strategic plan term paper

How To Write A Strategic Plan In 6 Steps + Examples

Gone are the days of rigid, 5 or 10-year planning cycles that don't leave room for flexibility and innovation. To stay ahead of the curve, you need a dynamic and execution-ready strategic plan that can guide your business through the ever-evolving landscape.

In this article, we'll show you how to write a strategic plan in 6 simple steps . By the end, you'll have a comprehensive, actionable strategic plan that will help you align your organization on the path to success.

💡Pro tip : Use our customizable, free Strategic Planning Template that includes all the key elements of a strategic plan to streamline your strategic planning process.

Follow this guide step-by-step, or skip to the part you're most interested in:

• Pre-Planning Phase: Build The Foundation
• Key Elements of a Strategic Plan

How To Write A Strategic Plan In 6 Simple Steps

Develop an iterative strategic planning process, 3 strategic plan examples to get you started, how to achieve organizational alignment with your strategic plan.

• Quick Overview of Key Steps In Writing A Strategic Plan

Create An Execution-Ready Strategic Plan With Cascade 🚀

Before jumping into the planning phase, it's essential to lay the groundwork.

Pre-Planning Phase: Build The Foundation 

Your strategic planning process should start well before you write your strategic plan. The pre-planning phase is crucial for gathering the data and strategic insights necessary to create an effective plan.

1. Conduct Strategic Analysis

Strategic analysis is a crucial step before writing your strategic plan. It's like building a house – you wouldn't start constructing the walls without a strong foundation, and the same goes for strategic planning. It equips you with the knowledge and insights to create a strategic plan that is well-targeted, addresses your actual situation, and positions your organization for success.

Use a strategic framework like GAP analysis , SWOT analysis , Porter's Five Forces , Ansoff matrix , McKinsey 7S model , or GE matrix to structure your analysis sessions. Incorporating a risk matrix can also help align and decide on key strategic priorities.

Additionally, consider running a strategic planning workshop with your team. Co-creating the plan with stakeholders is a significant advantage, as it fosters a sense of ownership and increases the likelihood of successful strategy execution . According to McKinsey , initiatives where employees contribute to development are 3.4 times more likely to succeed .

2. Choose your strategic planning model

Before creating your strategic plan, decide on the structure you will use. There are hundreds of ways to structure a strategic plan. You've likely heard of famous strategic models such as OKRs and the Balanced Scorecard .

But beyond the well-known ones, there's also a myriad of other strategic planning models . However, many models that work well on paper often fail to meet organizational needs in practice.

Common issues with many models include:

• Complexity: People get lost in terminology rather than focusing on execution
• Scalability: They work well for small organizations but fail when extended across multiple teams
• Rigidity: They force unnecessary layers, hindering flexibility
• Lack of measurability: They state outcomes well but fail to help measure success
• Adaptability: They don’t adjust well to changing economic landscapes

Our goal is to provide a simpler, more effective way to write a strategic plan. The Cascade Strategy Model , refined over years of working with +20,000 teams, offers a proven approach to strategic planning that is adaptable, scalable, and effective for organizations of all sizes.

In the following sections, we'll explore the key elements and steps to write a strategic plan based on the Cascade Model.

Key Elements Of A Strategic Plan

The key elements of a strategic plan using the Cascade Model work together to create a clear and actionable roadmap for your organization.

Think of it as a step-by-step guide, where each element builds upon the previous one: 

• Vision: Where do you want to get to? 
• Values: How will you behave on the journey? 
• Focus Areas: What are going to be your strategic priorities? 
• Strategic objectives: What do you want to achieve? 
• Actions and projects: How are you going to achieve the objectives? 
• KPIs: How will you measure success?

These interconnected elements ensure everyone in your organization is aligned on your overall strategy . Above all, the Cascade Model is intended to be execution-ready—in other words, it has been proven to deliver success far beyond strategic planning.

To create a powerful strategic plan, follow this clear, step-by-step process using the Cascade Model.

💡 Pro Tip : If you want to follow along as we cover each step, you can use our Strategic Planning Template spreadsheet (Excel format), or, for the best experience, sign up for instant access to our free Strategic Planning Template in Cascade .

Your vision statement is your organization's anchor - it defines where you want to get to .

A good vision statement can help funnel your strategy towards long-term goals that matter the most to your organization, and everything you write in your plan from this point on will help you get closer to achieving your vision.

Trying to do too much at once is a surefire way to sink your strategic plan. By creating a clear and inspiring vision statement, you can avoid this trap and provide guidance and inspiration for your team.

For example, a bike manufacturing company might have a vision statement like, “To be the premier bike manufacturer in the Pacific Northwest.” This statement clearly articulates the organization's goals and is a powerful motivator for the team.

In short, don't start your strategic plan without a clear vision statement. It will keep your organization focused and help you navigate toward success.

📚 Recommended read: How to Write a Vision Statement (With Examples, Tips, and Formulas)

Alongside your organization’s vision, a well-crafted mission statement is essential. It succinctly defines your purpose, culture, goals, and values, serving as a foundation for your strategic plan. Ensure your mission statement is clear and aligns with your organization’s vision to drive cohesive and effective strategies.

Values are the enablers of your vision statement —they represent how your organization will behave as you work towards your strategic goals.

Make sure to integrate your organization's core values into everyday operations and interactions. In today's highly-competitive world, it's crucial to remain steadfast in your values and cultivate an organizational culture that's transparent and trustworthy.

Companies with the best company cultures consistently outperform competitors and their average market by up to 115.6%, as reported by Glassdoor . 

For example, a bike manufacturing company might have core values like:

• Accountability

These values reflect the organization's desire to become the leading bike manufacturer, while still being accountable to employees, customers, and shareholders.

👉 You can create and add your values, mission and vision statements directly in Cascade . This ensures your company's core principles remain top of mind for everyone.

📚When you're ready to start creating some company values, check out our guide, How To Create Company Values .

3. Focus Areas

Your focus areas are the strategic priorities that will keep your team on track and working toward the company's mission statement and vision. They represent the high-level areas that you need to focus on to achieve desired business outcomes.

In fact, companies with clearly defined priorities are more likely to achieve their objectives. According to a case study by the Harvard Business Review , teams that focus on a small number of key strategic initiatives are more likely to succeed than those that try to do too much. 

Rather than spreading your resources too thin over multiple focus areas, prioritize three to five. 

Following our manufacturing example above, some good focus areas include:

• Aggressive growth
• Producing the nation's best bikes
• Becoming a modern manufacturer
• Becoming a top place to work

Your focus areas should be tighter in scope than your vision statement, but broader than specific goals, time frames, or metrics. 

With a clear set of focus areas, your team will be better able to prioritize their work and stay focused on the most important things, which will ultimately lead to better business results.

👉 In Cascade, you can add focus areas while creating or importing an existing strategic plan from a spreadsheet.

With Cascade's Focus Area deep-dive functionality, you will be able to: 

• Review the health of your focus areas in one place
• Get a breakdown by plans, budgets, resources, and people behind each strategic priority
• See something at-risk? Drill down into each piece of work regardless of how many plans it's a part of

📚 Recommended read: Strategic Focus Areas: How to create them + Examples

4. Strategic Objectives

Strategic objectives are the specific and measurable outcomes you want to achieve . While they should align with your focus areas, they should be more detailed and have a clear deadline. 

According to the 2022 State of High Performing Teams report , there is a strong correlation between goals and success not only at the individual and team level but also at the organizational level. Here's what they found: 

• Employees who are unaware of their company's strategic goals are over three times more likely to work at a company experiencing a revenue decline than employees who are aware of the goals 
• Companies with shrinking revenues are almost twice as likely to have employees with unclear work expectations.

Jumping straight into actions without defining clear objectives is a common mistake that can lead to missed opportunities or misalignment between strategy and execution.

To avoid this pitfall, we recommend you add between three and six objectives to each focus area .

It's here that we need to start being a bit more specific for the first time in your strategic planning process. Let's take a look at an example of a well-written strategic objective:

• Continue top-line growth that outpaces the industry by 31st Dec 2023.

This is too specific to be a focus area. While it's still very high level, it indicates what the company wants to accomplish and includes a clear deadline. Both these aspects are critical to a good strategic objective.

Your strategic objectives are the heart and soul of your plan, and you need to ensure they are well-crafted. So, take the time to create well-planned objectives that will help you achieve your vision and lead your organization to success.

👉 Adding objectives in Cascade is intuitive, straightforward, and accessible. With one click, you'll open the objective sidebar and fill out the details. These can include a timeline, the objective's owner, collaborators, and how your objective will be measured (success criteria).

📚 Recommended read: What are Strategic Objectives? How to write them + Examples

5. Actions and projects

Once you've defined your strategic objectives, the next step is to identify the specific strategic initiatives or projects that will help you achieve those objectives . They are short-term goals or actionable steps you or your team members will take to accomplish objectives. They should leverage the company's resources and core competencies. 

Effective projects and actions in your strategic plan should: 

• Be specific 
• Contain a deadline
• Have an owner
• Align with at least one of your strategic objectives
• Provide clarity on how you or your team will achieve the strategic objective

Let's take a look at an example of a well-written project continuing with our bike manufacturing company using the strategic objective from above:

Strategic objective: Continue top-line growth that outpaces the industry by 31st Dec 2023.

Project: Expand into the fixed gear market by 31st December 2023.

This is more specific than the objective it links to, and it details what you will do to achieve the objective.

Actions and projects are where the rubber meets the road. They connect the organizational strategic goals with the actual capabilities of your people and the resources at their disposal. Defining projects is a vital reality check every strategic plan needs.

👉You can create actions and projects easily in Cascade! From the Objective sidebar, you can choose to add a project or action under your chosen objective. In the following steps, you can assign an owner and timeline to each action or project.

Plus, in Cascade, you can track the progress of each project or action in four different ways. You can do it manually, via milestones, checklists, or automatically by integrating with Jira and 1000+ other available integrations .

📚 Recommended read: What are Strategic Initiatives? How to Develop & Execute + Examples

6. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Measuring progress towards strategic objectives is essential to effective strategic control and business success. That's where Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) come in.

KPIs are measurable values that track progress toward achieving key business objectives . They help you stay on track and focused on your organization's strategic goals.

To get the most out of your KPIs, make sure you link them to a specific goal or objective. This way, you'll avoid creating KPIs that don't contribute to your objectives and distract you from focusing on what matters. 

Ideally, you will add both leading and lagging KPIs to each objective so you can get a more balanced view of how well you're progressing. Leading KPIs can indicate future performance, while lagging KPIs show how well you've done in the past.

Think of KPIs as a form of signpost in your organization. They provide critical insights that inform business leaders of their organization's progress toward key business objectives. Plus, they can help you identify opportunities faster and capitalize on flexibility.

👉 In Cascade , you can add measures while creating your objectives or add them afterward. Open the Objective sidebar and add your chosen measure.

When you create your Measure, you can choose how to track it. Using Cascade, you can track it manually or automatically. You can automate tracking via 1000+ integrations , including Excel spreadsheets and Google Sheets . This way, you can save time and ensure that your team has up-to-date information for faster and more confident decision-making.

📚 Recommended reads:

• 10 Popular KPI Software Tools To Connect & Visualize Your Data (2024 Guide)
• ‍ How To Track KPIs To Hit Your Business Goals

Developing an iterative strategic planning process is essential for staying adaptable and responsive to change. This approach involves continuously reviewing and refining your strategies to ensure they remain relevant in a dynamic business environment. Regularly assess your plan's effectiveness, gather stakeholder feedback, analyze performance data, and make necessary adjustments.

This cycle of strategic planning, execution, and evaluation helps identify areas for improvement, fosters innovation, and keeps your organization aligned with its long-term goals. By adopting an iterative strategic planning process, you can navigate challenges more effectively and maintain a competitive edge.

📚 Check out our article Develop An Iterative Strategic Planning Process to dive into this topic

Corporate Strategic Plan 

Following the steps outlined above, you should end up with a strategic plan that looks something like this:

This is a preview of a corporate strategic plan template that is pre-filled with examples. Here, you can use the template for free and begin filling it out to align with your organization's needs. Plus, it's suitable for organizations of all sizes and any industry. 

Once you fill in the template, you can also switch to the timeline view. You'll get a complete overview of how the different parts of your plan are distributed across the roadmap in a Gantt chart view.

This template will help you create a structured approach to the strategic planning process, focus on key strategic priorities, and drive accountability to achieve necessary business outcomes. 

👉 Get your free corporate strategic plan template here.

Coca-Cola Strategic Plan

Need a bit of extra inspiration with your plan? Check out this strategic plan example, inspired by Coca-Cola's business plan:

This strategic planning template is pre-filled with Coca-Cola's examples so you can inspire your strategic success on one of the most iconic brands on the planet. 

👉 Grab your free example of a Coca-Cola strategic plan here.

The Ramsay Health Care expansion strategy

Ramsay Health Care is a multinational healthcare provider with a strong presence in Australia, Europe, and Asia.

Almost all of its growth was organic and strategic. The company founded its headquarters in Sydney, Australia, but in the 21st century, it decided to expand globally through a primary strategy of making brownfield investments and acquisitions in key locations.

Ramsay's strategy was simple yet clever. By becoming a majority shareholder of the biggest local players, the company expanded organically in each region by leveraging and expanding their expertise.

Over the last two decades, Ramsay's global network has grown to 460 locations across 10 countries with over $13 billion in annual revenue.

📚 Recommended read: Strategy study: The Ramsay Health Care Growth Study

✨ Bonus resource: We've created a list of the most popular and free strategic plan templates in our library that will help you build a strategic plan based on the Cascade model explained in this article. You can use these templates to create a plan on a corporate, business unit, or team level.

We highlighted before that other strategic models often fail to scale strategic plans and goals across multiple teams and organizational levels. 

In an ideal world, you want to have a maximum of two layers of detail underneath each of your focus areas. This means you'll have a focus area, followed by a layer of objectives. Underneath the objectives, you'll have a layer of actions, projects (or strategic initiatives), and KPIs.

If you have a single team that's responsible for the strategy execution, this works well. However, how do you implement a strategy across multiple and cross-functional teams? And why is it important? 

According to LSA research of 410 companies across 8 industries, highly aligned companies grow revenue 58% faster and are 72% more profitable. And this is what Cascade can help you achieve. 

To achieve achieve organization-wide alignment with your strategic plan and impact the bottom line, there are two ways to approach it in Casade: through contributing objectives or shared objectives .

1. Contributing objectives

This approach involves adding contributing objectives that link to your main strategic objectives, like this:

For each contributing objective, you simply repeat the Objective → Action/Project → KPI structure as follows:

Here's how you can create contributing objectives in Cascade: 

Option A: Create contributing objectives within the same plan 

This means creating multiple contributing objectives within the same strategic plan that contribute to the main objective. 

However, be aware that if you have a lot of layers, your strategic plan can become cluttered, and people might have difficulty understanding how their daily efforts contribute to the strategic plan at the top level. 

For example, the people responsible for managing contributing objectives at the bottom of the plan ( functional / operational level ) will lose visibility on how are their objectives linked to the main focus areas and objectives (at a corporate / business level ). 

This approach is best suited to smaller organizations that only need to add a few layers of objectives to their plan.

Option B: Create contributing objectives from multiple strategic plans linking to the main objective

This approach creates a network of aligned strategic plans within your organization. Each plan contains a set of focus areas and one single layer of objectives, each with its own set of projects, actions, and KPIs. This concept looks like this:

This example illustrates an objective that is a main objective in the IT strategic plan , but also contributes to the main strategic plan's objective.

For example, let's say that your main business objective is to improve customer satisfaction by reducing product delivery time by 25% in the next quarter. This objective requires multiple operational teams within your organization to work together to achieve a shared objective. 

Each team will create its own objective in its plan to contribute to the main objective: 

• Logistics team: Reduce the shipment preparation time by 30%
• IT team: Implement new technology to reduce manual handling in the warehouse
• Production team: Increase production output by hour for 5%   

Here's how this example would look like within the Cascade platform:

Although each contributing objective was originally created in its own plan, you can see how each contributing objective relates to the main strategic objective and its status in real-time.

2. Shared objectives

In Cascade, shared objectives are the same objectives shared across different strategic plans.

For example, you can have an objective that is “Achieve sustainable operations” . This objective can be part of the Corporate Strategy Plan, but also part of the Operations Plan , Supply Chain Plan , Production Plan, etc. In short, this objective becomes a shared objective between multiple teams and strategic plans. 

This approach helps you to:

• Cascade your business strategy as deep as you want across a near-infinite number of people while maintaining strategic alignment throughout your organization .
• Create transparency and a much higher level of engagement in the strategy throughout your organization since objective owners are able to identify how their shared efforts contribute to the success of the main business objectives.

The more shared objectives you have across your organization, the more your teams will be aligned with the overarching business strategy. This is what we call " alignment health ”. 

Here's how you can see the shared objectives in the alignment map and analyze alignment health within Cascade:

You get a snapshot of how your corporate strategic plan is aligned with sub-plans from different business units or departments and the status of shared objectives. This helps you quickly identify misaligned strategic initiatives and act before it's too late.  Plus, cross-functional teams have better visibility of how their efforts contribute to shared objectives. 

So whether you choose contributing objectives or shared objectives, Cascade has the tools and features to help you achieve organization-wide alignment and boost your bottom line.

Quick Overview Of Key Steps In Writing A Strategic Plan

Here's a quick infographic to help you remember how everything connects and why each element is critical to effective strategic planning:

This simple answer to how to write a strategic plan avoids confusing jargon and has elements that the whole organization can both get behind and understand. 

💡Tip: Save this image or bookmark this article for your next strategic planning session.

If you're struggling to write an execution-ready strategic plan, the Cascade Strategy Model is the solution you've been looking for. With its clear, easy-to-understand terminology, and simple linkages between objectives, projects, and KPIs, you can create a plan that's both scalable and flexible.

But why is a flexible and execution-ready strategic plan so important? It's simple: without a clear and actionable plan, you'll never be able to achieve your business objectives. By using the Cascade Strategic Planning Model, you'll be able to create a plan that's both tangible and measurable, with KPIs that help you track progress towards your goals.

However, the real value of the Cascade framework lies in its flexibility . By creating links between main business objectives and your teams' objectives, you can easily scale your plan without losing focus. Plus, the model's structure of linked layers means that you can always adjust your strategy in response to new challenges to easily develop an iterative strategic planning process. 

So if you want to achieve results with your strategic plan, start using Cascade today. With its unique combination of flexibility and focus, it's the perfect tool for any organization looking to master strategy execution and succeed in today's fast-paced business world. 

Want to see Cascade in action? Get started for free or book a 1:1 demo with Cascade's in-house strategy expert.

This article is part one of our mini-series "How to Create a Strategy". This first article will give you a solid strategy model for your plan and get the strategic thinking going.

Think of it as the foundation for your new strategy. Subsequent parts of the series will show you how to create the content for your strategic plan.

Articles in our "How To Create a Strategy" series

• How To Write A Strategic Plan In 6 Steps + Examples (This article)
• How to Write a Good Vision Statement
• How To Create Company Values
• Creating Strategic Focus Areas
• How To Write Strategic Objectives
• How To Create Effective Projects
• How To Write KPIs + Ultimate Guide To Strategic Planning

More resources on strategic planning and strategy execution: 

• 6 Steps to Successful Strategy Execution
• 4-Step Strategy Reporting Process (With Template)
• Annual Planning: Plan Like a Pro In 5 Steps (+ Template) 
• 18 Free Strategic Plan Templates (Excel & Cascade) 2024
• The Right Way To Set Team Goals
• 23 Best Strategy Tools For Your Organization in 2024

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More Like this

How to write a strategic plan.

How do you know if you have a complete strategic plan? A complete strategic plan has several components, but the various parts fall into three categories. Following our step-by-step guide, you’ll learn how to write a strategic plan quickly.

Not to oversimplify how to write a strategic plan, but by placing all the parts of a strategic plan into three areas or categories of focus, you can see how the pieces fit together.

The three pieces of the puzzle are:

Where are we now?

Where are we going?

• How will we get there?

Get the Free Guide to Build Your Strategic Objectives (with Examples!)

Each part has certain elements to show you how and where things fit. Our 4-Phase Guide to Strategic Planning lays out each step of the planning process. You can also watch our video, The Complete Strategic Planning Checklist” for a brief overview.

Get the Free Guide for Setting OKRs that Work (with 100 examples!)

Video Transcript – The Complete Strategic Plan

Hi everyone, its Erica Olsen from OnStrategy. Welcome to today’s whiteboard video on “Do You Have a Complete Strategic Plan?”

As you would expect from us, we’re going to make that as easy as possible and give you a checklist — and a checklist not only for a complete plan — but for an awesome plan. So, let’s jump in.

First things first, you need a couple of things that set your strategic direction: your mission statement, which tells us why you exist, your reason for being, and your vision statement of where you’re going. You’ve heard me say it a million times, strategic plans are all about going to a place that you are not today. And your vision statement answers that. We often lump values in this area: mission, vision, and values, because it sounds good.

But I would say that a strategic plan does not have to have values if you don’t have them already articulated. And the only reason for that is because I would highly recommend that you take a values process and run that separately from a strategic planning process, because there’s a lot of work there. And it deserves its own time and attention. And if you have your values, they should go in here if you don’t put a placeholder.

So then we move to strategy. In order to articulate your strategy, you’ve got to understand where you are today. And we use a trusty tool that is a SWOT–Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. So once you have a clear understanding of where you are today, and where the opportunities are for growth, you can build out the strategy areas of your plan, which look like this: your strategic goals.

Those are the four, or five, or six big areas of focus that make up the framework of your plan that are super important. Everything rises and falls here–your vision connects to your goals and your goals connect your objectives.

Also, in your strategy is your org-wide strategies or your organizational-wide strategies. Those are the differentiation statements, or how you’re different. Strategy is about being unique. And that’s what that statement does for you.

And then of course, clarifying where are we going to play? How are we going to win? That’s your growth strategy. Strategic plans have got to have a growth section. That’s your competitive advantages and your customer segments. So, once you have all that articulated, we can move to your annual plan, which looks like organization-wide objectives.

Those are your SMART objectives. They should be measurable, time bound, accountable, all that good stuff. Each of your strategic initiatives should have at least one or two quarterly action items to ensure you can really move them in to execution. And of course, no good plan is done unless you’re clear about how you’re going to measure your success–key performance indicators or KPIs. So with that, there’s your checklist for a complete and awesome strategic plan.

Hit the like button if you like our content, and please subscribe to our channel. We’re dropping videos every Friday. Happy strategizing.

Plan Writing Step 1: Establish Your Strategic Foundation

The first step in any business strategy or organizational strategy is to start by establishing or confirming your strategic foundation – in simple terms, we mean clearly articulating why your organization exists and how you expect your team to behave (Mission and Core values). This phase of the strategic planning process creates the foundation of your strategic plan as it tells you and the rest of your organization what your starting point is and why you generally exist (your core purpose or mission).

After setting up the foundation, you can determine where you’re going or hope to go in the future and exactly how you will get there by steering your organization in the right direction.

As you think about where your organization is now, you want to look at the foundational elements of your organization’s purpose and culture (mission + values) and assess your organization’s current state (SWOT and competitive advantages).

This portion of strategic planning is designed to outline the core foundation of your organization, like why you exist and how you behave, while looking at the internal and external factors that will influence your planning elements. Below is a quick overview of those elements, which include a breakdown of your mission statement, core values, and SWOT analysis.

Who are we, and how do we behave?

Mission statement.

The mission describes your organization’s purpose – the purpose for which you were founded and why you exist.

Some mission statements include the business of the organization. Others explain what products or services they produce or the customers they serve. Does your mission statement say what you do? Why does your organization exist?

Core Values:

This clarifies what you believe and how you expect your team to behave.

Three questions to ask to clarify your core values include:

• What are the core values and beliefs of your organization?
• What values and beliefs guide your daily interactions?
• What are you and your people committed to?

While a values statement is foundational to your overall strategy, the values process can be run separately from the strategic planning process as it needs its own time and attention. Your value statements are the barometer to determine whether you are conducting your business in a way that stays true to your organization’s purpose.

Video Transcript – Overview of the Strategic Planning Process

Hi, my name is Erica Olsen. Today’s whiteboard video is an overview of the strategic planning process. Instead of going through a bullet pointed list, we’ll do it in the form of an illustration.

To orient ourselves, I want to outline the four phases of the process over here: assess, design, build, and manage. The phases of planning include assessing, designing, and building, and we spend a couple of months per year doing that.

We spend the rest of the year managing the performance and the execution of our plan. Oftentimes, we get into execution, and we’re not exactly realizing the results that we want. In which case, we go back into some parts of the planning process, and sort of rinse and repeat. Today’s video is going through the whole process, but sometimes you just make big pieces of it. So, let’s jump in.

Great strategic plans start with understanding where we are today–assessing the current state– point A. We do that by gathering an external perspective, opportunities and threats, and an internal perspective, strengths, and weaknesses. And we summarize all that information and do a SWOT analysis. And as a little Asterix, we have detailed whiteboard videos on each point today. So, if you need to dig deeper, check those out.

So, once we’re clear about where we are today, we can move into the second part of our process, which is designing the strategy, starting with our mission statement. Our mission statement is a square here because great mission statements tell us what’s in and what’s out. Why do we exist as an organization, what’s our core purpose, and then by default, what’s not. With clarity on our mission, we can move to casting our vision or our future state.

Strategic plans are all about moving organizations from where we are today to where we want to be in the future. And that’s what our vision statement does for us. It tells us where we want to go.

The rest of our plan builds a roadmap from today to tomorrow. Starting with a couple of things that help us answer, “How will we succeed?” our competitive advantages, and our long-term, organization-wide strategies. These come in different names, but let’s just use the analogy and the visual to keep us grounded.

These help as guides. They act as an umbrella over our entire plan to make sure that we’re building a plan that we can succeed and be successful and be competitive with. So, with that guideline in place, we can move to building our framework–our long-term strategic objectives. Again, there are different names for this, but let’s just use that for today. I like to see them in four categories because we want a holistic framework. We want to make sure that our plan covers our financial perspective, our customer perspective, our operational and internal perspective, and our people perspective.

Less than six strategic objectives is a pretty good idea when you’re looking at your framework because we’re going to cascade the rest of the plan from these. From there, we’re ready to move into the next phase, which is building our plan.

That looks like starting with our goals, or our corporate goals. And we’re using the word ‘goals’ to articulate quantifiable, outcome-based statements. Where do you want to be in year one, and year two, and year three? And most of the time, we use key performance indicators to help guide us along the way.

So, we like our corporate goals. And again, we’re going to cascade from our strategic objectives. We like our corporate goals to be SMART. SMART is a great acronym to make sure that you have good, quantifiable, outcome-based goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound.

Once we have our corporate goals in place, a couple per each long-term, strategic objective, we’re ready to move into annual operating plans. And that looks like building goals and cascading into each level of the organization. So that looks like corporate goals being cascaded into department goals, and department goals being cascaded into individual, contributor goals.

Once we’ve cascaded it down that far, we have a plan, and we’re done with the third phase. So now we have a plan. Now what? We want to move into managing execution because nobody wants to build a plan that sits on a shelf. So, there are three things you need to have in place to effectively execute.

Number one: people. You need to make sure that every person in your organization has an individual action plan that expresses ownership and accountability for what they need to get done by when. And with that, that matters because all the rest of this is just on paper if we’re not clear about that very specific piece.

The second thing is we need to make sure that we have a system in place to track and manage performance. A software system, spreadsheets, whatever it looks like, you’re going to gather a lot of data on a monthly, or quarterly and annual basis, you need a place to put that, and everybody needs to be working on the same system.

The third thing is process. You need to schedule at least monthly, or quarterly reviews of your performance because without that review, all the rest of this is just again, good ideas on paper.

So, with that, that’s an overview of the strategic planning process. Subscribe to our channel. Happy strategizing.

Plan Writing Step 2: Conduct a Current State Assessment

As you think about where your organization is now, you want to look at the foundational elements of your organization’s purpose and culture (mission + values) and assess your organization’s current state (SWOT and competitive advantages).

This portion of strategic planning is designed to outline the core foundation of your organization, like why you exist and how you behave, while looking at the internal and external factors that will influence your planning elements. Below is a quick overview of those elements, which include a breakdown of your mission statement, core values, SWOT analysis, and business objectives..

When assessing your current position, you must conduct a thorough internal and external analysis of your organization. This includes assessing two major things:

• How well you are meeting your customer and market needs.
• How well do your internal processes and employees rate in terms of efficiency and satisfaction?

It may be tempting to skip this step or feel like you know where your organization stands and can make do with a less formal process, but this is not the case. Conducting a formal internal/external analysis via a SWOT, PESTLE , market analysis, or even employee surveys will help you lay the groundwork for your strategic plan.

Successful attributes of an internal and external analysis:

• Your organization’s strengths
• Weaknesses for your organization to improve upon
• A clearly defined competitive advantage
• Market opportunities to pursue
• An understanding of your competitor’s competitive advantages
• Strategic themes that serve as the framework of your plan

SWOT is an acronym that stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. These elements are crucial in assessing your strategic position within your organization. You want to build on your organization’s strengths, shore up the weaknesses, capitalize on the opportunities, and recognize the threats.

The SWOT can also be used as a forward-looking tool to determine where you want to go, as it allows you to see where your opportunities or threats may be in the future. These can help you pinpoint what some of your growth opportunities are.

Plan Writing Step 3: Create Your Vision of the Future

The elements of the question “Where are we going?” help you answer other questions such as “What will my organization look like in the future?”, “Where are we headed?”, and “What is my vision of the future I want to create for my company?” Because the future is hard to predict, you can have fun imagining what it may look like. The following elements help you define the future for your business:

Vision Statement

Your organization’s vision statement is the articulation of what your organization’s future makeup will be and where the organization is headed. What will your organization look like in 5 to 10 years from now? What are your company’s goals that you seek to accomplish? What is your desired future state?

It’s important that your organization’s vision always remains relevant and clear. We recommend a vision that is big, bold, and audacious—like “All children achieve their full potential” from Big Brothers Big Sisters of America.

A vision statement like this would probably be true and relevant to the organization for its entirety. A vision statement may only need to change if the organization is making big moves or pivoting to address major shifts in the market or industry.

Sustainable Competitive Advantage

A sustainable competitive advantage explains what you are best at compared to your competitors. Each company strives to create an advantage that continues to be competitive over time. What can you be best at? What is your uniqueness? What can your organization potentially do better than any other organization?

Growth Strategy

Strategy is ultimately about being unique. It is about playing to the strengths that make your organization different from the others in your market. It establishes a way to match your organization’s strengths with market opportunities so that your organization comes to mind when your customer has a need.

This section explains how you travel to your final destination. Does your strategy match your strengths in a way that provides value to your customers? Does it build an organizational reputation and recognizable industry position?

Your growth strategy should clarify:

• Where are we going to play?
• How are we going to win?

Growth strategies are where your competitive advantages and your customer segments come into play. Once you have all that articulated, you can move to your annual plan, which looks taking your organization-wide objectives and building a strategic framework.

Plan Writing Step 4: Build Your Plan

How will we achieve our vision with action?

Strategic objectives are the steps that bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be. They also connect your big, bold vision to the annual goals you need to achieve it and establish the boundaries for your organization’s focus.

Strategic Objectives

Knowing how you’ll reach your vision is the meat of your strategic plan, and it’s also the most time consuming. The reason it takes so much time to develop your strategic priorities is because there are a number of routes from your current position to your vision. Picking the right one determines how quickly or slowly you’ll get to your final destination.

Strategic objectives are long-term, continuous strategic areas that help you connect your growth strategy and annual actions to your long-term vision of success. Strategic planning with holistic objectives encompasses four areas:

• Operational

Ask yourself what the key activities within these four areas are that you need to perform in order to achieve your vision.

It’s also important to separate your strategic objectives from your day-to-day operational objectives. They almost act like ‘mini vision statements’ as they support the overall vision of success by focusing on manageable focus areas.

Ultimately, your strategic objectives are not a mishmash of department goals. Instead, they embody the company-wide direction. They are what drive the direction and growth.

It is recommended to have at least four to six strategic objectives. They are your areas of focus that create the framework for your plan, and this should stem from your vision. Your vision connects your goals, and your goals connect your objectives. Your objectives should be SMART–specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

Short-term Goals/Priorities/Initiatives

Short-term strategic goals convert your strategic objectives into specific performance targets. You can use goals, priorities, or initiatives interchangeably. Here, the term ‘goals’ defines short-term action. Effective goals clearly state:

• What you want to accomplish.
• When you want to accomplish it.
• How you’re going to accomplish it.
• Who is going to be responsible.

All goals or strategic initiatives should be specific and measurable:

• What are the 1- to 3-year goals you’re trying to achieve to reach your vision?
• What are your specific, measurable, and realistic targets of accomplishment?

Within your strategic plan, you should set milestones to measure achievement and motivate your team. Setting milestones also sets clear expectations of who is in charge of specific tasks and results.

Additionally, milestones help teams determine whether resource allocations serve to assess risks or upcoming obstacles. Strategic plans are iterative rather than sequential, so setting milestones can allow your plan to be more adaptive to address changes in the market rather than changing the overall strategic goals.

Action Items

Action items are plans that set specific actions that lead to implementing your goals. They include start and end dates and appoint a person responsible. Are your action items comprehensive enough to achieve your goals?

KPIs and Scorecards

A scorecard measures and manages your strategic plan. Each goal should have some form of measurement, whether that is through key performance indicators (KPIs) or some other method of measurement. What are the key metrics and KPIs you need to track to monitor whether you’re achieving your mission? Pick 5 to 10 goal-related measures you can use to track the progress of your plan and plug them into your scorecard.

In executing the plan, identify issues that surround the management and monitoring of the plan and how the plan is communicated and supported throughout your entire organization. How committed are you to implementing the plan to move your organization forward? Will you commit money, resources, and time to support the plan?

As you’ve been going through the planning and assessment phase of your strategic plan, you’ve hopefully thought of the resources needed to achieve this, including team members who will play a crucial role in executing the plan. Clear communication and support from your entire organization are essential for the successful execution of your strategic plan.

Before you begin executing your plan, it is essential to ensure that you have your resource allocation fully ironed out. This will prevent the possibility of ‘scope creep’ and keep you and your team aligned on your needs.

Another consideration for successful strategic plan implementation is ensuring stakeholder and employee buy-in. Stakeholder buy-in is crucial for any strategic plan.

• Identify your key stakeholders.
• Make sure you and your team understand everyone’s role in the process.
• Establish communication channels.
• Offer active listening and transparency.
• Celebrate the milestones.

However, buy-in really begins before the execution of your plan. If you’re waiting until it’s time for them to act on the plan before you consider whether they are bought in, then it’s a little late in the game. If you aren’t giving your team a voice in the planning and analysis stage and getting their input on the issues your organization faces, it will be harder to get them to buy-in to the implementation stage.

Revisiting and Refining your Strategic Plan

As stated before, the strategic planning process is iterative. It won’t always be a linear process with linear progress and achievements. This is why regularly revisiting your plan and making adjustments as needed is essential. Monitoring the pulse of your strategic plan is something that can be done by implementing a regular review cycle quarterly and revisiting your annual goals at the beginning of each fiscal year to determine what is working and what isn’t.

PS – Strategic planning is best supported by an agile review process.

We’ve covered this extensively, but the most successful strategic planning processes are supported by a consistent, rigorous review process where teams review performance monthly, review and refresh the plan quarterly, and then do a bigger plan refresh annually.

Check out our agile strategy guide here. Don’t miss it to as part of an effective strategic planning process. Your organization’s success is directly tied to your strategy execution approach.

Challenges in Strategic Planning

The strategic planning process can be very involved and complex. It is definitely not a quick fix and it is not a one person job. Some common issues that many organizations come across in the planning and execution stages of their plans can be your team’s resistance to change, misalignment of resources, setting unrealistic goals, or a failure to adapt to external market shifts. However, with proper strategic thinking, strategy execution, and alignment with key stakeholders, these challenges can be overcome.

These challenges can be overcome by a consistent and open method of communication, a regular review process where you’re discussing your success and the things that may hinder it and fostering a culture of adaptability and ownership of your organization’s goals and accomplishments.

12 Principles to maintain your momentum during a planning and execution process:

• Make sure you have CEO buy-in to your plan and process.
• One-page plans are amazing executive summaries for your plan.
• Create a “final plan” when you move to execution. But adapt it quarterly as needed.
• Foster a culture of continuous learning.
• Empower your decision-makers.
• Celebrate the small successes.
• Encourage feedback.
• Seek internal and external feedback.
• Don’t be afraid to adapt.
• Practice open communication.
• Don’t get tangled up in the business-as-usual tasks.
• Keep your eye on the big picture.

28 Comments

Very useful to me and for my organization as formulation of strategic plans is my job

A good introduction

Very good , your direction make an easy for me to di this things.thanks

I am going to write a strategic plan, but not before I read this!

Very resourceful not only for my exams but for my work as well. Thanks.

Good information, but you might want to check the typos.

Thanx,i can now rearrange and plan my life and carrier.

Excellent and simple answer to plan, and deliver a strategy to my business

The information is so ressourcefull. Am now a real strategic planner. Thanks.

Critical tool for advancing the management of my enterprises towards attaining sustainable ,growth projections.

IS BEEN REALLY HELPFUL THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

Eeh! Its Gud information. I will use it for my LIFE strategic PLAN.

Though it was my first time to visit this site, it was very good and opened up mind more especially on what I didn’t know and thus will give it a closure look to build my confident and more knowledge

Thank you Kristin,

This has helped me to design my strategic plan well for my on coming NGO after a struggle with the old version which was not giving me a lead of how to fit in information in their right places.

I agree other than I’m missing the question “What might prevent us from coming there?”

hi fine can yaou help me about nutrition roadmap models

Hi, thank you for the helps. I am not familiar of strategic planning and this article is a good help.

now i know, i will write my strategic plan now. am grateful to the organizers this article.

Very informative. This is a good reference. Thank you.

thank you for sharing.. very clear explanation

Thanks Erica because of strong and brief text about strategy.i am strategic planner in petroleum industries health organization in Iran.

Thanks for three points for stategy .

very Nice..This article Helped me alott. Please keep doing this.Inspiration and guidence is very importatnt for someone to reach to his destination.And i think you are doing a good job. 🙂

Fantastic information, just in line with my outline. Thank you

Good information. However, I think this strategic plan process was designed for private sector more than any other sector!

I need to write a strat for the Africa expansion for a cinema group . Any ideas .

it’s really good and good introduction, thanks

Comments Cancel

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6 Steps to Make Your Strategic Plan Really Strategic

by Graham Kenny

Summary .   

Why is it that when a group of managers gets together for a strategic planning session they often emerge with a document that’s devoid of “strategy”, and often not even a plan ?

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Blog Business Strategic Plan Examples (With Free Templates)

Strategic Plan Examples (With Free Templates)

Written by: Tobi Ojenike May 17, 2024

Many businesses get caught up in the daily grind and lose sight of innovation and growth. 

Ask any thriving business their recipe for success, and you’ll get a clear answer — set long-term goals routinely and write a plan of action that outlines how to achieve objectives. 

Enter the strategic plan. It’s a document that every business (and even professionals) should invest in. 

In this blog, I’ll share examples of strategic plans for different industries. If you want to create a strategic plan easily, check out our  Plan Maker  and  strategic plan templates  (PS: You don’t need design skills to edit these templates). 

Click to jump ahead:

What is a strategic plan?

Why use a strategic plan.

• Strategic plan examples

A strategic plan is a document that outlines a company’s objectives and how it plans to achieve those objectives. It also outlines the step-by-step process and resources required to drive organizational success.

Organizations that invest in strategic plans experience long-term success. Here’s an overview of the benefits of strategic plans.

• Provide clarity : Strategic plans highlight who is responsible for what task or goal, which eliminates confusion and saves time.  
• Aid in decision-making : By setting specific goals, strategic plans make it easy to determine which actions, tasks, or activities must be prioritized. 
• Enables adaptability : Since strategic involve planning, organizations are better equipped to anticipate and adapt to changes.
• Better communication : Strategic plans promote communication across teams and departments, which helps create a sense of ownership. 

Strategic plan examples 

For the remainder of this blog, I’ll provide strategic plan templates you can edit in Venngage for different industries and scenarios. Hint: You don’t need design skills to make professional strategic plans! 

For each example, you can take our sample text or add your own to the template.

Non-profit organization

A non-profit organization can use strategic plans to guide operations and improve its impact. Here’s an example of how a non-profit might structure a plan.

• Mission: Focus on social impact and community engagement.
• Goals and objectives :  Increase beneficiaries served, expand volunteer base, and secure funding.
• Strategies: Implement new programs, launch fundraising campaigns, and build partnerships.

Healthcare organization

Strategic plans help healthcare companies chart out long-term growth, improve patient care, optimize operations, and stay competitive in a rapidly changing industry.

Here’s a sample strategic plan a healthcare company might use.

• Mission: Deliver high-quality and accessible healthcare services.
• Goals and objectives : Improve patient outcomes, enhance operational efficiency, and adopt new technologies.
• Strategies: Invest in staff training, implement new treatment protocols, and upgrade facilities.

Business organization

Most business organizations use strategic plans to help set long-term goals, develop effective growth strategies, and guide decision-making.

Here’s an example of how a business can develop its strategic plan.

• Mission: Maximize profitability and market share.
• Goals and objectives: Increase revenue, expand into new markets, and develop innovative products/services.
• Strategies: Implement marketing campaigns, invest in research and development, and optimize supply chain.

Startup company

Despite being in their infancy, startups also benefit from strategic plans to establish a clear direction for the future, allocate precious resources effectively, and guide growth and development.

Here’s a sample template a startup company can use to create a strategic plan.

• Mission: Disrupt an industry and achieve rapid growth.
• Goals and objectives: Secure funding, develop a minimum viable product (MVP), and acquire initial customers.
• Strategies: Participate in pitch competitions, build a solid online presence, and leverage social media marketing .

Schools can use strategic plans to meet their vision and mission, enhance student outcomes, and foster a positive educational environment. 

Here’s a great example of a strategic plan schools can implement today.

• Mission: Provide a quality education that prepares students for future success.
• Goals and objectives: Improve student academic performance, enhance graduation rates, and create a safe and inclusive learning environment.
• Strategies: Implement new teaching methods, offer personalized learning opportunities, and create after-school programs.

Government agency

Government agencies can use strategic plans to set priorities, allocate resources efficiently, and ensure that their activities align with public needs.

Here’s a strategic plan template that any government agency will find compelling.

• Mission: Deliver essential public services and uphold the law.
• Goals and objectives: Enhance public safety, improve infrastructure, and promote economic development.
• Strategies: Implement new crime-fighting initiatives, invest in infrastructure projects, and enact new regulations.

Student (personal development)

Students can use strategic plans for personal development to set clear goals, create actionable steps, and track progress toward achieving goals.

Here’s a great strategic plan template students can use.

• Mission: Achieve academic goals and personal growth.
• Goals and objectives: Improve study habits, develop time management skills, and explore career options.
• Strategies: Set SMART goals, create a study schedule, and network with professionals.

Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurs can use strategic plans to guide their professional growth and achieve long-term career goals.

If you’re an entrepreneur, check out this strategic plan template.

• Mission: Launch and grow a successful business venture.
• Goals and objectives: Develop a sound business plan, secure funding, and attract and retain customers.
• Strategies: Conduct market research, participate in business incubators, and leverage lean startup methodologies.

Technology company

Technology companies can use strategic plans to navigate the fast-changing environment and adapt for long-term success.

Here’s a strategic plan template that any technology company can use.

• Mission: Develop cutting-edge technologies that improve lives.
• Goals and objectives: Launch innovative products, expand the user base, and stay ahead of the competition.
• Strategies: Invest in research and development, attract top talent, and build a strong brand reputation.

Conclusion: Create strategic plans with ease using Venngage and taste long-term success

Whether you’re a student, educator, non-profit organization, or any other business, strategic plans are handy documents to invest in.

Without a strategic plan (and setting goals and a strategy), it’s difficult, if not impossible, to transform your vision into reality. If you’re worried about the complexities of designing a strategic plan, why not edit a Venngage template?

Take control of your life or business, check out our strategic plan templates and start creating!

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How to Set Strategic Planning Goals

• 29 Oct 2020

In an ever-changing business world, it’s imperative to have strategic goals and a plan to guide organizational efforts. Yet, crafting strategic goals can be a daunting task. How do you decide which goals are vital to your company? Which ones are actionable and measurable? Which goals to prioritize?

To help you answer these questions, here’s a breakdown of what strategic planning is, what characterizes strategic goals, and how to select organizational goals to pursue.

Access your free e-book today.

What Is Strategic Planning?

Strategic planning is the ongoing organizational process of using available knowledge to document a business's intended direction. This process is used to prioritize efforts, effectively allocate resources, align shareholders and employees, and ensure organizational goals are backed by data and sound reasoning.

Research in the Harvard Business Review cautions against getting locked into your strategic plan and forgetting that strategy involves inherent risk and discomfort. A good strategic plan evolves and shifts as opportunities and threats arise.

“Most people think of strategy as an event, but that’s not the way the world works,” says Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen in the online course Disruptive Strategy . “When we run into unanticipated opportunities and threats, we have to respond. Sometimes we respond successfully; sometimes we don’t. But most strategies develop through this process. More often than not, the strategy that leads to success emerges through a process that’s at work 24/7 in almost every industry."

Related: 5 Tips for Formulating a Successful Strategy

4 Characteristics of Strategic Goals

To craft a strategic plan for your organization, you first need to determine the goals you’re trying to reach. Strategic goals are an organization’s measurable objectives that are indicative of its long-term vision.

Here are four characteristics of strategic goals to keep in mind when setting them for your organization.

1. Purpose-Driven

The starting point for crafting strategic goals is asking yourself what your company’s purpose and values are . What are you striving for, and why is it important to set these objectives? Let the answers to these questions guide the development of your organization’s strategic goals.

“You don’t have to leave your values at the door when you come to work,” says HBS Professor Rebecca Henderson in the online course Sustainable Business Strategy .

Henderson, whose work focuses on reimagining capitalism for a just and sustainable world, also explains that leading with purpose can drive business performance.

“Adopting a purpose will not hurt your performance if you do it authentically and well,” Henderson says in a lecture streamed via Facebook Live . “If you’re able to link your purpose to the strategic vision of the company in a way that really gets people aligned and facing in the right direction, then you have the possibility of outperforming your competitors.”

Related: 5 Examples of Successful Sustainability Initiatives

2. Long-Term and Forward-Focused

While strategic goals are the long-term objectives of your organization, operational goals are the daily milestones that need to be reached to achieve them. When setting strategic goals, think of your company’s values and long-term vision, and ensure you’re not confusing strategic and operational goals.

For instance, your organization’s goal could be to create a new marketing strategy; however, this is an operational goal in service of a long-term vision. The strategic goal, in this case, could be breaking into a new market segment, to which the creation of a new marketing strategy would contribute.

Keep a forward-focused vision to ensure you’re setting challenging objectives that can have a lasting impact on your organization.

3. Actionable

Strong strategic goals are not only long-term and forward-focused—they’re actionable. If there aren’t operational goals that your team can complete to reach the strategic goal, your organization is better off spending time and resources elsewhere.

When formulating strategic goals, think about the operational goals that fall under them. Do they make up an action plan your team can take to achieve your organization’s objective? If so, the goal could be a worthwhile endeavor for your business.

4. Measurable

When crafting strategic goals, it’s important to define how progress and success will be measured.

According to the online course Strategy Execution , an effective tool you can use to create measurable goals is a balanced scorecard —a tool to help you track and measure non-financial variables.

“The balanced scorecard combines the traditional financial perspective with additional perspectives that focus on customers, internal business processes, and learning and development,” says HBS Professor Robert Simons in the online course Strategy Execution . “These additional perspectives help businesses measure all the activities essential to creating value.”

The four perspectives are:

• Internal business processes
• Learning and growth

The most important element of a balanced scorecard is its alignment with your business strategy.

“Ask yourself,” Simons says, “‘If I picked up a scorecard and examined the measures on it, could I infer what the business's strategy was? If you've designed measures well, the answer should be yes.”

Related: A Manager’s Guide to Successful Strategy Implementation

Strategic Goal Examples

Whatever your business goals and objectives , they must have all four of the characteristics listed above.

For instance, the goal “become a household name” is valid but vague. Consider the intended timeframe to reach this goal and how you’ll operationally define “a household name.” The method of obtaining data must also be taken into account.

An appropriate revision to the original goal could be: “Increase brand recognition by 80 percent among surveyed Americans by 2030.” By setting a more specific goal, you can better equip your organization to reach it and ensure that employees and shareholders have a clear definition of success and how it will be measured.

If your organization is focused on becoming more sustainable and eco-conscious, you may need to assess your strategic goals. For example, you may have a goal of becoming a carbon neutral company, but without defining a realistic timeline and baseline for this initiative, the probability of failure is much higher.

A stronger goal might be: “Implement a comprehensive carbon neutrality strategy by 2030.” From there, you can determine the operational goals that will make this strategic goal possible.

No matter what goal you choose to pursue, it’s important to avoid those that lack clarity, detail, specific targets or timeframes, or clear parameters for success. Without these specific elements in place, you’ll have a difficult time making your goals actionable and measurable.

Prioritizing Strategic Goals

Once you’ve identified several strategic goals, determine which are worth pursuing. This can be a lengthy process, especially if other decision-makers have differing priorities and opinions.

To set the stage, ensure everyone is aware of the purpose behind each strategic goal. This calls back to Henderson’s point that employees’ alignment on purpose can set your organization up to outperform its competitors.

Calculate Anticipated ROI

Next, calculate the estimated return on investment (ROI) of the operational goals tied to each strategic objective. For example, if the strategic goal is “reach carbon-neutral status by 2030,” you need to break that down into actionable sub-tasks—such as “determine how much CO2 our company produces each year” and “craft a marketing and public relations strategy”—and calculate the expected cost and return for each.

The ROI formula is typically written as:

ROI = (Net Profit / Cost of Investment) x 100

In project management, the formula uses slightly different terms:

ROI = [(Financial Value - Project Cost) / Project Cost] x 100

An estimate can be a valuable piece of information when deciding which goals to pursue. Although not all strategic goals need to yield a high return on investment, it’s in your best interest to calculate each objective's anticipated ROI so you can compare them.

Consider Current Events

Finally, when deciding which strategic goal to prioritize, the importance of the present moment can’t be overlooked. What’s happening in the world that could impact the timeliness of each goal?

For example, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the ever-intensifying climate change crisis have impacted many organizations’ strategic goals in 2020. Often, the goals that are timely and pressing are those that earn priority.

Learn to Plan Strategic Goals

As you set and prioritize strategic goals, remember that your strategy should always be evolving. As circumstances and challenges shift, so must your organizational strategy.

If you lead with purpose, a measurable and actionable vision, and an awareness of current events, you can set strategic goals worth striving for.

Do you want to learn more about strategic planning? Explore our online strategy courses and download our free flowchart to determine which is right for you and your goals.

This post was updated on November 16, 2023. It was originally published on October 29, 2020.

About the Author

Strategic Plans for Long-Term Growth: Examples and Strategies

Small to midsize businesses (SMBs) make up the vast majority of businesses in the US, according to the US Chamber of Commerce, and they are widely considered to be engines of innovation in the overall economy. But for many founders of these organizations, creating and maintaining strategic plans to keep those ships sailing smoothly five, ten, or even twenty years into the future can be immensely difficult. Don’t worry, though: We’ve got you covered. In this article, we’ll guide you through strategic planning examples and approaches for small to midsize companies in all types of industries. With a little foresight, you can ensure the strategic planning process is an effective means of building a company you’ll love forever .

If you want to:

• Move your organization in the direction you intend for long-term success.
• Implement your plan smoothly for greater growth.
• Use a better platform for developing a truly effective strategic plan.

… then you’ll love this guide. Let’s get started.

What’s Covered in This Guide

Click on each to jump to that section.

What Is Strategic Planning?

How many types of business plans are there, what is the goal of strategic planning.

• How Do I Become a Strategic Leader?

4 Examples of Strategic Planning Strategies

The strategic planning process in 11 steps, what does strategic planning involve, how to implement your strategic plan, examples of strategic plans, get your strategic planning done on ninety.

Strategic planning is the process you use to:

• Establish and document a clear direction for your organization.
• Identify business goals and set priorities that create growth for your company.
• Formulate a long-term plan of action designed to achieve these objectives.
• Determine an internal system tracking and evaluating performance.

When organizations want to, they use a strategic plan to:

• Strengthen their operation.
• Focus on collective energy and resources.
• Enable leaders, teams, and other stakeholders to work toward common goals.
• Make agreements around desired results.
• Refresh direction and prevail over a changing or challenging environment.

Thinking strategically helps companies take the right action for more success and better outcomes. Some even call it an art.

Strategic plans are one of three essential business plans used to pursue important objectives for your company. When tackling challenges and determining action plans, you can think strategically, tactically, or operationally. These three thought processes often work in concert to help you create a framework that achieves your desired objectives.

• Strategic plans are designed for multilevel involvement throughout the entire organization. Leaders will look ahead to where they want to be in three, five, and ten years and develop a mission.
• Tactical plans support strategic plans. They outline the specific responsibilities and functionalities at the department level so team members know how to do their part to make the strategic plan successful.
• Operational plans focus on the highly detailed procedures, processes , and routine tasks that frontline team members must accomplish to achieve desired outcomes.

The goal of your strategic plan is to determine:

• Where your company stands in relation to the current business environment. Understand how your business operates, how you create value , and how you differentiate from your competitors.
• Where you want to take the business based on Focus Filters such as your company’s Vision, culture, Core Values, and goals . Envision how you see the company 5–10 years from now.
• What you need to do to get there. You come away from your planning sessions with a road map that helps deliver on your strategic objectives. Determine better ways to enable and implement change, schedule deadlines, and structure goals so they’re achievable .

The main purpose of your strategic plan is to create clearly defined goals for achieving the growth and success your organization needs. These goals are connected to your organization’s Vision .

How Do I Become a Strategic Leader? 

Strategic leadership, also known as strategy execution, is how you create, implement, and sustain your strategic plan so your organization moves in the direction you intend for long-term success. This usually involves establishing ongoing practices and benchmarks, allocating resources, and providing leadership that supports your Vision.

Strategic leadership can employ two different approaches:

• A prescriptive approach is analytical and focuses on how strategies are created to account for risks and opportunities.
• A descriptive approach is principle-driven and focuses on how strategies are implemented to account for risks and opportunities.

Most people agree that a strategic plan is only as good as the company’s ability to research, create, implement, evaluate, and adjust when needed. The benefits can be great when:

• Your entire organization supports the plan.
• Your business is set up to succeed.
• Your team members are more likely to stay on track without being distracted or derailed.
• You make better decisions based on metrics that facilitate course correction.
• Everyone in your company is involved and invested in better outcomes.
• Departments and teams are aligned across your company.
• People are committed to learning, leading, and coaching .
• Productivity increases, and performance improves.
• Creativity is encouraged and rewarded.

What are the four main points of strategic planning? You engage in strategic thinking so you can create effective company goals that are:

1. Purpose-driven

Align your strategic plan with the Vision as you understand it.

2. Actionable

Actionable strategic goals are worth spending your time and resources on to reach organizational objectives.

3. Measurable

It’s critical for you to track your strategy's progress and success, enabling your teams to take action and meet the goals more effectively.

4. Focused Long-term

A long-term focus distinguishes a strategic plan from operational goals, which involve daily activities and milestones required for success. When planning strategically, you’re looking ahead to the company’s future.

A strategic plan isn’t written in a day: Critical thinking evolves over several months. Those involved in the strategic planning are usually a Senior Leadership Team and team members from your company and possibly other stakeholders.

When should strategic planning be done?

You should plan strategically for startups and newer organizations from the start. But even if your company is a more established small or midsize business, it’s not too late to start working on strategy.

Flexible timing that’s tailored to the needs of your organization is smart. Although the frequency of strategy sessions is up to you, many leaders use these milestones as a guide:

• When the economy, your market, and industry trends change, or a global event occurs (like the onset of a pandemic)
• Following a change in senior leadership
• Before a product launch or when a new division is added to your business
• After your company merges with another organization
• During a convenient time frame such as a quarterly and annual review

Many organizations opt to schedule regular strategic reviews either quarterly or annually. Especially when crafting a plan, your strategic planning team should meet regularly. They will often follow predetermined steps in the development of your long-term plan.

What are the 11 steps of strategic planning?

1. identify your company’s strategic position in the marketplace..

Gather market data and research information from both internal and external sources. You may want to conduct a comprehensive SWOT analysis . Your strengths and weaknesses are directly related to your current competitive advantage within your industry. They're what you use to balance challenges to your success. They also influence the likelihood of increased market share in the future.

2. Define your unique Vision.

What would success look like for you in three years? Five years? Ten years? Articulate that in your Vision. Formulating purpose-driven strategic goals articulates why your company does what it does. Your organizational values inform your Vision and connect them to specific objectives.

3. Determine your company’s value.

Many companies use financial forecasting for this purpose. A forecast can assign anticipated measurable results, return on investment, or profits and cost of investment.

4. Set your organizational direction.

Defining the impact you want to have and the time frame for achieving it helps focus a too-broad or over-ambitious first draft. This way, your plan will have objectives that will have the most impact. 

5. Create specific strategic objectives.

Your strategic objectives identify the conditions for your success. For instance, they may cover:

• Value: Increasing revenue and shareholder value, budgeting cost, allocating resources aligned with the strategic plan, forecasting profitability, and ensuring financial stability. 
• Customer Experience: Identifying target audiences, solution-based products and services, value for the cost, better service, and increased market share.
• Operational Efficiency: Streamlining internal processes, investing in research and development, total quality and performance priorities, reducing cost, and improving workplace safety.
• Learning and Growth: Training leaders and teams to address change and sustain growth, improving employee productivity and retention, and building high-performing teams.

6. Set specific strategic initiatives.

Strategic initiatives are your company's actions to reach your strategic objectives, such as raising brand awareness, a commitment to product development, purpose-driven employee training, and more.

7. Develop cascading goals.

Cascading goals are like cascading messages : They filter your strategy throughout the company from top to bottom. The highest-level goals align with both mid-level goals and the individual goals team members must accomplish to achieve overall outcomes. This helps everyone see how their performance will influence overall success, which improves engagement and productivity.

8. Create alignment across the entire company.

The success of your strategy is directly impacted by your commitment to inform and engage your entire workforce in strategy implementation. This involves ensuring everyone is connected and working together to achieve your goals. Overall decision-making becomes easier and more aligned.

9. Consider strategy mapping.

A strategy map is an easy-to-understand diagram, graphic, or illustration that shows the logical, cause-and-effect relationship among various strategic objectives. They are used to quickly communicate how your organization creates value. It will help you communicate the details of your strategic plan better to people by tapping into their visual learning abilities.

10. Use metrics to measure performance.

When your strategy informs the creation of SMART organizational goals , benchmarks can be established and metrics can be assigned to evaluate performance within specific time frames. Key performance indicators align performance and productivity with long-term strategic objectives. 

11. Evaluate the performance of your plan regularly.

You write a strategic plan to improve your company’s overall performance. Evaluating your progress at regular intervals will tell you whether you’re on your way to achieving your objectives or whether your plan needs an adjustment.

Effective strategic planning involves creating a company culture of good communication and accountability. It involves creating and embracing the opportunity for positive change.

Consider these statistics:

• In many companies, only 42% of leaders and 27% of employees have access to a strategic plan.
• Even if they have access, 95% of employees do not understand their organization's strategy.
• 5.2% of a strategy’s potential is lost to poor communication.
• What leaders care about makes up at least 80% of the content of their communications. But those messages do not tap into around 80% of their employees’ primary motivators for putting extra energy into a change program.
• 28% of leaders say one of the main reasons strategic initiatives succeed is the ability to attract skilled personnel; 25% say it’s good communication; 25% say it’s the ability to manage organizational change.

Here’s what you can do to embrace a culture of good communication and accountability:

Make your strategic plan visible. Talk about what's working and what isn't. People want to know where and how they fit into the organization and why their contribution is valuable — even if they don't understand every element of the plan.

Build accountability. If you've agreed on a plan with clear objectives and priorities, your leaders have to take responsibility for what's in it. They must own the objectives and activities in your plan.

Create an environment for change. It’s much more difficult to implement a strategy if you think there will be no support or collaboration from your team members. Addressing their concerns will help build a culture that understands how to champion change.

• 98% of leaders think strategy implementation takes more time than strategy formulation.
• 61% of leaders acknowledge that their organizations often struggle to bridge the gap between strategy formulation and its day-to-day implementation.
• 45% of leaders say ensuring team members take different actions or demonstrate different behaviors is the toughest implementation challenge; 37% of leaders say it’s gaining support across the whole organization.
• 39% of leaders say one of the main reasons strategic plans succeed is skilled implementation.

The reality for so many is that it’s harder to implement a strategic plan than to craft one. Great strategic ideas and a clear direction are key to success, no matter what. But so is:

• Turning strategic ideas into an easy-to-implement framework that enables meaningful managing, tracking, and adapting
• Getting everyone in the organization on the same strategic page, from creation to execution

When your plan is structured to support implementation, you're more likely to get it done.

What are examples of good strategic planning? If you prefer a more traditional approach, there's lots of templates out there to help you create a plan document with pen and paper whether you're a for-profit or nonprofit entity .

But Ninety has a better way.

The Vision planner is essentially a strategic planning template on Ninety’s cloud-based platform that allows you to:

• Set goals, establish how you will meet them, and share them with those who need to know.
• Gain visibility around your company's Core Values .
• Create Core Values, a niche, and long-term goals that are accessible to everyone in your company.
• Create a Vision that lets you know what needs to happen now.
• Easily update and track changes.
• Bring alignment to your entire organization.

And you can do all this with only two digitized pages.

In your Vision tool inside Ninety, you can easily access all the things that make strategic plans effective by either using our default categories or making custom ones that meet your company’s specific needs. While you can include information about your Vision, goals, SWOT analysis, and key performance indicators from the start, here are some examples of custom options you could add to help more effectively implement your strategic plan: 

• Executive Summary
• Elevator Pitch
• Compelling Why
• Industry Analysis
• Marketing Strategy
• Operations Plan
• Financial Projections

Your Vision and goals are also completely integrated with all other features on Ninety, such as Scorecards, Rocks, To-Dos, Issues, Org Chart , Meetings, 1-on-1s, and more:

• Create a clear game plan for each team.
• Determine one- and three-year goals.
• Reference past versions in a Vision archive.
• Share your Vision with all teams, or keep it private if it's still in progress.

Now that you’ve learned how to grow your company using strategic planning, it’s time to put your knowledge into practice:

Build your strategic plan on Ninety now .

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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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