such as accounting and finance, marketing, and human resources) within a company to accomplish its strategic goals. The term strategic planning is essentially synonymous with strategic management.

The concept of strategic planning originally became popular in the 1950s and 1960s, and enjoyed favor in the corporate world up until the 1980s, when it somewhat fell out of favor. However, enthusiasm for strategic business planning was revived in the 1990s and strategic planning remains relevant in modern business.

CFI’s Course on Corporate & Business Strategy is an elective course for the FMVA Program.

Strategic Planning Process

The strategic planning process requires considerable thought and planning on the part of a company’s upper-level management. Before settling on a plan of action and then determining how to strategically implement it, executives may consider many possible options. In the end, a company’s management will, hopefully, settle on a strategy that is most likely to produce positive results (usually defined as improving the company’s bottom line) and that can be executed in a cost-efficient manner with a high likelihood of success, while avoiding undue financial risk.

The development and execution of strategic planning are typically viewed as consisting of being performed in three critical steps:

1. Strategy Formulation

In the process of formulating a strategy, a company will first assess its current situation by performing an internal and external audit. The purpose of this is to help identify the organization’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as opportunities and threats ( SWOT Analysis ). As a result of the analysis, managers decide on which plans or markets they should focus on or abandon, how to best allocate the company’s resources, and whether to take actions such as expanding operations through a joint venture or merger.

Business strategies have long-term effects on organizational success. Only upper management executives are usually authorized to assign the resources necessary for their implementation.

2. Strategy Implementation

After a strategy is formulated, the company needs to establish specific targets or goals related to putting the strategy into action, and allocate resources for the strategy’s execution. The success of the implementation stage is often determined by how good a job upper management does in regard to clearly communicating the chosen strategy throughout the company and getting all of its employees to “buy into” the desire to put the strategy into action.

Effective strategy implementation involves developing a solid structure, or framework, for implementing the strategy, maximizing the utilization of relevant resources, and redirecting marketing efforts in line with the strategy’s goals and objectives.

3. Strategy Evaluation

Any savvy business person knows that success today does not guarantee success tomorrow. As such, it is important for managers to evaluate the performance of a chosen strategy after the implementation phase.

Strategy evaluation involves three crucial activities: reviewing the internal and external factors affecting the implementation of the strategy, measuring performance, and taking corrective steps to make the strategy more effective. For example, after implementing a strategy to improve customer service, a company may discover that it needs to adopt a new customer relationship management (CRM) software program in order to attain the desired improvements in customer relations.

All three steps in strategic planning occur within three hierarchical levels: upper management, middle management, and operational levels. Thus, it is imperative to foster communication and interaction among employees and managers at all levels, so as to help the firm to operate as a more functional and effective team.

Benefits of Strategic Planning

The volatility of the business environment causes many firms to adopt reactive strategies rather than proactive ones. However, reactive strategies are typically only viable for the short-term, even though they may require spending a significant amount of resources and time to execute. Strategic planning helps firms prepare proactively and address issues with a more long-term view. They enable a company to initiate influence instead of just responding to situations.

Among the primary benefits derived from strategic planning are the following:

1. Helps formulate better strategies using a logical, systematic approach

This is often the most important benefit. Some studies show that the strategic planning process itself makes a significant contribution to improving a company’s overall performance, regardless of the success of a specific strategy.

2. Enhanced communication between employers and employees

Communication is crucial to the success of the strategic planning process. It is initiated through participation and dialogue among the managers and employees, which shows their commitment to achieving organizational goals.

Strategic planning also helps managers and employees show commitment to the organization’s goals. This is because they know what the company is doing and the reasons behind it. Strategic planning makes organizational goals and objectives real, and employees can more readily understand the relationship between their performance, the company’s success, and compensation. As a result, both employees and managers tend to become more innovative and creative, which fosters further growth of the company.

3. Empowers individuals working in the organization

The increased dialogue and communication across all stages of the process strengthens employees’ sense of effectiveness and importance in the company’s overall success. For this reason, it is important for companies to decentralize the strategic planning process by involving lower-level managers and employees throughout the organization. A good example is that of the Walt Disney Co., which dissolved its separate strategic planning department, in favor of assigning the planning roles to individual Disney business divisions.

An increasing number of companies use strategic planning to formulate and implement effective decisions. While planning requires a significant amount of time, effort, and money, a well-thought-out strategic plan efficiently fosters company growth, goal achievement, and employee satisfaction.

Additional Resources

Thank you for reading CFI’s guide to Strategic Planning. To keep learning and advancing your career, the additional CFI resources below will be useful:

• Broad Factors Analysis
• Scalability
• Systems Thinking
• See all management & strategy resources
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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.

Claim your FREE eBook on 8 effective strategic planning templates here

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.

Download your FREE 40-page eBook to lead effective Strategy Review Meetings

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 .

Claim your FREE Balanced Scorecard Excel template for better strategic management

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.

Claim your FREE Measure & Goal Evaluation Toolkit for streamlined analysis

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.

See ClearPoint Strategy in action! Click here to watch our quick 6-minute demo

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!

Transform Your Strategic Planning with ClearPoint Strategy Software

Struggling with the execution of your strategic plans? You’re not alone. ClearPoint Strategy is here to turn your strategic planning around.

Our software is designed to address the common pitfalls in strategy execution, such as poor communication, misaligned goals, and ineffective tracking. By booking a demo with us, you’ll see firsthand how ClearPoint can enhance transparency, improve alignment, and boost execution efficiency across your organization.

Don't let your strategic efforts fail—discover how ClearPoint Strategy empowers you to be among the few who successfully achieve their strategic goals. Book your demo today and start making your strategy work for you!

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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.

Table of Contents

Ted Jackson

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

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What is strategic planning?

Strategic planning is a process in which an organization's leaders define their vision for the future and identify their organization's goals and objectives. The process includes establishing the sequence in which those goals should be realized so the organization can reach its stated vision.

Strategic planning is forward looking. It differs from traditional business planning, which typically focuses on short-term, tactical goals, such as how a budget is divided up. The time covered by a business plan can range from several months to several years.

The product of strategic planning is a strategic plan. It is often reflected in a plan document or other media. These plans can be easily shared, understood and followed by various people including employees, customers, business partners and investors.

Organizations conduct strategic planning periodically to consider the effect of changing business, industry, and legal and regulatory conditions . A strategic plan may be updated and revised at that time to reflect any strategic changes.

Why is strategic planning important?

Businesses need direction and organizational goals to work toward. Strategic planning offers that type of guidance. Essentially, a strategic plan is a roadmap to get to business goals . Without such guidance, there is no way to tell whether a business is on track to reach its goals.

The following four aspects of strategy development are worth attention:

• The mission. Strategic planning starts with a mission that offers a company a sense of purpose and direction. The organization's mission statement describes who it is, what it does and where it wants to go. Missions are typically broad but actionable. For example, a business in the education industry might seek to be a leader in online virtual educational tools and services.
• The goals. Strategic planning involves selecting goals. Most planning uses SMART goals -- specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound -- or other objectively measurable goals. Measurable goals are important because they enable business leaders to determine how well the business is performing against goals and the overall mission. Goal setting for the fictitious educational business might include releasing the first version of a virtual classroom platform within two years or increasing sales of an existing tool by 30% in the next year.
• Alignment with short-term goals. Strategic planning relates directly to short-term, tactical business planning and can help business leaders with everyday decision-making that better aligns with business strategy. For the fictitious educational business, leaders might choose to make strategic investments in communication and collaboration technologies , such as virtual classroom software and services but decline opportunities to establish physical classroom facilities.
• Evaluation and revision. Strategic planning helps business leaders periodically evaluate progress against the plan and make changes or adjustments in response to changing conditions. For example, a business may seek a global presence, but legal and regulatory restrictions could emerge that affect its ability to operate in certain geographic regions. As a result, business leaders might have to revise the strategic plan to redefine objectives or change progress metrics.

Modern considerations for strategic planning

While strategic planning has been a cornerstone of organizational management for decades, the landscape of strategic planning has undergone significant shifts in recent years.

Innovations in technology and socioeconomic upheavals, most notably the COVID-19 pandemic, have fundamentally altered the calculus of strategic planning. These modern considerations underscore the evolving nature of strategic planning in today's world.

The importance of strategic planning in an evolving society

The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic has starkly highlighted the importance of flexibility and resilience in strategic planning. Organizations worldwide have faced the stark reality that the ability to pivot quickly in response to rapidly changing external conditions is not just advantageous but essential for survival.

This period has reinforced the concept that strategic plans must be living documents -- adaptable, dynamic and responsive to unforeseen challenges and opportunities. The traditional view of strategic planning as a set of fixed guidelines has given way to an understanding of strategic plans as fluid frameworks that guide organizational response to a volatile environment.

Embracing digital transformation

The swift pace of technological evolution has made the incorporation of digital transformation strategies a critical component of strategic planning.

Digital capabilities are now at the heart of operational success and competitive differentiation. Organizations can integrate data analytics and AI into strategic planning processes to help them innovate, boost efficiency, enhance customer experiences and maintain a competitive edge .

Agility and adaptability

Modern strategic planning is characterized by an emphasis on agility and the capacity for rapid adaptation. In an era marked by constant change, organizations must be prepared to navigate through a sea of change, adjusting their course in response to market dynamics and environmental shifts.

This necessitates a continuous reassessment of the strategic plan and a willingness to recalibrate goals and tactics in alignment with the evolving external landscape. The agility to adapt strategic priorities swiftly is now a critical competency for organizational resilience and long-term success.

Sustainability and social responsibility

Sustainability and social responsibility have emerged as central considerations in strategic planning. As societal expectations evolve, there is an increasing demand for organizations to align their strategies with environmental, social and governance ( ESG ) criteria.

This alignment reflects a broader commitment to sustainable development and responsible corporate citizenship . Incorporating sustainability and social responsibility into strategic planning not only meets regulatory and societal expectations but also opens new avenues for innovation and connects organizations with eco-conscious consumers and stakeholders .

Cultivating organizational culture and employee engagement

A strategic plan that resonates with an organization's culture and actively engages employees is more likely to succeed. Cultivating a supportive culture that aligns with the strategic vision is crucial for fostering organizational alignment and buy-in.

Engaging employees in the strategic planning process instills a sense of ownership and commitment to the organization's goals , thereby driving collective effort toward their realization. Modern strategic planning recognizes the value of employee engagement and organizational culture as foundational elements that underpin the successful implementation of strategic objectives.

What are the steps in the strategic planning process?

There are myriad different ways to approach strategic planning depending on the type of business and the granularity required. Most strategic planning cycles can be summarized in these five steps:

Identify. A strategic planning cycle starts with the determination of a business's current strategic position. This is where stakeholders use the existing strategic plan -- including the mission statement and long-term strategic goals -- to perform assessments of the business and its environment. These assessments can include a needs assessment or a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis) to understand the state of the business and the path ahead.

Prioritize. Next, strategic planners set objectives and initiatives that line up with the company mission and goals and will move the business toward achieving its goals. There may be many potential goals, so planning prioritizes the most important, relevant and urgent ones. Goals may include a consideration of resource requirements -- such as budgets and equipment -- and they often involve a timeline and business metrics or KPIs for measuring progress.

Develop. This is the main thrust of strategic planning in which stakeholders collaborate to formulate the steps or tactics necessary to attain a stated strategic objective. This may involve creating numerous short-term tactical business plans that fit into the overarching strategy. Stakeholders involved in plan development use various tools such as a strategy map to help visualize and tweak the plan. Developing the plan may involve cost and opportunity tradeoffs that reflect business priorities. Developers may reject some initiatives if they don't support the long-term strategy.

Implement. Once the strategic plan is developed, it's time to put it in motion. This requires clear communication across the organization to set responsibilities, make investments, adjust policies and processes , and establish measurement and reporting. Implementation typically includes strategic management with regular strategic reviews to ensure that plans stay on track.

Update. A strategic plan is periodically reviewed and revised to adjust priorities and reevaluate goals as business conditions change and new opportunities emerge. Quick reviews of metrics can happen quarterly, and adjustments to the strategic plan can occur annually. Stakeholders may use balanced scorecards and other tools to assess performance against goals.

Who does the strategic planning in a business?

A committee typically leads the strategic planning process. Planning experts recommend the committee include representatives from all areas within the enterprise and work in an open and transparent way where information is documented from start to finish.

The committee researches and gathers the information needed to understand the organization's status and factors that will affect it in the future. The committee should solicit input and feedback to validate or challenge its assessment of the information.

The committee can opt to use one of many methodologies or strategic frameworks that have been developed to guide leaders through this process. These methodologies take the committee through a series of steps that include an analysis or assessment, strategy formulation, and the articulation and communication of the actions needed to move the organization toward its strategic vision.

The committee creates benchmarks that will enable the organization to determine how well it is performing against its goals as it implements the strategic plan. The planning process should also identify which executives are accountable for ensuring that benchmarking activities take place at planned times and that specific objectives are met.

How often should strategic planning be done?

There are no uniform requirements to dictate the frequency of a strategic planning cycle. However, there are common approaches.

• Quarterly reviews. Once per quarter is usually a convenient time frame to revisit assumptions made in the planning process and gauge progress by checking metrics against the plan.
• Annual reviews. A yearly review lets business leaders assess metrics for the previous four quarters and make informed adjustments to the plan.

Timetables are always subject to change. Timing should be flexible and tailored to the needs of a company. For example, a startup in a dynamic industry might revisit its strategic plan monthly. A mature business in a well-established industry might opt to revisit the plan less frequently.

Types of strategic plans

Strategic planning activities typically focus on three areas: business, corporate or functional. They break out as follows:

• Business. A business-centric strategic plan focuses on the competitive aspects of the organization -- creating competitive advantages and opportunities for growth. These plans adopt a mission evaluating the external business environment, setting goals, and allocating financial, human and technological resources to meet those goals. This is the typical strategic plan and the main focus of this article.
• Corporate . A corporate-centric plan defines how the company works. It focuses on organizing and aligning the structure of the business, its policies and processes and its senior leadership to meet desired goals. For example, the management of a research and development skunkworks might be structured to function dynamically and on an ad hoc basis. It would look different from the management team in finance or HR.
• Functional. Function-centric strategic plans fit within corporate-level strategies and provide a granular examination of specific departments or segments such as marketing, HR, finance and development. Functional plans focus on policy and process -- such as security and compliance -- while setting budgets and resource allocations .

In most cases, a strategic plan will involve elements of all three focus areas. But the plan may lean toward one focus area depending on the needs and type of business.

What is strategic management?

Organizations that are best at aligning their actions with their strategic plans engage in strategic management. A strategic management process establishes ongoing practices to ensure that an organization's processes and resources support the strategic plan's mission and vision statement .

In simple terms, strategic management is the implementation of the strategy . As such, strategic management is sometimes referred to as strategy execution. Strategy execution involves identifying benchmarks, allocating financial and human resources and providing leadership to realize established goals.

Strategic management may involve a prescriptive or descriptive approach . A prescriptive approach focuses on how strategies should be created. It often uses an analytical approach -- such as SWOT or balanced scorecards -- to account for risks and opportunities. A descriptive approach focuses on how strategies should be implemented and typically relies on general guidelines or principles.

Given the similarities between strategic planning and strategic management, the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably.

What is a strategy map?

A strategy map is a planning tool or template used to help stakeholders visualize the complete strategy of a business as one interrelated graphic. These visualizations offer a powerful way for understanding and reviewing the cause-and-effect relationships among the elements of a business strategy.

While a map can be drawn in a number of ways, all strategy maps focus on four major business areas or categories: financial, customer, internal business processes, and learning and growth. Goals sort into those four areas, and relationships or dependencies among those goals can be established.

For example, a strategy map might include a financial goal of reducing costs and a business process goal to improve operational efficiency . These two goals are related and can help stakeholders understand that tasks such as improving operational workflows can reduce company costs and meet two elements of the strategic plan.

A strategy map can help translate overarching goals into an action plan and goals that can be aligned and implemented.

Strategy mapping can also help to identify strategic challenges that might not be obvious. For example, one learning and growth goal may be to increase employee expertise but that may expose unexpected challenges in employee retention and compensation, which affects cost reduction goals.

Benefits of strategic planning

Effective strategic planning has many benefits. It forces organizations to be aware of the future state of opportunities and challenges. It also forces them to anticipate risks and understand what resources will be needed to seize opportunities and overcome strategic issues.

Strategic planning also gives individuals a sense of direction and marshals them around a common mission. It creates standards and accountability. Strategic planning can enhance operational plans and efficiency. It also helps organizations limit time spent on crisis management , where they're reacting to unexpected changes that they failed to anticipate and prepare for.

Information technology is a key part of developing an effective strategic plan. Look at these eight free IT strategic planning templates that can help make IT a driving force in a business. Learn how to assess an organization's needs and implement a technology strategy and see how to set business goals in these step-by-step guides.

Continue Reading About strategic planning

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Essential Guide to Strategic Planning

Strategic planning maps the initiatives and investments required to achieve long‑⁠term strategic objectives. Here’s how to do it well.

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Strategic planning that works — even in volatile times

Just 29% of strategists say their organizations change plans fast enough to respond to disruption. What’s the problem? Most often, unclear objectives, poor strategic planning processes and disengaged business leaders.

Use this guide to:

Turn your strategy into action faster

Combat 7 mistakes  common to strategic planning

Capture and communicate your plans with an  exclusive one-page template

4 critical things to know about strategic planning

Especially in times of disruption, it’s key to understand what strategic planning is and does, what assumptions you need and how to leverage the value of adaptive strategy and scenario planning.

• What Is Strategic Planning?
• Strategic Assumptions
• Scenario Planning
• Adaptive Strategy

Strategy and strategic plans: How they are different and why it matters

Strategy creates a common understanding of what an organization wants to achieve and what it needs to do to meet its goals. Strategic plans bridge the gap from overall direction to specific projects and day-to-day actions that ultimately execute the strategy. Job No. 1 is to know the difference between strategy and strategic plans — and why it matters.

Strategy defines the long-term direction of the enterprise. It articulates what the enterprise will do to compete and succeed in its chosen markets or, for the public sector, what the agency will do to achieve its mission.

Strategic planning defines how the enterprise will realize its strategic ambitions in the midterm. Too often, strategic plans are created and then forgotten until the next planning cycle begins. A well-done strategic plan turns an enterprise strategy into a clear roadmap of initiatives, actions and investments required to execute the strategy and meet business goals.

Functional strategic plans document the choices and actions needed for the function to move from the current state to the desired end state, and contribute effectively to the enterprise business model and goals.

Business unit strategic plans define and finalize business unit goals, objectives and initiatives, while cognizant of enterprise priorities and external trends. 

Operational plans deal with the short-term execution of specific projects and changes, as well as any operational tasks not contained in the strategic plan.

If you’re responsible for functional strategy,  such as IT , create strategic frameworks focused only on what’s material — critical assumptions, relevant metrics and the key initiatives your function needs to contribute effectively to organizational goals, even as those goals shift.

Look out for key trends and disruptions, and test strategic assumptions

It’s critical to scan and respond to trends and disruptions that could impact your strategy and strategic plans — and change your strategic assumptions. Strategic planning cycles should incorporate some mechanism to vet assumptions for relevance (also see “Scenario Planning”).

Ignoring or devaluing trends and disruptions can leave critical gaps in both your strategic assumptions and your strategic planning process, because you may be overlooking both threats and opportunities for your value proposition and competitive positioning.

One Gartner survey found that only 38% of organizations have a formal process for this type of trendspotting. Gartner scopes the seven key areas of disruptive change as a “TPESTRE” of interconnected trend areas (see figure). 

Executives across functions and teams can use the TPESTRE construct to identify key trends at any time — from augmented human experience to purpose-driven organizations and digitally enabled sustainability — and analyze their impact. From there, they can build strategic assumptions around the trends as they begin to map what actions might be needed in terms of business models, people/capabilities, IT systems and resources.

After sudden humanitarian or geopolitical disruptions like the COVID-19 pandemic or Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a framework like TPESTRE can help you identify and monitor  a range of risks  that may affect your enterprise or function and that you may need to include in scenario planning. 

Scenario planning as a strategic planning tool for functions

Scenario planning enables executives and their teams to explore and evaluate plausible alternative futures to make strategic plans more robust and resilient. Pandemic-related disruption and volatility showed the importance of leveraging a range of scenarios to reset business strategy and strategic plans. 

Commonly used by strategists at the organizational level, scenario planning at the functional level is just as valuable. Many functional leaders have little experience with strategic scenario planning, even though they may regularly work with their CFO to build budget and forecast scenarios. Those who can learn and apply scenario planning in strategic planning can help their organization navigate volatile and dynamic conditions more effectively, especially in areas like supply chain , where disruption remains high.

Exploring scenarios enables you to determine suitable action plans or strategies for different possible futures. It reveals how to react to a specific future and which set of actions would make sense no matter what conditions ultimately unfold. 

For leaders of functional teams, developing scenarios and their underlying assumptions is in itself a useful exercise to corroborate or challenge strategies and keep them current.

The objective of scenario planning is to secure the best immediate outcome while preparing suitable alternative action plans, depending on how a situation unfolds. Proactively agreeing on both near-term operational decisions and long-term strategic plans will reduce the time it takes you to respond to emerging risks and opportunities. This can help your function preempt, rather than reactively control for, the negative effects of a major event or disruption.

Additional resources:

Guide to Scenario Planning for Functional Leaders

Scenario Planning for Supply Chain Leaders

Scenario Planning Ignition Guide for Marketing

Strengthen Your R&D Portfolio With Scenario Planning

Use adaptive strategic planning to enable a dynamic response

In an increasingly volatile and uncertain world, strategy can rapidly become out-of-date. To address this challenge, strategic planning must be adaptive. The faster the rate of change in operating conditions and the more disruptions you need to integrate into long-term strategy, the more adaptive your strategy models must be.

An adaptive strategy approach is what ensures your organization can spot new opportunities earlier and respond more quickly than your competitors, making you most likely to succeed in a dynamic digital world.

A truly adaptive strategy approach is consistent with four core practices (see figure) designed to move the enterprise from a rigid, top-down, calendar-based process to a more event-driven strategy approach. Functional strategy can incorporate the same principles. While a truly adaptive approach will be based on all four core practices, functional leaders can initially focus on the practices that address their immediate strategy challenges. 

Rather than requiring perfect or complete information to execute, adaptive strategy uses available information to identify immediate actions required for an enterprise or function to be successful. These actions may range from focusing on high-priority areas to making foundational investments or conducting experiments to test ideas. You can use insights from these actions, along with any new information and analysis, to identify your next set of actions.

Adaptive strategy requires you to review strategy whenever new (and relevant) information becomes available, so it’s important to continually scan the business context to identify changes and review — and, where necessary, adjust — strategy in response to changes. (Also see “Strategic Assumptions.”)

Check out more strategic planning essentials for your function

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Frequently asked questions

What is strategic planning.

Strategic planning is the process through which enterprises, functions and business units identify the roadmap of initiatives and portfolio of investments that will be required in the medium term to achieve long-term strategic objectives.

What are the four types of strategic planning and the three levels of strategic planning?

Strategic planning starts with setting strategy at the enterprise level, but that strategy must then be turned into action. The three levels of strategic planning typically refer to corporate versus business unit and functional. The four types of plans are typically strategic, operational, tactical and contingency.

What steps are involved in the strategic planning process?

To build a successful strategic plan with a consistent and sequential process,  functional leaders  should:

Ensure consistent usage of terms to minimize confusion in strategic planning and set a baseline for collaboration

Build a strong foundation for more detailed planning by setting or pressure-testing mission, vision and goal statements first

Streamline stakeholder input by limiting mission, vision and goal setting to senior leadership, and leaving objective, action plan, and measure and metric development to managers with execution expertise

What are the key elements of strategic planning?

The key elements of a successful strategic plan include:

Mission and vision.  The organization’s mission articulates its reasons for being, and the vision lays out where the organization hopes to be. The strategic plan, which links the two, must be adaptive enough to respond if the context changes during execution.

Strategic assumptions.  To build a successful strategic plan, leadership should scope for trends and disruptions, and assess their potential impact on enterprise goals.

Strategic plan design.  A rigorous strategic planning design effectively translates the strategy into plans that can and will be executed. Poor plans lead to poor execution.

What are the key terms in strategic planning?

Mission: Organization’s purpose

Vision: Desired future state

Objective: How to reach goals

Action plan: What’s needed to achieve objectives

Measures and metrics: To track progress toward goals

How do we design a strategic planning system?

Strategic planning “systems” refer to the tools used to document strategic plans. Gartner urges organizations not to focus on strategy in terms of the document they’re creating, but instead focus on turning strategy into an easily communicated action plan.

What is a strategic action plan?

The strategic action plan is a formal document that serves as the primary source of information for how objectives will be executed, monitored, controlled and closed. Many organizations also deploy an associated but separate “action plan” for achieving the operating model. 

What are strategic measures and metrics?

Measures are observable outcomes that allow organizations to evaluate the efficacy of their action plans. Metrics quantify those observed changes to enable an organization to concretely quantify its progress and stay aligned to its chosen measures.

What are the 7 key success factors involved in strategic planning?

These seven success factors are key to producing high-quality strategic plans that will be successfully executed yet responsive to change:

Focus on designing a minimally viable strategy.

Customize planning efforts to meet participants where they are.

Sketch out initiative design before prioritizing strategic actions.

Be clear about who owns what.

Cascade plans side to side, not just top-down.

Focus performance measures on key assumptions.

Pressure-test plans against a narrow set of future scenarios.

Drive stronger performance on your mission-critical priorities.

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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The 5 steps of the strategic planning process

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Starting a project without a strategy is like trying to bake a cake without a recipe — you might have all the ingredients you need, but without a plan for how to combine them, or a vision for what the finished product will look like, you’re likely to end up with a mess. This is especially true when working with a team — it’s crucial to have a shared plan that can serve as a map on the pathway to success.

Creating a strategic plan not only provides a useful document for the future, but also helps you define what you have right now, and think through and outline all of the steps and considerations you’ll need to succeed.

What is strategic planning?

While there is no single approach to creating a strategic plan, most approaches can be boiled down to five overarching steps:

• Define your vision
• Assess where you are
• Determine your priorities and objectives
• Define responsibilities
• Measure and evaluate results

Each step requires close collaboration as you build a shared vision, strategy for implementation, and system for understanding performance.

Related: Learn how to hold an effective strategic planning meeting

Why do I need a strategic plan?

Building a strategic plan is the best way to ensure that your whole team is on the same page, from the initial vision and the metrics for success to evaluating outcomes and adjusting (if necessary) for the future. Even if you’re an expert baker, working with a team to bake a cake means having a collaborative approach and clearly defined steps so that the result reflects the strategic goals you laid out at the beginning.

The benefits of strategic planning also permeate into the general efficiency and productivity of your organization as a whole. They include: 

• Greater attention to potential biases or flaws, improving decision-making 
• Clear direction and focus, motivating and engaging employees
• Better resource management, improving project outcomes 
• Improved employee performance, increasing profitability
• Enhanced communication and collaboration, fostering team efficiency 

Next, let’s dive into how to build and structure your strategic plan, complete with templates and assets to help you along the way.

Before you begin: Pick a brainstorming method

There are many brainstorming methods you can use to come up with, outline, and rank your priorities. When it comes to strategy planning, it’s important to get everyone’s thoughts and ideas out before committing to any one strategy. With the right facilitation , brainstorming helps make this process fair and transparent for everyone involved.  

First, decide if you want to run a real-time rapid ideation session or a structured brainstorming . In a rapid ideation session, you encourage sharing half-baked or silly ideas, typically within a set time frame. The key is to just get out all your ideas quickly and then edit the best ones. Examples of rapid ideation methods include round robin , brainwriting , mind mapping , and crazy eights . 

In a structured brainstorming session, you allow for more time to prepare and edit your thoughts before getting together to share and discuss those more polished ideas. This might involve brainstorming methods that entail unconventional ways of thinking, such as reverse brainstorming or rolestorming . 

Using a platform like Mural, you can easily capture and organize your team’s ideas through sticky notes, diagrams, text, or even images and videos. These features allow you to build actionable next steps immediately (and in the same place) through color coding and tagging. 

Whichever method you choose, the ideal outcome is that you avoid groupthink by giving everyone a voice and a say. Once you’ve reached a consensus on your top priorities, add specific objectives tied to each of those priorities.

Related: Brainstorming and ideation template

1. Define your vision

Whether it’s for your business as a whole, or a specific initiative, successful strategic planning involves alignment with a vision for success. You can think of it as a project-specific mission statement or a north star to guide employees toward fulfilling organizational goals. 

To create a vision statement that explicitly states the ideal results of your project or company transformation, follow these four key steps: 

• Engage and involve the entire team . Inclusivity like this helps bring diverse perspectives to the table. 
• Align the vision with your core values and purpose . This will make it familiar and easy to follow through. 
• Stay grounded . The vision should be ambitious enough to motivate and inspire yet grounded enough to be achievable and relevant.
• Think long-term flexibility . Consider future trends and how your vision can be flexible in the face of challenges or opportunities. 

For example, say your vision is to revolutionize customer success by streamlining and optimizing your process for handling support tickets. It’s important to have a strategy map that allows stakeholders (like the support team, marketing team, and engineering team) to know the overall objective and understand the roles they will play in realizing the goals. 

This can be done in real time or asynchronously , whether in person, hybrid, or remote. By leveraging a shared digital space , everyone has a voice in the process and room to add their thoughts, comments, and feedback. 

Related: Vision board template

2. Assess where you are

The next step in creating a strategic plan is to conduct an assessment of where you stand in terms of your own initiatives, as well as the greater marketplace. Start by conducting a resource assessment. Figure out which financial, human, and/or technological resources you have available and if there are any limitations. You can do this using a SWOT analysis.

What is SWOT analysis?

SWOT analysis is an exercise where you define:

• Strengths: What are your unique strengths for this initiative or this product? In what ways are you a leader?
• Weaknesses: What weaknesses can you identify in your offering? How does your product compare to others in the marketplace?
• Opportunities: Are there areas for improvement that'd help differentiate your business?
• Threats: Beyond weaknesses, are there existing potential threats to your idea that could limit or prevent its success? How can those be anticipated?

For example, say you have an eco-friendly tech company and your vision is to launch a new service in the next year. Here’s what the SWOT analysis might look like: 

• Strengths : Strong brand reputation, loyal customer base, and a talented team focused on innovation
• Weaknesses : Limited bandwidth to work on new projects, which might impact the scope of its strategy formulation 
• Opportunities : How to leverage and experiment with existing customers when goal-setting
• Threats : Factors in the external environment out of its control, like the state of the economy and supply chain shortages

This SWOT analysis will guide the company in setting strategic objectives and formulating a robust plan to navigate the challenges it might face. 

Related: SWOT analysis template

3. Determine your priorities and objectives

Once you've identified your organization’s mission and current standing, start a preliminary plan document that outlines your priorities and their corresponding objectives. Priorities and objectives should be set based on what is achievable with your available resources. The SMART framework is a great way to ensure you set effective goals . It looks like this:  

• Specific: Set clear objectives, leaving no room for ambiguity about the desired outcomes.
• Measurable : Choose quantifiable criteria to make it easier to track progress.
• Achievable : Ensure it is realistic and attainable within the constraints of your resources and environment.
• Relevant : Develop objectives that are relevant to the direction your organization seeks to move.
• Time-bound : Set a clear timeline for achieving each objective to maintain a sense of urgency and focus.

For instance, going back to the eco-friendly tech company, the SMART goals might be: 

• Specific : Target residential customers and small businesses to increase the sales of its solar-powered device line by 25%. 
• Measurable : Track monthly sales and monitor customer feedback and reviews. 
• Achievable : Allocate more resources to the marketing, sales, and customer service departments. 
• Relevant : Supports the company's growth goals in a growing market of eco-conscious consumers. 
• Time-bound : Conduct quarterly reviews and achieve this 25% increase in sales over the next 12 months.

With strategic objectives like this, you’ll be ready to put the work into action. 

Related: Project kickoff template

4. Define tactics and responsibilities

In this stage, individuals or units within your team can get granular about how to achieve your goals and who'll be accountable for each step. For example, the senior leadership team might be in charge of assigning specific tasks to their team members, while human resources works on recruiting new talent. 

It’s important to note that everyone’s responsibilities may shift over time as you launch and gather initial data about your project. For this reason, it’s key to define responsibilities with clear short-term metrics for success. This way, you can make sure that your plan is adaptable to changing circumstances. 

One of the more common ways to define tactics and metrics is to use the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) method. By outlining your OKRs, you’ll know exactly what key performance indicators (KPIs) to track and have a framework for analyzing the results once you begin to accumulate relevant data. 

For instance, if our eco-friendly tech company has a goal of increasing sales, one objective might be to expand market reach for its solar-powered products. The sales team lead would be in charge of developing an outreach strategy. The key result would be to successfully launch its products in two new regions by Q2. The KPI would be a 60% conversation rate in those targeted markets.  

Related: OKR planning template  

5. Manage, measure, and evaluate

Once your plan is set into motion, it’s important to actively manage (and measure) progress. Before launching your plan, settle on a management process that allows you to measure success or failure. In this way, everyone is aligned on progress and can come together to evaluate your strategy execution at regular intervals.

Determine the milestones at which you’ll come together and go over results — this can take place weekly, monthly, or quarterly, depending on the nature of the project.

One of the best ways to evaluate progress is through agile retrospectives (or retros) , which can be done in real time or asynchronously. During this process, gather and organize feedback about the key elements that played a role in your strategy. 

Related: Retrospective radar template

Retrospectives are typically divided into three parts:

• What went well.
• What didn’t go well.
• New opportunities for improvement.

This structure is also sometimes called the “ rose, thorn, bud ” framework. By using this approach, team members can collectively brainstorm and categorize their feedback, making the next steps clear and actionable. Creating an action plan during a post-mortem meeting is a crucial step in ensuring that lessons learned from past projects or events are effectively translated into tangible improvements. 

Another method for reviewing progress is the quarterly business review (QBR). Like the agile retrospective, it allows you to collect feedback and adjust accordingly. In the case of QBRs, however, we recommend dividing your feedback into four categories:

• Start (what new items should be launched?).
• Stop (what items need to be paused?).
• Continue (what is going well?).
• Change (what could be modified to perform better?).

Strategic planners know that planning activities continue even after a project is complete. There’s always room for improvement and an action plan waiting to be implemented. Using the above approaches, your team can make room for new ideas within the existing strategic framework in order to track better to your long-term goals.

Related: Quarterly business review template

Conclusions

The beauty of the strategic plan is that it can be applied from the campaign level all the way up to organizational vision. Using the strategic planning framework, you build buy-in , trust, and transparency by collaboratively creating a vision for success, and mapping out the steps together on the road to your goals.

Also, in so doing, you build in an ability to adapt effectively on the fly in response to data through measurement and evaluation, making your plan both flexible and resilient.

Related: 5 Tips for Holding Effective Post-mortems

Why Mural for strategic planning

Mural unlocks collaborative strategic planning through a shared digital space with an intuitive interface, a library of pre-fab templates, and methodologies based on design thinking principles.

Outline goals, identify key metrics, and track progress with a platform built for any enterprise.

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More Like this

What is the difference between a business plan and a strategic plan.

It is not uncommon that the terms ‘strategic plan’ and ‘business plan’ get confused in the business world. While a strategic plan is a type of business plan, there are several important distinctions between the two types that are worth noting. Before beginning your strategic planning process or strategy implementation, look at the article below to learn the key difference between a business vs strategic plan and how each are important to your organization.

Definition of a business plan vs. a strategic plan

A strategic plan is essential for already established organizations looking for a way to manage and implement their strategic direction and future growth. Strategic planning is future-focused and serves as a roadmap to outline where the organization is going over the next 3-5 years (or more) and the steps it will take to get there.

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A strategic plan serves 6 functions for an organization that is striving to reach the next level of their growth:.

• Defines the purpose of the organization.
• Builds on an organization’s competitive advantages.
• Communicates the strategy to the staff.
• Prioritizes the financial needs of the organization.
• Directs the team to move from plan to action.
• Creates long-term sustainability and growth impact

Alternatively, a business plan is used by new businesses or organizations trying to get off the ground. The fundamentals of a business plan focus on setting the foundation for the business or organization. While it looks towards the future, the focus is set more on the immediate future (>1 year). Some of the functions of a business plan may overlap with a strategic plan. However, the focus and intentions diverge in a few key areas.

A business plan for new businesses, projects, or organizations serves these 5 functions:

• Simplifies or explains the objectives and goals of your organization.
• Coordinates human resource management and determines operational requirements.
• Secures funding for your organization.
• Evaluates potential business prospects.
• Creates a framework for conceptualizing ideas.

In other words, a strategic plan is utilized to direct the momentum and growth of an established company or organization. In contrast, a business plan is meant to set the foundation of a newly (or not quite) developed company by setting up its operational teams, strategizing ways to enter a new market, and obtaining funding.

A strategic plan focuses on long-term growth and the organization’s impact on the market and its customers. Meanwhile, a business plan must focus more on the short-term, day-to-day operational functions. Often, new businesses don’t have the capacity or resources to create a strategic plan, though developing a business plan with strategy elements is never a bad idea.

Business and strategic plans ultimately differ in several key areas–timeframe, target audience, focus, resource allocation, nature, and scalability.

While both a strategic and business plan is forward-facing and focused on future success, a business plan is focused on the more immediate future. A business plan normally looks ahead no further than one year. A business plan is set up to measure success within a 3- to 12-month timeframe and determines what steps a business owner needs to take now to succeed.

A strategic plan generally covers the organizational plan over 3 to 5+ years. It is set with future expansion and development in mind and sets up roadmaps for how the organization will reach its desired future state.

Pro Tip: While a vision statement could benefit a business plan, it is essential to a strategic plan.

Target Audience

A strategic plan is for established companies, businesses, organizations, and owners serious about growing their organizations. A strategic plan communicates the organization’s direction to the staff and stakeholders. The strategic plan is communicated to the essential change makers in the organization who will have a hand in making the progress happen.

A business plan could be for new businesses and entrepreneurs who are start-ups. The target audience for the business plan could also be stakeholders, partners, or investors. However, a business plan generally presents the entrepreneur’s ideas to a bank. It is meant to get the necessary people onboard to obtain the funding needed for the project.

A strategic plan provides focus, direction, and action to move the organization from where they are now to where they want to go. A strategic plan may consist of several months of studies, analyses, and other processes to gauge an organization’s current state. The strategy officers may conduct an internal and external analysis, determine competitive advantages, and create a strategy roadmap. They may take the time to redefine their mission, vision, and values statements.

Alternatively, a business plan provides a structure for ideas to define the business initially. It maps out the more tactical beginning stages of the plan.

Pro Tip: A mission statement is useful for business and strategic plans as it helps further define the enterprise’s value and purpose. If an organization never set its mission statement at the beginning stages of its business plan, it can create one for its strategic plan.

A strategic plan is critical to prioritizing resources (time, money, and people) to grow the revenue and increase the return on investment. The strategic plan may start with reallocating current financial resources already being utilized more strategically.

A business plan will focus on the resources the business still needs to obtain, such as vendors, investors, staff, and funding. A business plan is critical if new companies seek funding from banks or investors. It will add accountability and transparency for the organization and tell the funding channels how they plan to grow their business operations and ROI in the first year of the business.

The scalability of a business plan vs. strategic plan

Another way to grasp the difference is by understanding the difference in ‘scale’ between strategic and business plans. Larger organizations with multiple business units and a wide variety of products frequently start their annual planning process with a corporate-driven strategic plan. It is often followed by departmental and marketing plans that work from the Strategic Plan.

Smaller and start-up companies typically use only a business plan to develop all aspects of operations of the business on paper, obtain funding and then start the business.

Why understanding the differences between a business plan vs a strategic plan matters

It is important to know the key differences between the two terms, despite often being used interchangeably. But here’s a simple final explanation:

A business plan explains how a new business will get off the ground. A strategic plan answers where an established organization is going in the future and how they intend to reach that future state.

A strategic plan also focuses on building a sustainable competitive advantage and is futuristic. A business plan is used to assess the viability of a business opportunity and is more tactical.

10 Comments

I agree with your analysis about small companies, but they should do a strategic plan. Just check out how many of the INC 500 companies have an active strategic planning process and they started small. Its about 78%,

Strategic management is a key role of any organization even if belong to small business. it help in growth and also to steam line your values. im agree with kristin.

I agree with what you said, without strategic planning no organization can survive whether it is big or small. Without a clear strategic plan, it is like walking in the darkness.. Best Regards..

Vision, Mission in Business Plan VS Strategic Plan ?

you made a good analysis on strategic plan and Business plan the difference is quite clear now. But on the other hand, it seems that strategic plan and strategic management are similar which I think not correct. Please can you tell us the difference between these two?. Thanks

Thank you. I get points to work on it

super answer Thanking you

Hi. I went through all the discussions, comments and replies. Thanks! I got a very preliminary idea about functions and necessity of Strategic Planning in Business. But currently I am looking for a brief nice, flowery, juicy definition of “Business Strategic Planning” as a whole, which will give anyone a fun and interesting way to understand. Can anyone help me out please? Awaiting replies…… 🙂

that was easy to understand,

Developing a strategic plan either big or small company or organization mostly can’t achieve its goal. A strategic plan or formulation is the first stage of the strategic management plan, therefore, we should be encouraged to develop a strategic management plan. We can develop the best strategic plan but without a clear plan of implementation and evaluation, it will be difficult to achieve goals.

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What Is Business Strategy & Why Is It Important?

• 20 Oct 2022

Every business leader wants their organization to succeed. Turning a profit and satisfying stakeholders are worthy objectives but aren’t feasible without an effective business strategy.

To attain success, leaders must hone their skills and set clear business goals by crafting a strategy that creates value for the firm, customers, suppliers, and employees. Here's an overview of business strategy and why it's essential to your company’s success.

Access your free e-book today.

What’s a Business Strategy?

Business strategy is the strategic initiatives a company pursues to create value for the organization and its stakeholders and gain a competitive advantage in the market. This strategy is crucial to a company's success and is needed before any goods or services are produced or delivered.

According to Harvard Business School Online's Business Strategy course, an effective strategy is built around three key questions:

• How can my business create value for customers?
• How can my business create value for employees?
• How can my business create value by collaborating with suppliers?

Many promising business initiatives don’t come to fruition because the company failed to build its strategy around value creation. Creativity is important in business , but a company won't last without prioritizing value.

The Importance of Business Strategy

A business strategy is foundational to a company's success. It helps leaders set organizational goals and gives companies a competitive edge. It determines various business factors, including:

• Price: How to price goods and services based on customer satisfaction and cost of raw materials
• Suppliers: Whether to source materials sustainably and from which suppliers
• Employee recruitment: How to attract and maintain talent
• Resource allocation: How to allocate resources effectively

Without a clear business strategy, a company can't create value and is unlikely to succeed.

Creating Value

To craft a successful business strategy, it's necessary to obtain a thorough understanding of value creation. In the online course Business Strategy , Harvard Business School Professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee explains that, at its core, value represents a difference. For example, the difference between a customer's willingness to pay for a good or service and its price represents the value the business has created for the customer. This difference can be visualized with a tool known as the value stick.

The value stick has four components, representing the value a strategy can bring different stakeholders.

• Willingness to pay (WTP) : The maximum amount a customer is willing to pay for a company's goods or services
• Price : The actual price of the goods or services
• Cost : The cost of the raw materials required to produce the goods or services
• Willingness to sell (WTS) : The lowest amount suppliers are willing to receive for raw materials, or the minimum employees are willing to earn for their work

The difference between each component represents the value created for each stakeholder. A business strategy seeks to widen these gaps, increasing the value created by the firm’s endeavors.

Increasing Customer Delight

The difference between a customer's WTP and the price is known as customer delight . An effective business strategy creates value for customers by raising their WTP or decreasing the price of the company’s goods or services. The larger the difference between the two, the more value is created for customers.

A company might focus on increasing WTP with its marketing strategy. Effective market research can help a company set its pricing strategy by determining target customers' WTP and finding ways to increase it. For example, a business might differentiate itself and increase customer loyalty by incorporating sustainability into its business strategy. By aligning its values with its target audiences', an organization can effectively raise consumers' WTP.

Increasing Firm Margin

The value created for the firm is the difference between the price of an item and its cost to produce. This difference is known as the firm’s margin and represents the strategy's financial success. One metric used to quantify this margin is return on invested capital (ROIC) . This metric compares a business's operating income with the capital necessary to generate it. The formula for ROIC is:

Return on Invested Capital = Net Operating Cost After Tax (NOCAT) / Invested Capital (IC)

ROIC tells investors how successful a company is at turning its investments into profit. By raising WTP, a company can risk increasing prices, thereby increasing firm margin. Business leaders can also increase this metric by decreasing their costs. For example, sustainability initiatives—in addition to raising WTP—can lower production costs by using fewer or more sustainable resources. By focusing on the triple bottom line , a firm can simultaneously increase customer delight and margin.

Increasing Supplier Surplus & Employee Satisfaction

By decreasing suppliers' WTS, or increasing costs, a company can create value for suppliers—or supplier surplus . Since increasing costs isn't sustainable, an effective business strategy seeks to create value for suppliers by decreasing WTS. How a company accomplishes this varies. For example, a brick-and-mortar company might partner with vendors to showcase its products in exchange for a discount. Suppliers may also be willing to offer a discount in exchange for a long-term contract.

In addition to supplier WTS, companies are also responsible for creating value for another key stakeholder: its employees. The difference between employee compensation and the minimum they're willing to receive is employee satisfaction . There are several ways companies can increase this difference, including:

• Increasing compensation: While most companies hesitate to raise salaries, some have found success in doing so. For example, Dan Price, CEO of Gravity Payments, increased his company's minimum wage to $80,000 per year and enjoyed substantial growth and publicity as a result.
• Increasing benefits: Companies can also decrease WTS by making working conditions more desirable to prospective employees. Some offer remote or hybrid working opportunities to give employees more flexibility. Several have also started offering four-day work weeks , often experiencing increased productivity as a result.

There are several ways to increase supplier surplus and employee satisfaction without hurting the company's bottom line. Unfortunately, most managers only devote seven percent of their time to developing employees and engaging stakeholders. Yet, a successful strategy creates value for every stakeholder—both internal and external.

Strategy Implementation

Crafting a business strategy is just the first step in the process. Implementation takes a strategy from formulation to execution . Successful implementation includes the following steps :

• Establish clear goals and key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Set expectations and ensure employees are aware of their roles and responsibilities
• Delegate work and allocate resources effectively
• Put the plan into action and continuously monitor its progress
• Adjust your plan as necessary
• Ensure your team has what they need to succeed and agrees on the desired outcome
• Evaluate the results of the plan

Throughout the process, it's important to remember to adjust your plan throughout its execution but to avoid second-guessing your decisions. Striking this balance is challenging, but crucial to a business strategy's success.

Learn More About Creating a Successful Business Strategy

Business strategy constantly evolves with changing consumer expectations and market conditions. For this reason, business leaders should continuously educate themselves on creating and executing an effective strategy.

One of the best ways to stay up-to-date on best practices is to take an online course, such as HBS Online's Business Strategy program. The course will provide guidance on creating a value-driven strategy for your business.

Do you want to learn how to craft an effective business strategy and create value for your company's stakeholders? Explore our online course Business Strategy , or other strategy courses , to develop your strategic planning skills. To determine which strategy course is right for you, download our free flowchart .

About the Author

What is a Business Plan? Definition, Tips, and Templates

Published: June 28, 2024

Years ago, I had an idea to launch a line of region-specific board games. I knew there was a market for games that celebrated local culture and heritage. I was so excited about the concept and couldn't wait to get started.

But my idea never took off. Why? Because I didn‘t have a plan. I lacked direction, missed opportunities, and ultimately, the venture never got off the ground.

And that’s exactly why a business plan is important. It cements your vision, gives you clarity, and outlines your next step.

In this post, I‘ll explain what a business plan is, the reasons why you’d need one, identify different types of business plans, and what you should include in yours.

Table of Contents

What is a business plan?

What is a business plan used for.

• Business Plan Template [Download Now]

Purposes of a Business Plan

What does a business plan need to include, types of business plans.

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A business plan is a comprehensive document that outlines a company's goals, strategies, and financial projections. It provides a detailed description of the business, including its products or services, target market, competitive landscape, and marketing and sales strategies. The plan also includes a financial section that forecasts revenue, expenses, and cash flow, as well as a funding request if the business is seeking investment.

The business plan is an undeniably critical component to getting any company off the ground. It's key to securing financing, documenting your business model, outlining your financial projections, and turning that nugget of a business idea into a reality.

The purpose of a business plan is three-fold: It summarizes the organization’s strategy in order to execute it long term, secures financing from investors, and helps forecast future business demands.

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What Is a Strategic Business Plan?

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• Business Planning & Strategy
• Strategic Business Plans
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Objectives in Workforce Planning

Projected profit and loss statement, rationales for marketing strategies.

• How to Find a DSL Modem's IP Address
• Why Is the Business Research Process Necessary to Assist Managers?

Long-term strategic business planning is necessary for company growth and success, explains Entrepreneur magazine . Business plans provide companies with the tools to track growth, establish a budget and prepare for unforeseen changes in the market place. A strategic business plan focuses on long-term growth objectives, rather than near-term operating goals and addresses different business strategy types.

A strategic plan includes many elements a business can utilize to attract financing and manage company objectives. To optimize strategic business planning, businesses must clearly define company goals and conduct extensive research to properly understand industry trends. Looking at different strategic planning models will help you decide how to set long-term goals for your small business.

What is a Strategic Business Plan?

A strategic business plan is a written document that pairs the objectives of a company with the needs of the market place. Although a strategic business plan contains similar elements of a traditional plan, a strategic plan takes planning a step further by not only defining company goals but utilizing those goals to take advantage of available business opportunities.

This is achieved by carefully analyzing a particular business industry and being honest about your company's strength and weakness in meeting the needs of the industry. A strategic business plan is followed by tactical plans to help achieve the strategic goals.

Reasons for Strategics Plans

A strategic business plan is necessary to optimize market research and to attain optimum market share for your business. The plan allows businesses to focus on a particular niche in the marketplace, which makes sales, advertising and customer management more effective. The plan allows a company to know as much as possible about the needs of its customers and gaps in the marketplace that need to be filled. A strategic business plan helps a company provide better, more targeted service to its clients.

Strategy vs. Tactics

A strategic business plan might set a goal of diversification for the business. Tactics for achieving this strategic goal might include acquiring a business with different product lines, or adding new products to the company's line. For example, a tennis racquet manufacturer might decided to add strings to its product line, either acquiring a string maker or sourcing its own strings.

A strategic business plan includes extensive market research, industry trends and competitor analyses. A strategic plan will include the components of a traditional plan, such as an executive summary, marketing analysis and financial statements, but a strategic plan will be more specific on how the company will go about achieving company goals.

For example, a strategic business plan will attempt to identify a target market, narrow it down to a manageable size, and establish a strategy for acquiring those customers.

Benefits of Strategic Business Plans

Writing a strategic business plan has many advantages. The plan can serve as an outline for successful completion of company milestones. Company owners are in a better position to not only understand their business but become experts in their industries.

A strategic plan helps executives understand the direction in which their company is headed by reviewing past progress and making changes to improve and grow. The plan is an organizational tool that helps to keep a company on track to meet growth and financial objectives.

Misconceptions About These Plans

Many small business owners feel that strategic business plans are for large companies and big businesses. However, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration, a strategic business plan can benefit companies of all sizes and can be a great advantage to small businesses. Small businesses may utilize different types of planning activities to develop the strategies necessary to attract and retain the customers it needs to succeed.

• Entrepreneur.com: Building a Strategy Pyramid

Sherrie Scott is a freelance writer in Las Vegas with articles appearing on various websites. She studied political science at Arizona State University and her education has inspired her to write with integrity and seek precision in all that she does.

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Why create a business plan, business planning & analysis, the importance of a business plan, what is the meaning of corporate planning, differences between strategy, plans and tactics, difference between business plan & strategic plan, tactical and operational planning, how does a business strategy differ from strategic marketing management, business enterprise planning, most popular.

• 1 Why Create a Business Plan?
• 2 Business Planning & Analysis
• 3 The Importance of a Business Plan
• 4 What Is the Meaning of Corporate Planning?

PWW Insights and Intelligence Blog

Published: September 6, 2019

Dime-a-dozen strategic business plans carry dime-a-dozen results. When creating their organization’s long-term strategic priorities, too many leaders fall victim to templates lacking the substantive measures needed to steer toward a brighter business future — or any future, for that matter.

Worse, others may become overwhelmed with the perceived complexity of the task. Strategic planning’s onus of breaking abstract and lofty visions into measurable daily actions is straightforward in theory, yet time-consuming and resource-intensive in practice, no matter what the leading management theories say.

There is a better way to create a strategic business plan tailored to your organization’s DNA, one that’s devisable, deployable and — ultimately — value-additive for your authentic enterprise growth.

How to Create a Strategic Business Plan: The Foundation

Several terms illustrate the core tenets of a strategic business plan.

• Vision: What do we want our company to look like in one, two, five, 10 years? In other words, what ideal successes, accomplishments and accolades do we want to develop a reputation for?
• Focus areas: How can we get where we want to be? What high-level feats or domains do we want to accomplish that’ll lend a long-term competitive advantage?
• Objectives: How will we scaffold those goals? What substantial start-and-stop activities pave the foundation for a successfully forged focus area?
• Initiatives: What everyday projects and operations will help us gradually achieve our objectives? How will we translate high-level ideas into a set of everyday, operational projects?
• Outcomes: How will we know we’ve completed an objective? How will we track, measure, benchmark and report KPIs across initiatives?

Creating a strategic business plan means developing a template that implements these concepts, then communicates them with all relevant business stakeholders.

Where to Begin When Building a New Business Plan

We’re all familiar with the two-day retreat booked off-premises — the one where business leaders meet, drink coffee and prepare the official annual strategic plan before returning to their offices to commence business as usual. That concept is inherently flawed, because it’s impossible to master business maturity in two days.

The most successful business strategic plans take shape gradually, initiated after a series of competitive intelligence, market research and qualitative analysis benchmarks where your organization is now — versus where it can go.

1. Perform Intelligence-Based External Assessments

Market research reveals various angles to your organization’s current strengths, weaknesses and risk categories. It also compares your operations and structures to competitors in your industry, providing authoritative and data-backed analyses to benchmark capacities.

Without conducting any prior competitive intelligence, your strategic plans have no roadmap designating where your business currently operates and where it strives to go.

Consider any of the following competitive intelligence strategic research before creating any official plan documents.

• Scenario planning: Scenario planning presents a broad, yet methodical, range of circumstances that may agitate your business operations and endeavors. These include industry and market disruptions , competitor breakthroughs, technological advancements and even geopolitical instances that could affect your industry, allowing you to plan accordingly.
• War gaming: War gaming is a set of guided role-playing exercises where organizations immerse themselves into the business models of their top competitors. Businesses can then better preempt the actions and strategies of those competitors, using briefings, market data and additional resources to get ahead of the opposition.
• Competitive profiling: Competitive market assessments see the most productive results through partnering with a strategic planning and market research firm. These firms deliver customized reports that detail your relative competitive position compared to others in the market , therefore empowering smarter investments and resource allocation to detect blind spots, close gaps and establish new opportunities — the goal of any robust strategic plan.

2. Select a Business Strategy Framework

Business strategy frameworks help document the perceived value you provide your customers. More importantly, they detail how you deliver that value — cataloging the products, policies, procedures, personnel and more that make up the anatomy of your operations.

You cannot implement a successful strategic plan altering the course of your business’ future without first pausing to know where you are: your strengths, weaknesses, past performances, etc.

Organizations assess their DNA through one of many strategic planning frameworks:

• Transformational business modeling
• SWOT analysis
• Porter’s five forces
• PESTLE model
• Balanced scorecard methodology
• And dozens more

3. Institutionalize Performance Measuring

Organizations must implement the infrastructure needed to manage, support and refine KPI measurements.

Without such technologies and systems, your organization has no way to hold itself accountable for any initiatives devised under the strategic plan.

Performance measurements for a strategic plan should:

• Be valid and verifiable
• Measure a specific value or business unit
• Inspire desired employee outcomes or behaviors
• Aggregate simply and intuitively, unburdening employees from undue manual data collection practices
• Ultimately answer specific, strategic questions guiding decision-makers toward improved business plans

Best Practices to Create a Successful Strategic Business Plan

There is no objective, “one-size-fits-all” business planning model. Strategic plans must be hand-drawn to the organization spearheading it, with steps, inputs, outputs and procedures as distinct as your handprint.

There are, however, a series of fundamental variables that must guide ideas from abstract to implementable. Follow these best practices to set the stage for more actionable, intelligent and executable strategic business plans.

1. Appoint a Cross-Functional Strategic Planning Team

A genuinely cross-functional team contains representatives from every major business department within your organizational structure. These include, but are not limited to:

• Human resources
• Financial planning and accounting
• Research and development

Ensuring all departments have a seat at the strategic planning table is the only way to account for the nebulous perspectives, processes, pain points and priorities that make up the daily operations of a business.

2. Identify Your Primary Focus Areas

Focus areas are the defining goals of your strategic plan. Think of them as a strategic plan’s north stars, the loftier tenets of your plan guiding the upcoming smaller list of pre-planned, individual objectives, initiatives and measurement KPIs. As separate efforts see completion, you step closer toward accomplishing the focus area.

The average strategic plan will contain anywhere from three to six focus areas prorated across three to five years . Those focus areas themselves will waterfall into half a dozen to a dozen concentrated objectives.

It’s essential to have a cross-functional leadership team devise primary focus areas as early as possible, using organizational values as their compass. These focus areas set the stage and will trigger the formation of more granular objectives and initiatives down the road, harmonizing short-term activities with the cited long-term vision.

3. Translate Objectives Into S.M.A.R.T. Goals

S.M.A.R.T. goals have been in the business lexicon for decades. The popularity and continued deployment of this framework is a testament to its nature, which takes abstract and often intangible focus areas and scaffolds them in practical actions, otherwise known as objectives.

S.M.A.R.T. goals have the following components.

• Specific: The goal pertains to a single topic, domain or interest.
• Measurable: The goal has a quantitative perimeter.
• Actionable: It’s possible to initiate the goal with your organization’s current capacities.
• Reasonable: The goal is logical for your market position, resources and values.
• Timely: The goal has a deadline.

Begin cataloging each of your focus domains into one- to two-sentence S.M.A.R.T. objectives. For example, let’s say your organization selects “Financial growth: increasing gross revenue” as a focus area. The S.M.A.R.T. objective of that focus area may then be, “Experience three consecutive monthly recurring revenues of $100,000 within the next 12 months.”

4. Review Budgets

Budget forecasting must run tangential to strategic planning.

In particular, the planning team must begin to consider current versus prospective resource allocation, given the priorities outlined in the S.M.A.R.T. objectives.

You don’t have to funnel every last dollar toward strategic planning goals, yet you should still set up a system that tracks current budget requirements, trends and spend strengths and weaknesses to inform better resource allocation along the plan’s three- to five-year timetable. Reviewing financial allotments during annual and even quarterly budgeting cycles may not cut it when it comes to intelligent strategic planning.

5. Include Relevant Departments and Employees to Cascade Specific Initiatives

Too many strategic plans fail due to siloed departments and unstructured communications. Representatives on the strategic planning committee must make it a priority to collaborate with their teams to relay all relevant focus areas, S.M.A.R.T objectives and budget reprioritizations.

This best practice also allows objectives to transform into their next progression: initiatives. Initiatives will be the micro-projects, action items and process changes executed at the departmental level that, eventually, deliver on the S.M.A.R.T objective. In short, it’s the actual, daily operational changes that will bring about strategic transformation — the mini “sprints” that complete the strategy marathon.

Employee ideation and feedback are imperative here. These are the individuals in the thick of your operations. You can only successfully realize tactical goals when they align with the everyday lived reality of your workforce — which you only aggregate if you rope them in.

Take the objective from earlier: “Experience three consecutive monthly recurring revenues (MRRs) of $100,000 within the next 12 months.” Interdepartmental insight may scaffold a series of initiatives to reach this MRR target, including the following.

• Production: Reduce the average cycle time of per-unit production from 30 minutes to 25 minutes.
• Accounts receivable: Reduce the average order transaction processing time from five minutes to three minutes by implementing more automated authorizations.
• Sales: Increase upsell rates by 15% among repeat customers.
• Marketing: Roll out a new A/B test strategy on key sales pages.
• Sales, marketing, production: Offer a new upmarket service line, subscription or product package.

6. Don’t Forget to Assign Key Performance Indicators to Every Initiative

Performance measurements communicate progress on objectives to teams and stakeholders alike. For every objective outlined under each focus area, you may devise multiple KPIs giving qualitative, expressive measures on the development of that objective — in turn relaying granular feedback on what’s succeeding and what needs more focus.

Structure your strategic planning KPIs to include the following.

• A measure: The unit of progress for a business action item.
• A benchmark: Outside market or industry data to compare KPIs to — and one of the many reasons to perform routine competitive analyses .
• A data source: The system you use to aggregate and store data.
• A report frequency: The amount and means by which you share KPI data.

7. Create a Strategic Plan Dashboard Accessible to All

Strategic planning dashboards create a visual representation of the strategic business plan, complete with every initiative, input and process change, as well as what objective they’re under. They most often live within an employee-accessible project management tracker or strategy management software.

That representation is cohesive, yet comprehensive. It serves as the project management-like repository for every component building up to the core focus areas of the strategic plan, while also creating a breadcrumb trail of accountability and workflows.

8. Continually Evaluate Performance Data

KPI reviews are an ongoing endeavor, not a one-and-done activity by a sole team member. In the strategic management maturity model, organizations which execute frequent and fluid KPI evaluations move closer to the fifth and highest level of business maturity evolution , continuous improvement.

Regular performance data reviews also empower organizations to refine initiatives they initially forecasted to contribute to an objective’s completion, but are proving to underperform. The earlier organizations spot these data discrepancies, the sooner they can take steps to put the strategic plan timeline back on track.

9. Prioritize Downstream Communication Before Plan Changes

If KPI analysis reveals any gaps or discrepancies, funnel them back into the initiatives occuring in the micro-environment. Before implementing them, though, department leaders must communicate these adaptations as well as their KPI-driven logic to their teams, ensuring buy-in and smooth re-implementation of the redefined action items.

Remember, your entire strategic plan — with its focus areas, objectives and building-block initiatives — takes shape across years, not months or weeks. Frequent departmental status meetings may seem like an endless game of management-employee ping-pong, but they are essential to keep your strategic plan execution on track.

Select change communication strategies that fit your organizational culture and structure:

• Granular departmental strategic planning meetings reviewing KPIs and new initiative directions
• One-on-one meetings between managers and team members
• Department-wide email memos and reviews
• Reports from project management offices or the office of strategy management , within project management software or similar digital strategy platforms

10. Consider Ongoing Accountability Efforts

Strategic planning consultants or firms provide a suite of services complementary to every stage of strategic planning.

Insights drawn from their research services are valuable to review before drafting a tactical business plan and during plan implementation, as well as when maintaining and managing business improvements in the post-objective achievement phase.

At their core, strategic planning firms profile clients’ strengths, weaknesses, growth areas, competitive differentiation opportunities and much more. They deliver quantitative and qualitative data that leverages superior strategic insights into:

• User experience and voice-of-customer surveys and reports
• Competitive research profiles and market assessment
• Risk scenario planning
• And much more

8 Strategic Business Planning Tips to Adopt Today

With its surgical ability to cut through the noise and establish shared goals, few initiatives harmonize people, processes and technology like intelligent strategic business planning.

The tenets of a strategic plan will naturally vary, yet several business planning best practices consistently boost implementation rates.

1. Strategic Thinking Is Not Strategic Planning

Which team member would you prefer to have: the long-term critical thinker with genuinely innovative ideas, yet rare follow-through, or the methodical practitioner, the one who goes above and beyond in their work ethic, but may not make vocal contributions to a strategic vision?

Lightbulb moments of tactical brilliance have a time and a place. However, ideas must walk the walk and talk the talk. Leaders must be able to translate focus areas into enterprise-enriching objectives with clear outcomes and performance measurements. Anything less merely spins the strategic wheels without traction.

2. Set up Feedback Channels

Strategic planning relies on the comprehension, participation and overall buy-in of downstream employees in every department. Make it clear you value their input. After all, these employees perform the everyday work across a plan’s implementation steps and initiatives, which are the building blocks to complete a strategic objective.

Create two-way feedback channels for staff to lend their thoughts and insights. Send out surveys to temperature-check the latest projects’ strengths, pain points and processes that may need adjustment. Encourage department and team leaders to conduct one-on-one sessions with their employees to garner feedback on the everyday reality of executing the strategic plans . These insights are invaluable in creating a smoother strategic planning pipeline, today and tomorrow.

3. Make Meetings Granular

Many organizations practice the default annual or quarterly strategic report. While these are vital presentations, ongoing strategic planning is more successful when holding smaller, more frequent meetings at the departmental and executive level.

These meetings should focus on only a handful of projects or initiatives, ones cascading toward a higher strategic objective — rather than just jumping to the abstract goals or reviewing the entire broad swath of the plan itself.

4. Adopt a Business Strategy, Then Worry About Making It Agile

Continuous business planning — compared to ad-hoc static or even structured, but reactive, planning— is the goal of many organizations. Standardized, ongoing planning allows organizations to change objectives on the fly without unraveling the strands of the entire plan.

Strategic planning must walk before it can run. Evolving up the strategic management maturity model into the continuous improvement category is a process that takes time, commitment, tweaks and recurring competitive market research to ground your business vision in reality.

5. Invest in Training

Schedule employee training at the onset of your strategic planning timelines. Doing so ensures the employees executing daily strategic initiatives are fluent and familiar with the tools they need to actually perform their roles.

Consider employee trainings for any of the following:

• New technology integral to strategic initiative execution, including strategy management software or new project management trackers
• New project workflows
• New performance measurement trackers, reports and data systems
• Any additional new infrastructure related to the execution of strategic priorities

6. Remember Your Customers/Clients

Customer insights inform some of the highest-value, propelling and profitable strategic priorities. Ensure your leaders aren’t putting the blinders on, creating insular objectives detached from real-world end users. Perform regular customer insight research such as voice-of-customer surveys and user experience syndications. You will enrich your short- and long-term plans as a result.

7. Integrate Continual Competitive Research and Market Assessments

Like voice-of-customer and user experience, competitive intelligence (CI) empowers businesses to create hyper-tactical and hyper-appropriate strategic objectives informed by market positions.

CI and strategic planning are like sparks and tinder. Data from CI and market analysis serves to ignite the very issues, gaps and opportunities a strategic plan remedies, including:

• Articulating your current strong market segments
• Pinpointing your top competitive threats
• Identifying strategies to mitigate, if not beat, those threats
• Narrowing paths and strategic choices to achieve competitive differentiators — e.g., the strategic plan

Partnering with a professional CI and market research firm  yields the most robust — and actionable — research. These consultants create detailed profiles pinpointing exact strength and growth areas, then assist in creating milestone roadmaps that close those gaps and propel strategic action.

8. Keep Principles and Values First

Strategic planning is more organic and more primed for success when its objectives align with company culture. These values are the DNA of your company. Reference them when developing your short- and long-term strategies, and those strategies will be far more likely to stick.

Need a Map Through Your Business’ Strategic Maze?

Explore Proactive Worldwide’s portfolio of strategic planning services .

Proactive Worldwide specializes in personalized research packages, deployment models and overall strategic planning consultancy and support for organizations that have had enough of shapeless strategic plans. By personalized, we mean personalized — no client receives the same pre-published market findings, data sets or regurgitated transformation templates.

Reach out when you’re ready to move beyond basic business strategy .

What can we help you achieve?

Get in touch with our market intelligence company today to start planning for the future of your organization.

• Financial Advisor

Financial Planning Basics

Updated: Jun 26, 2024, 4:51pm

No matter the size or scope of your financial goals, a financial plan can help make them a reality.

Financial planning is the process of looking at the current state of your finances and making a step-by-step plan to get it where you want it to be. That may mean devising a plan to become debt-free or figuring out how to save enough money for a down payment on a new home.

This process can include many aspects of personal finance, including investing, debt repayment, building savings, planning for retirement and even purchasing insurance.

Anyone can engage in financial planning—it’s not just for the wealthy. You can get started on making financial goals on your own, and if you choose, you can work with a financial professional to help devise the smartest plan to make those goals a reality.

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5 Steps to Create a Financial Plan

A financial plan is devised of smaller goals or tasks that will help support you along your financial journey. Create a financial plan with these five steps:

1. Identify Your Financial Goals

By identifying your financial goals, you’ll have a clear idea of what you need to accomplish to make them happen. Your goals should be realistic and actionable and include a timeline of when you want to accomplish them.

Making a goal to pay off credit card debt by a certain date, for example, would be an appropriate financial goal that will set you up for success.

2. Set a Budget

Having a clear picture of your finances will make it easier to achieve any financial goals. A budget can help you understand where your money is going each month. It can also help you identify where you may be overspending, giving you opportunities to cut back and allocate that money elsewhere.

One of the easiest budgets to start with is the 50/30/20 budget . This budget plan allocates your monthly income into three buckets: mandatory expenses (50%), savings and debt repayment (20%) and discretionary spending (30%). This is just one of many types of budgeting plans out there.

A budget should be a guide to help you understand your monthly finances and devise smaller goals that will bring you closer to your long-term financial goals. You likely won’t always follow your budget down to every single penny; keeping this in mind will help you stay on track, rather than get discouraged and give up on budgeting altogether.

There are apps out there that make budgeting much easier by helping you visualize your spending and savings choices each month. Some budgeting apps even give you the option to enter your financial goals directly into their platform to help you stay on track. A fully featured budgeting app allows you to track spending, manage recurring bill payments, set savings goals and manage your monthly cash flow.

3. Build an Emergency Fund

Building an emergency fund will help make sure that a financial emergency doesn’t become a catastrophic financial event.

Experts usually recommend having six months’ worth of living expenses saved to cushion you, should the unfortunate unexpected happen, such as losing a job. But six months’ worth of money can be unattainable for those who may be struggling financially, or those living in tight financial means each month.

You can start building an emergency fund by setting a few dollars aside each paycheck. You can start with a small fund goal of $100 to $200 to establish your fund. From there, you can create other smaller goals that will add up to a larger financial cushion. Some budgeting and savings apps also give you the option of rounding up to the nearest dollar in transactions and funnel that spare change toward your savings.

4. Reduce Your Debt

Having to make debt payments each month means you’ll have less money to allocate toward your purchase goals. Plus, carrying credit card debt can be expensive; every month, you’re accruing interest on your balance, which can make it take longer to pay off.

There are a variety of debt payoff methods out there. Two of the most popular include the debt snowball and debt avalanche methods . With the snowball method, you’ll pay off your smallest balance debts first, then make your way to the ones with the higher balances. The debt avalanche, on the other hand, starts with higher interest rate debts first.

5. Invest for the Future

Although risky, investing can help grow your money, even if you’re not wealthy. You can get started with investing by enrolling in your company’s 401(k) plan or opening a low-or-no fee account through an online broker .

Keep in mind that investing always involves some risk; you could end up losing the money you invest. There are also robo-advisors that automatically recommend investments based on your goals and risk tolerance.

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Bottom Line

A financial plan is composed of a series of smaller goals that will help you achieve a larger financial goal, such as purchasing a home or retiring comfortably. A solid financial plan includes identifying your goals, creating a budget, building an emergency fund, paying off high interest debt and investing.

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Jordan Tarver has spent seven years covering mortgage, personal loan and business loan content for leading financial publications such as Forbes Advisor. He blends knowledge from his bachelor's degree in business finance, his experience as a top performer in the mortgage industry and his entrepreneurial success to simplify complex financial topics. Jordan aims to make mortgages and loans understandable.

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Paramount to cut 15 percent of u.s. workforce in major layoff plan.

The company is also exploring “potential strategic partnerships” for Paramount+ and is reevaluating its portfolio with an eye to improving its balance sheet. 

By Caitlin Huston

Caitlin Huston

Business Writer

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Paramount continued to push forward on its $500 million cost-savings plan and goal of reaching sustained profitability in streaming by 2025, in the company’s first earnings report since the Skydance deal was announced. 

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Paramount Global had 21,900 employees worldwide as of the end of 2023, but eliminated an estimated 800 positions in February.

The company is also exploring “potential strategic partnerships” for Paramount+ and is in active discussion with “multiple parties” in an effort to reach sustained profitability on the service. Management said this could include licensing as well as joint ventures or partnerships. Paramount is also reevaluating its portfolio with an eye to improving its balance sheet. 

“The set of assets that make up Paramount Global today were built up through the rise of linear and while we have strong brands and businesses, we must reshape our portfolio to best compete in the future,” said Paramount co-CEO Chris McCarthy. “The assets under consideration are undeniably strong with exciting futures ahead, but will be better served on their own or as the centerpiece of another business.”

The $500 million is included in the $2 billion of cost efficiencies identified by Skydance. In connection with these actions, Paramount expects to incur a restructuring charge of approximately $300 million to $400 million in the third quarter, with the cash impact occurring over the next several quarters.

In the company’s second-quarter earnings report, Paramount reported direct-to-consumer revenue up 13 percent year-over-year to reach $1.8 billion and an adjusted profit figure of $26 million, after a loss of $424 million a year ago. The change in income was attributed to the revenue growth and lower costs for marketing and content.

Overall, Paramount reported an operating loss of $5.3 billion, after a loss of $250 million a year ago. The company attributed the change to a “goodwill impairment” charge of $5.98 billion for its cable networks reporting unit, which comes amid the estimated company market value for Paramount amid the Skydance offer and a decline in pay TV.

Revenue fell 11 percent year-over-year to $6.8 billion, with a 17 percent drop in revenue in the company’s TV Media division and an 18 percent drop in filmed entertainment. The drop in TV revenue was largely attributed to fluctuations in licensing revenues, which dropped 48 percent, as well as declines in the linear advertising market.

While helped by the releases of IF and A Quiet Place: Day One , theatrical revenues suffered by comparison to the release of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts in the prior year.

Within the company’s streaming segment, subscription revenue grew 12 percent, which the company said was driven by year-over-year subscriber growth and pricing increases for Paramount+, while advertising revenue rose 16 percent, due to growth in Paramount+ and Pluto TV. Paramount+ revenue is up 46 percent year-over-year.  

On July 7, Shari Redstone agreed to sell control of Paramount Global to a consortium led by Skydance, the production company helmed by David Ellison, and Gerry Cardinale’s RedBird Capital.

If a serious bidder emerges, the go-shop period can be extended to Sept. 5, per the filing. However, if Paramount does not choose to go with the Skydance offer, it will be forced to pay a $400 million breakup fee. If the transaction is approved, it is expected to be completed in the first half of 2025.

In the interim, Paramount co-CEO Brian Robbins said the company is consulting with Skydance on “very specific, limited things,” but that the company has been supportive of their strategic plan.

“Our strong performance in Q2 demonstrates that we are delivering on our strategic priorities. We are proud of our results, including significant earnings growth largely driven by our DTC segment. In fact, for the fourth year in a row, Paramount+ is leading the industry in domestic sign-ups driven by our big broad hit TV series and blockbuster films. DTC profit growth for the past four quarters has totaled nearly $900 million and we are on track to reach domestic profitability for Paramount+ in 2025,” the company’s co-CEOs, George Cheeks, Chris McCarthy and Brian Robbins, said in a statement.

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Trump wants to cut Social Security taxes for seniors. It's not as good as it sounds.

• Former President Donald Trump proposed ending taxes on Social Security benefits for older adults.
• Experts say the policy could increase the deficit by $1.6 trillion and deplete the program's funds.
• Millions of American boomers are already struggling to get by on limited savings and fixed incomes.

Former President Donald Trump said that if he's elected, he'd cut taxes on Social Security benefits for older Americans — but the policy risks shrinking those funds sooner than expected.

In a Wednesday interview on " Fox & Friends ," the Republican presidential nominee said he plans to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits, which apply to all individuals with a household income above $25,000. This group pays income tax on 50% of their benefits, and people with a higher income are often taxed more.

"We can do a lot of things to help the people," Trump said during the interview. "People on Social Security are being killed, and one of the things I'm doing is no tax for seniors on Social Security, and I'll get it done quickly."

Trump had previously pitched his plan to eliminate taxes on Social Security, writing on his social-media platform Truth Social on July 31: "SENIORS SHOULD NOT PAY TAX ON SOCIAL SECURITY!"

Some experts have criticized the plan. Garrett Watson, a senior policy analyst at The Tax Foundation, published a blog on August 2 calling the proposal to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits "unsound and fiscally irresponsible," arguing that doing so would increase the deficit by about $1.6 trillion over 10 years and cause the Social Security and Medicare trust funds to dry up more quickly.

According to the latest Social Security and Medicare Trustees report, the program will be able to pay out full benefits for 11 more years , after which they will shrink if Congress doesn't act to increase funding. The average monthly Social Security check in 2024 is about $1,780, and many baby boomers rely on Medicare as their only source of health insurance.

Business Insider has talked to several boomers without retirement savings , many of whom are falling behind on bills or forgoing retirement entirely. According to the Census Bureau's Population Survey, over half of older adults in the US have an annual income of  $30,000 or less .

While tax breaks might help in the short term, boomers are scared their Social Security benefits could be significantly cut in the next decade. With Trump's proposed policy, it's a risk.

"It scares us to death because we'll still be here, God-willing," a boomer in Illinois previously told BI. "How are we to survive?"

Trump has vowed not to cut Social Security

Trump has previously taken a strong position on Social Security — one at odds with many members of his own party who have faced criticism from Democrats for calling for Social Security cuts. For example, Trump said in January 2023 that "under no circumstances should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security."

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"Cut waste, fraud and abuse everywhere that we can find it and there is plenty, there's plenty of it," he said in a video message. "But do not cut the benefits our seniors worked for and paid for their entire lives. Save Social Security, don't destroy it."

Trump's platform, which was adopted by the Republican National Committee, vowed to preserve Social Security and Medicare benefits while ensuring there would be no cuts or changes to the retirement age. Older adults can start collecting Social Security at age 62 right now, and the official retirement age is typically 67, though it varies slightly by birth year.

Even with Trump's pledge to protect retirees' benefits, Democratic lawmakers have continued to criticize the GOP and some of their proposals to change the program by raising the retirement age.

"As long as I am President, I will keep strengthening Social Security and Medicare and protecting them from Republicans' attempts to cut benefits Americans have earned," Biden said in a May statement .

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has not yet released a policy outline on Social Security, but she's expected to continue Biden's work to expand Social Security benefits and to protect Medicare and the Affordable Care Act .

Watch: The biggest revelations from Trump's tax returns

• Main content

Trump's bitcoin stockpile plan stirs debate in cryptoverse

"Never sell your bitcoin," Donald Trump told a cheering crowd at a crypto convention in Nashville in late July.

The Republican presidential candidate's  speech  was the latest overture in his effort to court crypto-focused voters ahead of November's election and offered a bevy of campaign promises, including a plan for a state bitcoin reserve.

"If elected, it will be the policy of my administration to keep 100% of all the bitcoin the U.S. government currently holds or acquires into the future," Trump said, adding the funds would serve as the "core of the strategic national bitcoin stockpile ."

Indeed, Trump isn't the only one with such a proposal. U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis has introduced legislation that would see the U.S. government purchase 1 million bitcoins, around 5% of the total supply, while independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has suggested a government stockpile of 4 million bitcoins.

The rise of crypto ETFs: How to invest in digital currency without buying coins

A strategic reserve would be one use for the massive amount of bitcoin held by the U.S. government. The jury's out on what it would be used for, whether it's feasible, or if it's even welcome for the broader crypto market , though.

The U.S. government holds a bumper cache of crypto: around $11.1 billion worth which includes 203,239 bitcoin tokens, according to data firm Arkham Intelligence which said the pile came from criminal seizures, including from online marketplace Silk Road, which was shut down in 2013.

At current levels, the U.S. holds about 1% of the overall global bitcoin supply – which stands at about 19.7 million tokens, according to Blockchain.com. Bitcoin's total supply is capped at 21 million coins.

To compare against big non-state investors, Michael Saylor's Microstrategy holds about 226,500 bitcoin tokens, as per second-quarter results. BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust and Grayscale Bitcoin Trust hold 344,070 and 240,140 tokens respectively, according to data site BitcoinTreasuries.

A government bitcoin stockpile could shore up bitcoin prices.

"It would have a positive impact on price. It would have to because we've never had such a limited supply commodity, albeit digital, assume a new state of a reserve asset," said Mark Connors, head of global macro at Onramp Bitcoin.

More: Top 10 cryptocurrencies of 2024

Yet such a reserve also means fewer tokens for crypto investors to trade with and could leave them exposed if the government ever sold part of its reserves.

"RFK talked about having 19% of bitcoin, the same amount of the gold supply – I can't imagine a single bitcoiner would be happy about that," Connors added.

Governments besides the United States also boast bumper hoards of bitcoins, with BitcoinTreasuries reporting China is the second largest government holder, with 190,000 coins.

'A lot to figure out'

While the prospect of a national bitcoin reserve is uncertain, crypto watchers are nonetheless pondering what form it could take.

Connors suggested the Federal Reserve could manage the reserves for the Treasury Department, as it does with gold . On the other hand, the stockpile could be more akin to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, where both the president and Congress have varying amounts of control, according to Frank Kelly, senior political strategist at asset manager DWS Group.

"There's a lot to parse and figure out there," Kelly said.

There's also an irony that jars with many true bitcoin believers: the digital asset intended to be decentralized and free of government control becoming part of a state reserve.

Regardless of what happens with a bitcoin stockpile, many market players are happy enough to see crypto becoming a significant campaign talking point.

"There's a general view in the industry that both parties are paying much more attention to digital assets," said Rahul Mewawalla, CEO of Mawson Infrastructure Group which operates data centers for bitcoin mining.

"The expectation is that will continue post-November."

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How Companies Can Take a Global Approach to AI Ethics

• Swanand Deodhar,
• Favour Borokini,

Ideas about right and wrong can differ from one cultural context to the next. Corporate AI governance must reflect this.

Many efforts to build an AI ethics program miss an important fact: ethics differ from one cultural context to the next. Ideas about right and wrong in one culture may not translate to a fundamentally different context, and even when there is alignment, there may well be important differences in the ethical reasoning at work — cultural norms, religious tradition, etc. — that need to be taken into account. Because AI and related data regulations are rarely uniform across geographies, compliance can be difficult. To address this problem, companies need to develop a contextual global AI ethics model that prioritizes collaboration with local teams and stakeholders and devolves decision-making authority to those local teams. This is particularly necessary if their operations span several geographies.

Getting the AI ethics policy right is a high-stakes affair for an organization. Well-published instances of gender biases in hiring algorithms or job search results may diminish the company’s reputation, pit the company against regulations , and even attract hefty government fines . Sensing such threats, organizations are increasingly creating dedicated structures and processes to inculcate AI ethics proactively. Some companies have moved further along this road, creating institutional frameworks for AI ethics .

• SD Swanand Deodhar is an associate professor at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. His engaged research in topics such as digital platforms and digital transformation is rooted in deep collaboration with practice.  His work has appeared in journals of global repute and reference, such as  MIS Quarterly ,  Information Systems Research , and  Journal of International Business . You can follow him on LinkedIn .
• FB Favour Borokini is a PhD student with the Horizon Centre for Doctoral Training, hosted at the Faculty of Computer Science at the University of Nottingham. Her research interest is in the ethical framework that addresses harm in immersive environments. She holds a Law degree from the University of Benin, Nigeria, and is a member of the Nigerian bar. She has successfully leveraged her legal background to investigate issues such as the impact of technology on human rights, particularly women’s rights, the impact of AI on African women, and the experiences of African women working in AI across various sectors.
• Ben Waber is a visiting scientist at the MIT Media Lab and a senior visiting researcher at Ritsumeikan University. His research and commercial work is focused on the relationship between management, AI, and organizational outcomes. He is also the author of the book  People Analytics . Follow him on Mastodon: @[email protected].

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