define strategic planning and give example

Strategic Planning

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

What is Strategic Planning?

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

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

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

Strategic Planning Process

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

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

1. Strategy Formulation

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

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

2. Strategy Implementation

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

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

3. Strategy Evaluation

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

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

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

Benefits of Strategic Planning

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

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

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

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

2. Enhanced communication between employers and employees

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

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

3. Empowers individuals working in the organization

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

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

Additional Resources

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

• Broad Factors Analysis
• Scalability
• Systems Thinking
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What is strategic planning? A 5-step guide

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

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

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

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

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What is strategic planning?

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

What is a strategic plan?

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

Typically, your strategic plan should include: 

Your company’s mission statement

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

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

What are the benefits of strategic planning?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are the 5 steps in strategic planning?

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

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

Step 1: Assess your current business strategy and business environment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does your organization currently do well?

What separates you from your competitors?

What are your most valuable internal resources?

What tangible assets do you have?

What is your biggest strength? 

Weaknesses:

What does your organization do poorly?

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

What do your competitors do better than you?

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

What processes or products need improvement? 

Opportunities:

What opportunities does your organization have?

How can you leverage your unique company strengths?

Are there any trends that you can take advantage of?

How can you capitalize on marketing or press opportunities?

Is there an emerging need for your product or service? 

What emerging competitors should you keep an eye on?

Are there any weaknesses that expose your organization to risk?

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

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

Step 2: Identify your company’s goals and objectives

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Step 3: Develop your strategic plan and determine performance metrics

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

As you build your strategic plan, you should define:

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

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

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

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

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

Step 4: Implement and share your plan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Step 5: Revise and restructure as needed

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

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

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

Build a smarter strategic plan with a work management platform

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

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

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

Strategic planning FAQs

Still have questions about strategic planning? We have answers.

Why do I need a strategic plan?

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

When should I create a strategic plan?

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

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

What is a strategic planning template?

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

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

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

You should create a business plan when you’re: 

Just starting your business

Significantly restructuring your business

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

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

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

Simply put: 

A mission statement summarizes your company’s purpose.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Write better AI prompts: A 4-sentence framework

• CIO strategy

strategic planning

• Katie Terrell Hanna
• Stephen J. Bigelow, Senior Technology Editor
• Mary K. Pratt

What is strategic planning?

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

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

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

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

Why is strategic planning important?

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

The following four aspects of strategy development are worth attention:

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

Modern considerations for strategic planning

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

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

The importance of strategic planning in an evolving society

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

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

Embracing digital transformation

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

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

Agility and adaptability

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

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

Sustainability and social responsibility

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

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

Cultivating organizational culture and employee engagement

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

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

What are the steps in the strategic planning process?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who does the strategic planning in a business?

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

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

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

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

How often should strategic planning be done?

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

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

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

Types of strategic plans

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

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

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

What is strategic management?

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

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

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

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

What is a strategy map?

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

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

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

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

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

Benefits of strategic planning

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

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

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

Continue Reading About strategic planning

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• The evolving CIO role: From IT operator to business strategist
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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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Strategic Planning: A Definition

Unsure of what strategic planning involves and if your organization needs it?

You (generally) know where you want to take your organization, but aren’t sure how to get there. Don’t fall into the trap of making it up as you go along. Instead, launch a more directed effort with strategic planning. Think of this process as a map that plots out, step by step, how to get where you want to be. More specifically, the definition of strategic planning is the development of an organization’s purpose and goals, beyond the immediate future, and actions to achieve those goals.

The best way to understand strategic planning is to learn how it’s done. Read on and we’ll walk you through the entire process.

The 5 Steps Of Strategic Planning

Putting time and energy into strategic planning now will make it much easier for your organization later, and it all starts with five simple steps. Not only will following these steps enable you to reliably achieve your goals, but you’ll be set up to refresh your strategy as your organization matures and grows.

Step 1: Choose a framework.

Your first decision is to pick a strategic planning framework. Working from a specific format will make it much easier to determine which elements need to be included in your strategic plan. The Balanced Scorecard , Ansoff Matrix, and Hoshin Planning model are a few examples of strategic planning frameworks, and each has its strengths. The Balanced Scorecard works for any organization or industry, whereas the Ansoff matrix is specifically focused on aggressive sales growth, and the Hoshin model is project-centric. The framework you choose should suit the structure of your organization.

Step 2: Define your organization’s mission, vision, and values.

This is your “big picture” step, so put on your visionary thinking cap. Now is the time to nail down the purpose and direction of your organization. It involves three important elements:

• Your mission: It defines why you exist as an organization. Every aspect of your strategic plan should ultimately tie to your overarching mission.
• Your vision: It tells where you want to be in the future. Your vision should be feasible, based on ambitious but achievable targets.
• Your values: It states what you stand for as an organization.

No strategy is complete without a mission statement—it is mandatory. Vision and values are also important, but not integral to a strategic plan.

Step 3: Get into the details of your strategy.

Once you’ve defined your mission, zero in on the details and address the actual components of your strategic plan. (For the purposes of this article, we’ll use Balanced Scorecard terminology, but the general concepts are universal.)

You’ll begin by defining your strategic plan’s high-level goals for both individual departments and the corporation as a whole. Then, create measures (metrics) with targets so you can track and evaluate progress toward these goals. Finally, develop initiatives, or projects , to drive your measures and support your goals. Your goals, measures, and initiatives form the backbone of your strategy. Getting these right is critical to the strategic planning process.

Here are a few additional tips for the core of your strategic planning process .

Step 4: Create a reporting process.

Most organizations pull together monthly, quarterly, and annual reports for different audiences (divisions, executives, boards/councils). At this point in strategic planning, you’ll document the reports needed and the process to get them created. Your reporting process should outline details such as the reporting calendar, frequency, owners and stakeholders, and more. The strategic reports you require should all tie to your strategy—don’t report on something just because “Pat asked for it.”

Step 5: Communicate with your organization.

This isn’t as much of a final step as a best practice that spans the entire strategic planning process: Open the lines of communication between your strategy team and the rest of your organization throughout all four previous steps . Get feedback—even using something as simple as a survey—from department heads and internal stakeholders on everything from the mission statement to the most important metrics to track, measure, and report. Senior leadership may think they have these answers, but without asking the people on the ground doing the day-to-day work, nothing’s certain and your strategy could miss the mark. Give your department leads and managers a say in how the strategic plan is defined, and they will be on board and motivated to improve performance.

Remember to keep communication flowing even after you’ve wrapped up your strategic planning—the last crucial piece is to share your finalized strategy. Organizations do this in different ways. For example, an international financial institution effectively communicated its new plan to all staff using videos, progress reports, brochures, posters, and its internal corporate social network. A smaller organization held meetings with each department to review the new strategic plan and followed up by emailing each department its goals and how each tied to the strategy. There’s no single right way to communicate, but integrated efforts will ensure the strategic plan is recognized as part of the organization’s core culture.

Don’t be intimidated by strategic planning. Your efforts will pay off—we promise! Embrace the process, and turn to us for help along the way.

Sean Callison

Sean is the Vice President of Sales at ClearPoint. He leads the Sales department and focuses on developing impactful, consultative sales teams.

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Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. - Dwight D. Eisenhower

It’s that time again. 

Every three to five years, most larger organizations periodically plan for the future. Many times strategic planning documents are shelved and forgotten until the next cycle begins. On the other hand, many smaller and newer organizations, propelled by urgency, may not devote the necessary time and energy to the strategic planning process. 

Only 63% of businesses plan more than a year out. They fail to see that — contrary to Alice in Wonderland’s Cheshire cat — “any way” does not take you there. 

For all organizations, a more rigorous annual planning process is critical for driving future success, profitability, value, and impact.

John Kotter, a former professor at Harvard Business School and noted expert on innovation says, “ Strategy should be viewed as a dynamic force that constantly seeks opportunities, identifies initiatives that will capitalize on them, and completes those initiatives swiftly and efficiently.”

There’s hardly a better case that can be made for dynamic planning than in the tech industry, where mergers and acquisitions are accelerating exponentially. Companies need to be nimble enough to navigate rapid change . In this case, planning should occur quarterly.

Strategic planning is an ongoing process by which an organization sets its forward course by bringing all of its stakeholders together to examine current realities and define its vision for the future.

It examines its strengths and weaknesses, resources available, and opportunities. Strategic planning seeks to anticipate future industry trends .  During the process, the organization creates a vision, articulates its purpose, and sets strategic goals that are long-term and forward-focused. 

Those strategic goals inform operational goals and incremental milestones that need to be reached. The operational plan has clear objectives and supporting initiatives tied to metrics to which everyone is accountable . The plan should be agile enough to allow for recalibrating when necessary and redistributing resources based on internal and external forces.

The output of the planning process is a document that is shared across the enterprise. 

Strategic planning for individuals

Strategic planning isn’t just for companies. At BetterUp, strategic planning is one of the skills that we identify, track, and develop within the Whole Person Model . For individuals, strategic planning is the ability to think through ways to achieve desired outcomes. Just as strategic planning helps organizations realize their goals for the future, it helps individuals grow and achieve goals in a unified direction. 

Working backward from the desired outcome, effective strategic planning consists of coming up with the steps we need to take today in order to get where we want to be tomorrow. 

While no plan is infallible, people who develop this skill are good at checking to make sure that their actions are in alignment with the outcomes that they want to see in the future. Even when things don’t go according to plan, their long-term goals act as a “North star” to get them back on course. In addition, envisioning desired future states and figuring out how to turn them into reality enhances an individual’s sense of personal meaning and motivation. 

Whether we’re talking about strategic planning for the company or the individual, strategic plans can go awry in a variety of ways including: 

• Unrealistic goals and too many priorities
• Poor communication
• Using the wrong measures
• Lack of leadership

The extent to which that document is shelved until the next planning cycle or becomes a dynamic map of the future depends on the people responsible for overseeing the execution of the plan.

What is strategic plan management? 

"Most people think of strategy as an event, but that’s not the way the world works," according to Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen. "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 works 24/7 in almost every industry."

Strategic business management is the ongoing process by which an organization creates and sustains a successful roadmap that moves the company in the direction it needs to move, year after year, for long-term success. It spans from research and formulation to execution, evaluation, and adjustment. Given the pace of change, strategic management is more relevant and important than ever for assigning measurable goals and action steps

Many organizations fail because they don’t have the strategic management team at the table right from the beginning of the planning process. A strategic plan is only as good as its ability to be executed and sustained. 

A strategic management initiative might be driven by an internal group — many companies have an internal strategy team — or an outside consulting firm. Ultimately company leaders need to own executing and sustaining the strategy. 

Strategic management teams

In this Harvard Business Review article, Ron Carucci from consulting firm Navalent reports that 61% of executives in a 10-year longitudinal study felt they were not prepared for the strategic challenges they faced upon being appointed to senior leadership roles. Lack of commitment to the plan is also a contributing factor. In addition, leaders attending to quarterly targets, crisis management , and reconciling budgets often consider the execution of a long-term strategy a low priority.

A dedicated strategic management team works with those senior leaders and managers throughout the organization to communicate, coordinate and evaluate progress against goals. They tie strategic objectives to day-to-day operational metrics throughout the enterprise. 

A good strategic management group can assist in creating a culture of empowerment and learning . It holds regular meetings with employees. It sets a clear agenda and expectations to make the strategic plan real and compelling to the organization through concrete objectives, results, and timelines. 

Strategy development is a lot of work, but the benefits are lasting. After all, as the saying goes, "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." Taking the time for review and planning activities has the following benefits:

• Organizations and people are set up to succeed
• Increased likelihood of staying on track
• Decreased likelihood of being distracted or derailed
• Progress through the plan is communicated throughout the organization
• Metrics facilitate course correction
• Budgets enterprise-wide are based on strategy
• Cross-organization alignment
• Robust employee performance and compensation plans
• Commitment to learning and training
• A robust strategic planning process gets everyone involved and invested in the organizations
• Employees inform management about what’s working or not working at the operational level
• Innovation is encouraged and rewarded
• Increased productivity

1. Define mission and vision  

Begin by articulating the organization's vision for the future. Ask, "What would success look like in five years?" Create a mission statement describing organizational values and how you intend to reach the vision. What values inform and determine mission, vision, and purpose?

Purpose-driven strategic goals articulate the “why” of what the corporation is doing. It connects the vision statement to specific objectives, drawing a line between the larger goals and the work that teams and individuals do.

2. Conduct a comprehensive assessment  

This stage includes identifying an organization’s strategic position.

Gathering data from internal and external environments and respective stakeholders takes place at this time. Involving employees and customers in the research.

The task is to gather market data through research. One of the most critical components of this stage is a comprehensive SWOT analysis that involves gathering people and bringing perspectives from all stakeholders to determine:

• W eaknesses
• O pportunities

Strengths and weaknesses  — In this stage, planners identify the company’s assets that contribute to its current competitive advantage and/or the likelihood of a significant increase in the organization’s market share in the future. It should be an objective assessment rather than an inflated perspective of its strengths. 

An accurate assessment of weaknesses requires looking outward at external forces that can reveal new opportunities as well as threats. Consider the massive shift in multiple industries whose strategy has been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. While it was disastrous to the airline and restaurant industries’ business models , tech companies were able to seize the opportunity and address the demands of remote work. 

Michael Porter’s book Competetive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors claims that there are five forces at work in an industry that influence that industry’s ability to develop a competitive strategy. Since the book was published in 1979, organizations have turned to Porter’s theory to create their strategic framework. 

Here are the 5 forces (and key questions) that determine the competitive strategy for most industries.

• Competitive rivalry : When considering the strengths of an organization’s competitors it’s important to ask: How do our products/services hold up to our competition? If the rivalry is intense, companies need to consider what capacity they have to gain leverage through price cuts or bold marketing strategies. If there is little competition, the organization has a substantial gain in the market.
• Supplier power: How might suppliers influence strategy? For example, what if suppliers raised their prices? To what extent would a company need a particular supplier for our product(s)? Is it possible to switch suppliers in a way that is more cost effective and efficient? The number of suppliers that exist will determine your ability to keep costs low.
• Buyer power: To what extent do buyers have the ability to shop around right into the hands of your competitors? How much power does your customer base have in determining price? A small number of well-informed buyers shifts the power in their direction while a large pool may give you the strategic advantage
• Threat of substitution:  What is the threat of a company’s buyer substituting your services/products from the competition? What if the buyer figures out another way to access the services/products that it offers?
• Threat of new entry:  How easy is it for newcomers to enter the organization’s market?

3. Forecast  

Considering the factors above, determine the company’s value through financial forecasting . While almost certainly to become a moving target influenced by the five forces, a forecast can assign initial anticipated measurable results expected in the plan or ROI: profits/cost of investment.

4. Set the organizational direction of the business

The above research and assessment will help an organization to set goals and priorities. Too often an organization’s strategic plan is too broad and over-ambitious. Planners need to ask, ”What kind of impact are we seeking to have, and in what time frame?” They need to drill down to objectives that will have the most impact. 

5. Create strategic objectives

This next phase of operational planning consists of creating strategic objectives and initiatives. Kaplan and Norton posit in their balanced scorecard methodology that there are four perspectives for consideration in identifying the conditions for success. They are interrelated and must be evaluated simultaneously.

• Financial : Such considerations as growing shareholder value, increasing revenue, managing cost, profitability, or financial stability inform strategic initiatives. 
• Customer-satisfaction:  Objectives can be determined by identifying targets related to one or some of the following: value for the cost, best service, increased market share, or providing customers with solutions.
• Internal processes such as operational processes and efficiencies, investment in innovation, investment in total quality and performance management , cost reduction, improvement of workplace safety, or streamlining processes.
• Learning and growth: Organizations must ask: Are initiatives in place in terms of human capital and learning and growth to sustain change? Objectives may include employee retention, productivity, building high-performing teams, or creating a pipeline for future leaders .

6. Align with key stakeholders

It’s a team effort. The success of the plan is in direct proportion to the organization’s commitment to inform and engage the entire workforce in strategy execution. People will only be committed to strategy implementation when they're connected to the organization's goals. With everyone pulling in the same direction, cross-functional decision-making becomes easier and more aligned.

7. Begin strategy mapping

A strategy map is a powerful tool for illustrating the cause-effect of those perspectives and connecting them to between 12 and 18 strategic objectives. Since most people are visual learners, the map provides an easy-to-understand diagram for everyone in the organization creating shared knowledge at all levels.

8. Determine strategic initiatives

Following the development of strategic objectives, strategic initiatives are determined. These are the actions the organization will take to reach those objectives. They may relate initiatives related to factors such as scope, budget, raising brand awareness, product development, and employee training.

9. Benchmark performance measures and analysis

Strategic initiatives inform SMART goals to which metrics are assigned to evaluate performance. These measures cascade from senior management to management to front-line workers. At this stage, the task is to create goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based informing the operational plan.

Benchmarks are established against so that performance can be measures, and a time frame is created. Key performance indicators (KPI’s) are assigned based on organizational goals. These indicators align workers’ performance and productivity with long-term strategic objectives. 

10. Performance evaluation

Assessment of whether the plan has been successful . It measures activities and progress toward objectives and allows for the creation of improved plans and objectives in order to improve overall performance . 

Think of strategic planning as a circular process beginning and ending with evaluation. Adjust a  plan as necessary. The pace at which review of the plan is necessary may be once a year for many organizations or quarterly for organizations in rapidly evolving industries. 

Prioritizing the strategic planning process

The strategic planning meeting may have a reputation for being just another to-do, but it might be time to take a second look. With the right action plan and a little strategic thinking, you can reinvigorate your business environment and start planning for success.

It's that time to get excited about the future again.

Elevate your strategic planning

Discover how targeted coaching can enhance your strategic insight and execution across all levels of your organization.

Meredith Betz, M.S.Ed, M.S.O.D.

Meredith Betz is a Betterup Fellow Coach. As an organizational consultant and Executive Coach, Meredith's work focuses on leaders, teams, and the dynamics in the systems in which they live and work. She helps people become more influential and exhibit executive presence. Meredith is a certified Conscious Business Coach who helps leaders to exercise empathy and lead in a way that is consistent with their values. She gives them the tools to communicate and negotiate effectively with their stakeholders. Meredith recently co-wrote a memoir with a 103-year-old Estonian man who lived through the Nazi and Soviet occupations of Estonia in the 1940s. It was a profound experience. A seminal book for her is Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, an Austrian Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist.

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Strategic Planning

The process of an organization identifying its strategy or giving direction

Prior to becoming a Founder for Curiocity, Hassan worked for Houlihan Lokey as an Investment Banking Analyst focusing on sellside and buyside  M&A , restructurings, financings and strategic advisory engagements across industry groups.

Hassan holds a  BS  from the University of Pennsylvania in Economics.

What Is Strategic Planning?

• Dealing With Uncertainty In Strategic Planning
• What Is A Strategic Map
• Stages Of Strategic Planning

Strategic Planning Vs. Financial Planning

Strategic planning faqs.

Strategic planning is the process of an organization identifying its strategy or giving direction, as well as making decisions deciding how to allocate resources to accomplish that strategy.

Strategic planning is the process of recording and determining a business's direction by evaluating both where you are now and where you want to go in the future. 

It provides a space for an individual to write down their vision, mission, and values, as well as long-term goals and strategies for achieving them.

The process of identifying a company's goals, the resources needed to attain them, and the rules that will govern the purchase, use, and disposal of those resources.

Strategic planning is a top-level management function. This planning flow can go from the corporate level to the divisional level or vice versa. There are two approaches to strategic planning:

1. Top-down approach

It is a centralized method of strategy development in which the organization's general mission, strategic intent, objectives, and strategies are decided by the corporate center or head office. Unit managers are frequently seen as enablers of pre-determined business strategies.

2. Bottom-up approach

It's a characteristic of independent or semi-independent divisions or subsidiary corporations when the corporate center doesn't regard its strategic function as directly determining the purpose, objectives, or strategies of its operational activities.

It might choose to act as a catalyst and facilitator, keeping things simple and concentrating on the big picture and overall strategic aim .

The strategic plan first gained popularity in the late 1960s, and it remained popular in the business world until the 1980s, when it began to lose its fame. However, in the 1990s, there was a great deal of interest in strategic business planning, and it is still essential in today's industry.

Dealing with Uncertainty in Strategic Planning

Unpredictable, unstoppable, and sometimes meaningless conditions that may have a direct impact on projected outcomes are referred to as strategic uncertainty. A typical external analysis will uncover dozens of new strategic unknowns.

They must be well organized into logical groups or topics in order to be manageable. The importance of each cluster can then be assessed in order to define priorities for information gathering and additional analysis.

A future trend or event that has intrinsic unpredictability is a good example of strategic uncertainty. When additional analysis and information collecting are ineffective at reducing uncertainty, scenario analysis is used .

Scenario analysis is a method of analyzing future occurrences by examining various probable outcomes. As a result, it is one of the most common types of projection that does not attempt to depict a single exact vision of the future. It offers a number of potential future possibilities.

The significance of strategic uncertainty is that each piece of strategic uncertainty contains prospective trends or events that could affect current, proposed, or even potential companies.

The impact of strategic uncertainty will be determined by how vital the impacted  strategic business units (SBU)  are to the company. 

The importance of some strategic business units is greater than that of others. The sale, profit, or cost of strategic business units can all be used to determine their relevance.

Because of strategic ambiguity, a never-ending process of information collection and analysis consumes resources perpetually.

What is a strategic map

A strategy map is a planning tool that helps stakeholders see a company's entire strategy as a single interconnected graphic. These diagrams are a great method to comprehend and review the cause-and-effect linkages between the many aspects of a business strategy.

While a strategy map can be developed in a variety of ways, all focus on four primary business areas or categories: financial, customer, internal business processes (IBP), and learning and growth.

Goals can be sorted into one of the four categories, and links between them can be constructed. For example, a strategy map can include a financial target of cost reduction and an internal business processes (IBP) goal of improving operational efficiency.

Broader goals can be translated into action plans. These goals can then be aligned and implemented with the help of a strategy map.

Strategy mapping can also assist in identifying strategic difficulties that aren't immediately apparent. 

To cite an example, one learning and growth goal could be to enhance staff knowledge, but this could result in unexpected employee retention and compensation issues, which could impact cost-cutting goals.

Stages of Strategic Planning

The strategic planning process necessitates a great deal of thought and planning from a company's executive management.  Executives  may explore a variety of possibilities before deciding on a course of action and then selecting how to implement it strategically.

Finally, a company's management should choose a strategy that is most likely to deliver good results (typically defined as increasing the company's bottom line), and that can be implemented in a cost-effective manner with a high possibility of success while minimizing financial risk.

Strategic planning involves five stages that are described below:

Stage 1: Determining strategic position

This step sets the foundation for all work going forward. To figure out where you need to go and how you'll get there, you must first figure out where you are now. It also includes appropriate stakeholders from the beginning, taking into account both internal and external sources.

Have a chat with your company's management by gathering consumer insights and gathering industry and market data to identify significant strategic challenges. This will provide you with a comprehensive image of your market position as well as customer information.

It's also a good idea to go over your firm's mission and vision statements or create them if you don't already have them to offer yourself and your team a clear picture of what success looks like for your company.

Review your organization's basic principles as well to remind yourself of how your organization plans to achieve these goals.

To begin, identify the issues that need to be solved using industry and market data, such as customer insights and present and future expectations.

Create a list of your company's internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as external opportunities (ways your company can grow to meet requirements that the market doesn't currently meet) and threats (your competition).

Use a SWOT diagram as a framework for your initial analysis o, and you can easily categorize your findings into  Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT)  to define your present position using input from executives, customers, and external market data.

PEST analysis is an alternative to a SWOT analysis . PEST represents (Political, Economic, Socio-cultural, and Technological) is a strategic technique for identifying dangers and possibilities for your company. Your unique strategic position in the market will become evident as you integrate this knowledge, and you can begin to clarify a few key strategic objectives.

Stage 2: Setting objectives

After you've determined your present market position, you'll need to set objectives to help you reach your desired goals. Your goals should be in line with the mission and vision of your firm.

For setting your objectives, you may be asking yourself some important questions such as:

• Which of these initiatives will have the most influence on attaining our company's mission/vision and improving our market position?
• What are the most critical sorts of impact (e.g., client acquisition vs. revenue)?
• What will the competition's response be?
• Which initiatives are the most critical?
• What will we have to do to achieve our objectives?
• How are we going to track our progress and see if we've met our objectives?

To assist you in achieving your long-term strategic goals and activities, objectives should be unique and measurable. Updating website content, enhancing open email rates, and producing new leads in the pipeline are all possible goals.

Stage 3: Creating a plan

It's now time to create a strategic plan for achieving your goals. This step entails deciding on the techniques that will help you achieve your goals, as well as creating a timeframe and clearly articulating roles and responsibilities.

Before making any definite decisions on the plans, they should be carefully evaluated by top-level management, and a feasibility analysis of the alternatives is necessary.

Strategy mapping is a useful tool for visualizing your course of this process. Strategy maps, which work follow the top-down approach, make it easier to see how company processes work and where improvements can be made.

True strategic decisions almost always entail a trade- off in opportunity cost . For example, your organization may opt to put less money into customer service in order to put more money into producing an intuitive user experience.

Be ready to say "no" to efforts that do not improve your long-term strategic position based on your values, mission statement , and defined priorities.

Stage 4: Implementing and executing the plan

The development of the company enterprise depends on the strategy's effective implementation. The strategic management process is now in its active phase. 

At the start of this stage, a new structure should be put in place if the overall plan does not mesh with the company's present setup. Your strategic goals are more likely to be achieved if you create the concrete actions that your team must perform. It is important that everyone in the organization is aware of their roles within the company as well as how those roles relate to the broader objective.

By mapping out your processes, you can easily turn your broad strategy into a detailed plan. Use key performance indicator (KPI) dashboards to explain team roles effectively. The completion process and ownership for each step of the journey are illustrated in this detailed method.

To ensure that you stay on track, establish regular evaluations with individual contributors and their managers, as well as check-in points.

Stage 5: Monitoring the plan and ensuring effectiveness

The plan's last step involves monitoring and ensuring its effectiveness, allowing you to reevaluate your goals and make course corrections based on past successes and failures.

Determine which KPIs your team has met and how you can continue to fulfill them at the end of each quarter, changing your plan as needed. It's important to reevaluate your priorities and strategic position every year to ensure that you're on the right track for long-term success.

Use balanced scorecards to track your progress to gain a full understanding of your business's performance and execute strategic goals.

Your goal and vision may need to alter over time; an annual evaluation is an excellent chance to think about those changes, draft a new strategy, and implement it again.

We can see the various stages of strategic planning with the help of an example where you are planning a trip from New York to London: 

Stage 1 : If you are planning to travel from New York City (JKF) to London (LHR), you prepare your journey by knowing where you are and where you want to get to.

Stage 2 : Here, we ask ourselves some questions: how do we get there and prepare our schedule? 

Stage 3 :  In this stage, we construct our plan of traveling, finding the best possible means of reaching there.

Stage 4 : This is the stage where you are putting your plan into action. You pack your bags and are all ready for departure, seeing the scenic view from above-having connecting flights at the airport.

Stage 5 : The last stage involves monitoring your plan to see that you're sitting in the right seat and the meals served to you are proper.

They often overlap and intersect, but they serve distinct purposes and emphasize different aspects of an organization's future. 

Strategic Planning focuses on the long-term direction, defining the vision, mission, and overall approach. At the same time, Financial Planning concentrates on the financial resources, budgeting, and fiscal controls needed to achieve those long-term objectives.

Here are the differences:

The strategic plan illustrates the path to attaining the company's strategic objectives (vision), whereas the financial plan indicates the path to reaching financial goals.

A financial plan is needed to manage cash flow inside the organization, while a strategic plan is needed to align resources with the company's long-term goals.

A strategic plan is a five-step process that includes defining a strategic vision, setting objectives, crafting a strategy, implementing and executing the strategy, and tracking the strategy's success. On the other hand, financial statements prepare statements such as balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements.

Financial planning is concerned with the management of funds or the usage of cash flow over time, whereas strategic planning is concerned with the organization's road map.

Financial planning is used to meet predetermined financial goals, whereas strategic planning is used to make long-term plans that are guided by the company's vision and mission. The effectiveness of this planning determines a company's success.

The major problems while planning a strategy is that it lacks ownership, can lead to poor communication, lack of alignment, slow adoption of the plan, etc.,

Some of the misconceptions of strategic planning are that:

It is quick and easy,

It is the same as an annual work plan,

An outsider can generate the plan,

It is mainly for top-level management.

A strategic plan should look into the future as far as you feel comfortable. But bear in mind that you must be certain that the atmosphere of your business will remain steady for the duration of the timeframe you select.

You should at the very least review your plan twice a year or even every quarter. Even if you believe that your current plan is off the rails and needs to be scrapped, you should still carefully consider what went wrong the last time.

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Strategic Planning Process Definition, Steps and Examples

Published: 03 January, 2024

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Digital Strategy

Table of Contents

Organizations use Strategic Planning to gather all their stakeholders to evaluate the collection of current circumstances and decide upon their ongoing goals and benchmarks. They decide upon long-term objectives and establish a vision for the company’s future.

The efforts behind an organization’s Strategic Planning Processes are vital to its success, and yet, while many organizations acknowledge they need to do this kind of planning, they often don’t understand how to make it a reality. In this article, we explain the reasons behind Strategic Planning and how to make your Strategic Planning Process as powerful as possible.

What is a Strategic Plan

Strategic planning is a systematic process wherein the leaders of an organization articulate their vision for the future and delineate the goals and objectives that will guide the trajectory of the organization.

What is the Strategic Planning Process

Strategic planning is a process of defining an organization’s direction and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this direction . It involves creating a long-term plan that outlines the organization’s vision, mission, values, and objectives, as well as the strategies and tactics that will be used to achieve them.

Strategy is often misunderstood, which is surprising because fundamentally it’s a pretty basic concept. Strategy is a clearly expressed direction and a verified plan on how to get there. Your Strategic Planning Process formalizes the steps you’ll take to decide on your plan. The Strategic Planning Process facilitates using a Strategic Execution Framework that articulates where you’ll invest in innovation and where you can cut costs.

As far as business development planning is concerned, your Strategic Execution Framework is a vital tool for driving innovation, but first you must define the process you’ll undertake to determine how you and your team see the future of your organization. In this article, we discuss how to create your Strategic Plan and define its relationship to other concepts and documents that direct your business and its activities.

While it’s true that every business is different and must develop their own processes, we believe there are some process  of strategic planning stepsthat benefit all organizations.

Below are our recommendations for the steps to take when undergoing your Strategic Planning Process, along with the questions we suggest you answer during each specific step.

Step One: Analyze your Business Environment

• Who are your competitors?
• What relevant market data do you have, and what do you still need?
• What technology has emerged that impacts your business model?
• How have customer expectations changed since your last Strategic Plan?
• What advantages do you have over competitors?
• Where is your company weaker compared to competitors?
• What predictable complications are on the horizon?
• Which unpredictable complications seem most likely or most potentially impactful?

Step Two: Set your Strategic Direction

• What is your overall Business Purpose ?
• How have your operations reflected your Purpose and Goals recently?
• How should your operations reflect your Purpose and Goals?
• Where do you see your business going in the next year?
• In two years? In three years?
• What are the metrics you’ll use to measure success?
• What are your make-or-break necessities?

Step Three: Set and develop Strategic Goals and Strategic Objectives

• Have you considered short-, mid-, and long-term business goals , and what are they?
• How do your Strategic Goals reflect your Mission Statement?
• How do your Strategic Goals reflect your company values and vision?
• What daily operations must be completed to work toward your Strategic Objectives?
• How will you communicate your Strategic Goals and Strategic Objectives?
• Who is responsible for reporting on success?
• How will strategic data be collected?

Related: Strategic Goals: Examples, Importance, Definitions and How to Set Them

Step Four: Drill down to Department-Level Objectives

• What are specific department concerns?
• How will your budget influence and be influenced by your Strategic Goals and Objectives?
• Which departments have resources that could be shared to better advantage?
• What roles do individual departments play in your overall Strategic Goals?
• What ongoing projects become a priority because of your new Strategic Goals?
• Are Departmental Objectives complementing each other and the overall Business Model?

Step Five: Manage and Analyze Performance

• Who is on the Strategic Planning team?
• Are tasks and job descriptions properly aligned to ensure the right work is getting completed?
• What is the schedule for the meeting for Strategic Planning?
• What are your metrics for measuring performance and success?
• Have you clearly articulated and shared KPIs?
• Who is responsible for gathering data?
• How will data be collected?
• How will data be reported?
• What’s at stake for strategy success or failure?

Step Six: Review and develop your Strategic Plan

• How should your Strategic Plan look on paper?
• What is your Strategy Execution Framework —how will you guarantee the Strategic Plan Team’s decisions are respected and executed?
• What is the review process?
• How often do you evaluate your Strategic Plan?
• How will you communicate your final Strategic Plan?

Strategic Planning Process Examples

1) apple strategic plan process.

• Vision and Mission: Apple’s strategic planning begins with a clear vision and mission. Apple’s vision is to create innovative products that inspire and enrich people’s lives.
• Environmental Analysis: Apple conducts thorough environmental analyses, considering technological trends, market demands, and competitive landscapes. This includes staying at the forefront of cutting-edge technologies.
• SWOT Analysis: Apple evaluates its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. For example, one of Apple’s strengths is its strong brand image, while a weakness might be dependence on a limited product line.
• Setting business Goals and Objectives: Apple sets specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals. This could include objectives like maintaining a certain market share, launching new products, or achieving specific financial targets.
• Strategies and Tactics: Apple develops strategies based on its goals. For instance, a strategic move might be expanding its ecosystem by integrating hardware, software, and services. Tactics could include aggressive marketing campaigns and product launches.
• Implementation and Execution: Apple’s strategic plans are meticulously executed. The launch of iconic products like the iPhone, iPad, and Mac series demonstrates effective implementation of their strategies.
• Monitoring and Adjusting: Apple constantly monitors its performance metrics, customer feedback, and market dynamics. If necessary, adjustments are made to the strategic plan to stay responsive to changing conditions.

2) Tesla Strategic Plan Process

• Vision and Mission: Tesla’s strategic planning revolves around its mission to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. The vision includes producing electric vehicles and renewable energy solutions.
• Market Analysis: Tesla analyzes global markets for electric vehicles, renewable energy, and energy storage. This involves understanding regulatory environments, consumer behaviours, and technological advancements.
• Risk Assessment: Tesla conducts risk assessments related to manufacturing, supply chain, and market volatility. For instance, it considers risks associated with battery production and global economic conditions.
• Setting Bold Objectives: Tesla is known for setting ambitious objectives, such as achieving mass-market electric vehicle adoption and establishing a robust network of charging stations worldwide.
• Innovative Strategies: Tesla’s strategic planning involves innovation in technology and business models . For instance, the “Gigafactories” for mass production of batteries and the “Autopilot” feature in vehicles reflect innovative strategies.
• Agile Adaptation: Due to the rapidly changing automotive and energy sectors, Tesla maintains an agile approach. The company adapts its plans swiftly to capitalize on emerging opportunities, as seen in the expansion of its energy products.
• Continuous Improvement: Tesla places emphasis on continuous improvement. The iterative development of electric vehicle models, software updates, and advancements in battery technology showcase a commitment to refinement.

These examples demonstrate how strategic planning is a dynamic and integral part of the business processes of leading companies. They highlight the importance of a well-defined vision, rigorous analysis, adaptability, and innovation in the strategic planning process.

Tactical vs. Strategic Planning Process

An easy way to distinguish your company’s Tactical Planning from your Strategic Planning is to separate your wants from your HOWs.

In your Strategic Planning, you identify what you WANT for the company. These are big-picture dreams (achievable, but big ) that are your definition of success. In your Tactical Planning, you identify the HOW for reaching those dreams, including the smaller necessary steps.

Each kind of planning is vital for securing the organization’s future, but they require different sorts of attention and philosophy, and teams that are good at planning one way may not necessarily be good at the other kind of planning.

Strategic Planning vs. Your Business Purpose

Your Strategic Planning Process will of course be deeply connected to your Business Purpose .

We like to think of Business Purpose in broad terms, choosing especially to think of a business’s role in massive transformation. Embedded within a Business Purpose is the Business Plan that directs operations and how a company delivers value to its customers.

What is the relationship between your Strategic Planning and your Business Purpose? One feeds into the other. Your Business Purpose must point to a larger impact you’ll have on the people who purchase your goods and services, and your Strategic Planning takes into account how you’ll grow and expand that Purpose as you reach more customers more successfully.

Strategic Planning vs Business Planning

Strategic planning and business planning are two distinct processes that are often used interchangeably, but they have some key differences.

Strategic planning is a top-level process that focuses on determining the direction of an organization over the long term. It involves setting goals, determining the key resources and actions necessary to achieve those goals, and allocating those resources in a way that best serves the organization’s future. The outcome of strategic planning is typically a long-term strategic plan that outlines the organization’s vision, mission, values, and objectives.

Business planning , on the other hand, is a more tactical process that focuses on the implementation of specific initiatives and projects to support the organization’s long-term goals. Business plans typically outline the steps necessary to launch a new product, enter a new market, or achieve a specific objective. They may also include budgets, marketing plans, and other operational details.

In short, strategic planning is about setting the direction for an organization, while business planning is about implementing specific initiatives to support that direction. Both processes are important for the success of an organization and should be used in conjunction to ensure that resources are allocated effectively and that the organization is moving in the right direction.

Why is Strategic Planning Important?

Imagine this scenario: A warehouse full of goods sits, unsold and unmoved. A collection of brilliant people languishes at desks all day. Outside, the world spins and changes. It’s ready for what these people could do, can do, and yet nothing happens. Needs remain unmet. Progress is halted. Everyday life takes several backwards steps. This is what your business will look like without proper Strategic Planning.

Strategic Planning forces you to consider your Strategic Objectives and critically compare them to the resources you have available. As you continuously evaluate the circumstances of your business and your customers, your Strategic Plan evolves to match your goals and business capabilities.

The process involved pushes decision-makers to practice Strategic Thinking . It limits wasteful spending, especially when upper-level managers are willing to forgo pet projects in favor of operations with a broader use and appeal.

Strategic Planning is important because it directs your resources to efficiently meet your overall Business Goals. Without Strategic Planning, you are likely to waste resources, make conflicting decisions, or fail to grow your business to its greatest potential.

When Do You Create a Strategic Plan?

Most businesses find value in reviewing their Strategic Plan every three years. This allows enough time to pass that you can evaluate the success of previous plans, reflect on the achievement of your Strategic Goals, consider developments outside your organization that affect your business, and begin formulating new goals that will become the next version of your plans.

When businesses first begin, they often have too many fires burning at once. They remain focused on existing today rather than planning for tomorrow. Most entrepreneurs remember those stressful early days of starting their businesses and can understand why formalities like Strategic Plans can fall by the wayside. We believe if your business lasts longer than a year it’s important to develop a plan for the future. Think of Strategic Planning as a celebration of a first anniversary—a sign that you’re poised to continue moving forward for years to come.

However, Strategic Planning is not a one-off event that is over once the cookies are all gone and the room clears. Your Strategic Planning team should meet regularly to measure how effective the plans are at helping you reach your Strategic Goals. Ad hoc subcommittees can play a role in gathering evidence to ensure that your plans remain appropriate, especially if conditions change.

For example, we recommended a close review of Strategic Plans and Strategic Goals once the COVID-19 pandemic made it clear that business was going to be affected at least short- to mid-term. We continue to recommend teams regularly revisit their Strategic Plans with global circumstances in mind to recognize opportunities and prepare for challenges.

The Benefits of Strategic Planning

As we’ve mentioned, there are many benefits of Strategic Planning . Some of those benefits include:

• Shared sense of power and importance
• United direction
• Clear path and purpose for decision-making and operations
• Boosted operational effectiveness
• Responsible, efficient use of available resources
• Meaningful work done on a daily basis
• Tracking of progress
• Ability to adjust to changing circumstances

What is a business without Strategic Planning? In most cases, it’s not much, nor is it long for the world. While it’s possible to accidentally find success without much planning, most successful businesses are a result of careful thought mixed with the urge to pounce on the opportunity.

What prepares you to pounce?

Your Strategic Planning and the processes that make it possible.

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Home » What Is Strategic Planning? (Definition and Examples)

What Is Strategic Planning? (Definition and Examples)

July 1, 2022 max 7min read.

This Article Covers :-

What Is Strategic Planning?

What are the elements of strategic planning, why is strategic planning important, what are the examples of strategic planning, definition of strategic planning.

Strategic planning refers to developing specific business plans, putting them into action, and analyzing the results regarding a company’s overarching long-term goals or objectives.

Strategic planning is another buzzword that businesses and startups revolve around. However, most of them are only stuck on strategic thinking.

There’s a difference between strategic thinking and strategic planning . The latter gets things done.

But what is strategic planning, and what does it involve? 

Strategic planning is the process of developing a defined business strategy that helps your company’s direction. 

It involves prioritization , efficient resource capacity planning , the optimization of operations, and the assurance that all employees and stakeholders align towards the same goals. 

It reaffirms a company’s direction and how it will measure its success. 

What Are the Types of Strategic Planning?

There are three main types of strategic planning:

Annual planning

Annual planning is a process that takes place over one year. It involves setting goals and objectives for the year and developing strategies to achieve those goals. 

Annual planning is best suited for stable businesses with a predictable sales cycle.

Rolling planning

Rolling planning involves setting goals and objectives on a rolling basis and developing strategies to achieve those goals. 

Rolling planning is best suited for businesses in a growth phase or an unpredictable sales cycle.

Crisis planning

Crisis planning is a process in response to a specific crisis. 

It involves developing a plan to address the crisis and implementing that plan. 

In addition to these, there are specific strategic planning models that you can adopt while approaching your strategic plan. 

Some of the strategic planning models are as follows: 

SWOT Analysis

The SWOT analysis is a rising model that companies frequently employ at the start of the strategic planning process. 

It highlights the internal and external factors that help or hinder the achievement of a corporate goal.

Strengths – Factors of the company that can assist in achieving the goal.

Weaknesses – Factors of the business that may obstruct the achievement of the goal

Opportunities – External variables that could assist in achieving the goal.

Threats – External variables that may obstruct the achievement of the goal.

SWOT analysis might assist you in figuring out what you’re good at and where you could improve. 

Take a look at our SWOT analysis guide .

PESTLE Analysis

PESTLE divides the business environment into four categories:

Political – Changes in taxation, trading agreements, or grant support for enterprises are examples of political factors.

Economic – Interest rates, inflation, and changes in consumer demand are all economic factors.

Social – Factors such as altering lifestyle patterns or demographic trends

Technological – Emerging technology or equipment that boosts productivity are examples of technological advancements.

Legal – Changes in employment law or the way your industry is controlled are examples of legal changes.

Environmental – Customers, regulators, and employees’ expectations of sustainable development evolve.

Now that you know how to approach your strategic planning process, look at the elements of strategic planning.

There are four essential elements of strategic planning that you must pay attention to. They are as follows:

Your Mission

Strategic planning begins with a mission statement that gives a business a feeling of direction and purpose. 

An organization’s mission statement describes who it is, what it does, and where it wants to go. Mission statements are usually broad but specific. 

A company in the education field, for example, might aim to be the market leader in online virtual instructional tools and services.

Selecting goals is an integral part of strategic planning. Most teams use SMART goals or other objectively quantifiable goals.  

Measurable goals are vital because they allow business leaders to assess how well the company meets its objectives and achieves its overall mission.

You can begin your SMART goal-setting journey by reading our guide on it.

Alignment is a crucial yet often neglected element of strategic planning. Here are some things to keep in mind: 

• Do your short-term goals align with your long-term goals? 
• How do you plan on aligning your cross-functional teams ? 
• How will you manage your stakeholder expectations ? 

You can always get started with your internal team alignment and make your way up. At Chisel , we use the Team Radar feature to grasp which page each team is on. 

The strategic planning process is essential for several reasons. 

It helps you take a step back, assess your business or organization’s current situation, and identify areas that need improvement. 

Furthermore, it gives you a roadmap to follow as you work to achieve your goals.

Good strategic planning will keep you focused and help ensure that you make decisions aligned with your overall goals.

If you’re unsure where to start, there are many product and business strategy templates and tools we discuss in our blogs . 

What Are the Steps in the Strategic Planning Process?

You can carry out strategic planning through the following steps:

Identifying 

The first step in strategic planning is identifying a company’s present strategic position. 

This is where stakeholders examine the organization and its environment using the existing strategic plan, including the mission statement and long-term strategic goals.

Prioritizing

The strategic planners then develop targets and objectives that align with the organization’s mission and goals to help the company achieve them.  

There could be a lot of potential goals; thus, prioritizing the most important, relevant, and immediate ones is crucial.

You may employ any prioritization matrix or establish OKRs in this step.

Developing 

This is the crux of strategic planning, in which stakeholders work together to develop the stages or strategies required to achieve a specified strategic goal. 

This may entail developing short-term tactical business strategies that align with the overall strategy. 

Stakeholders participating in the development use tools like a mind-map to visualize and alter the plan.

Implementing

It’s time to put the strategic plan into action after being prepared. 

To set roles, make investments, alter policies and processes, and develop measurement and reporting, you must communicate well across the business. 

Strategic management and regular strategic reviews are usually part of the implementation process to ensure that objectives stay on track.

As company conditions change and new possibilities arise, you should regularly evaluate and update your strategic planning to alter priorities and reconsider goals. 

Quarterly evaluations of KPIs are possible, as are annual revisions to the strategic plan. 

Stakeholders can review performance against goals using balanced scorecards and other tools.

Now you know the fundamental steps involved in the strategic planning process. However, you can take it one step forward by instilling some best practices.

What Are the Best Practices for Strategic Planning?

A few best practices for strategic planning can help businesses get the most out of this process.

Team Alignment

The first best practice for strategic planning is ensuring that the entire team is involved. 

From the CEO to the entry-level employees, everyone should have a say in the company’s goals and how you can achieve them. This ensures everyone is on the same page and working towards the same objectives.

Using product roadmap software ‘s that align all teams and stakeholders in one place can come in handy.

Periodic Review

Another best practice for strategic planning is reviewing and adjusting the plan as needed. 

The business landscape is constantly competitive , so it’s essential to ensure that the strategic plan is still relevant and achievable. 

Adjusting the plan as needed will help keep the business on track and ensure that the goals are still realistic.

Transparent Communication

Finally, one of the most essential best practices for strategic planning is communicating the plan to everyone in the company. 

Employees need to know the goals and how they can help achieve them. By communicating the plan clearly, businesses can ensure that everyone is working towards the same objectives.

By following these best practices for strategic planning, businesses can ensure that they get the most out of this essential process.

Some of the most popular companies globally are known for their strategic planning. 

Nike, for example, has a well-defined strategic plan that has helped them become one of the most successful companies in the world. 

Another great example is Google, which has a clear strategic plan that has helped them become a global powerhouse. 

Regarding social media giants, Facebook is one of the top dogs. With over 2.23 billion monthly active users, the platform boasts incredible reach.

Given its size and scope, it’s no surprise that Facebook takes a very strategic approach to its planning. The company has a whole team dedicated to strategic planning and execution.

Well, now you have everything you need. Let’s embark on your strategic planning journey with Chisel’s free-forever all-rounder product management tools ! 

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Strategic committee usually leads the strategic planning. This committee may include stakeholders, corporate executives, product owners and managers , and other strategic consultants.

Goals and objectives are two critical components of strategic planning. Goals are the broad, long-term aspirations that an organization hopes to achieve. Objectives are the specific, measurable steps an organization will take to achieve its goals.

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Strategic Planning – Definition, Examples and FAQs

Strategic planning comprises the creation of tangible business strategies, their implementation, and evaluation of the results, all while keeping the organization’s long-term aims and ambitions in mind. This notion is used to achieve organizational goals by coordinating efforts among several departments such as finance, human resources, and marketing. Such departments include personnel and human resources, marketing, and accounting and finance. Strategic planning and strategic management are fundamentally identical. This article will go into strategic planning in detail and provide some examples for your convenience.

Christensen goes on to say that the common view of strategy as an isolated episode is incompatible with the reality. “That is not how the world works,” he says, stunned. We must be prepared to respond quickly to any unexpected threats or opportunities that may arise. There are times when a satisfactory response is possible to provide, and times when it is not. Nonetheless, this strategy is the primary means by which fresh methodologies are developed. A strategy’s successful execution is virtually always the product of a continuous process in some sector of the economy.Strategic maneuver planning takes a significant amount of time, effort, and constant evaluation. Putting the necessary effort into it has the ability to transform your business for the better. The application of strategic planning can provide three benefits.

Table of Contents

Meaning of Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is used by organizations as a managerial endeavor to establish objectives, focus efforts, improve operational effectiveness, synchronize stakeholders with organizational goals, foster a collective understanding of the future, achieve agreement on preferred results, and respond to a changing external environment.

The deliberate planning process results in the formulation of crucial decisions and activities that shape and define a company, its mission, consumers, and operations. Successful strategic planning includes not only establishing the company’s intended goal and the intended course of action to attain it, but also defining the key performance indicators that will measure success.

Strategic planning is a very effective organizational approach used by firms of all sizes and across all industries. Every member of an organization or firm benefits from understanding the stages of the strategic planning process. It is crucial to have a thorough awareness of the fundamental aspects and methods required for successful execution. This essay will describe strategic planning, answer frequently asked questions about its application in business growth, and offer some next steps.

Strategic Planning Examples

The strategic plan will include the company’s goals, objectives, and the process it will use to achieve them, in addition to its mission and vision statements. Strategic and operational plans are diametrically opposed. The business plan is widely used to facilitate the formation of a firm and the acquisition of the initial money required to begin operations. A strategic plan outlines the process by which current assets will be used to achieve future growth and success.

The Canadian Soccer Association’s strategy plan for 2014-2018 is dense with information and specifications. This document examines the organization’s current situation and projects its future areas of focus. It outlines the tactics and goals that the Canadian Soccer Association wants to pursue in order to attain those goals.

How does Strategic Planning Work?

Strategic planning is not only used by businesses. According to the Whole Person Model, BetterUp aids its users in the development of a variety of abilities, including strategic planning. Individual strategic planning demands the ability to consider alternative routes to the intended target. Organizations and individuals both have the capacity to shape their futures according to their visions. They can enhance their goal attainment efficiency through the practice of strategic planning. To ensure that we reach our intended destination in the future, we must start by identifying the actions that need to be implemented in the present. This strategy is known as “working backwards.”

Individuals who have attained this degree of proficiency are masters at ensuring that their actions yield the desired results. This is true even if there is no plan with an absolute guarantee of success. Individuals may continuously refer to their long-term aims as a “North star” to provide direction and sustain progress in cases of divergence from the desired course. Creating a system to visualize one’s ideal future scenarios has the potential to boost an individual’s sense of purpose and motivation.

Benefits of Strategic Planning

Because of the volatility nature of today’s business environment, many firms have been forced to pursue reactive strategies rather than proactive ones. While investing significant time and money to reactive solutions is necessary, their applicability is often restricted to the near future. Strategic planning helps companies to take a proactive approach to their planning efforts and consider issues in a broader, long-term context. They enable businesses to actively impact their surroundings rather than simply reacting to them.

Create One, Forward-focused Vision

The execution of a clearly defined strategy benefits all members of an organization because it directs them toward achieving their goals. One of the most significant benefits of strategic investment is the ability to connect your firm and its shareholders through a clear vision for the future.

You may be able to build an accountability culture by giving employees with knowledge about the organization’s objectives, the reasons for those objectives, and the ways in which they may contribute to those objectives’ achievement.

As a result, there may be implications at a lower level. A manager who does not understand the organization’s strategy or the rationale that drives its development, for example, may lead their employees wrong. Giving your team a common goal to strive for will allow them to advance with greater strategic awareness.

Empowers Individuals in the Organization

Increased conversation and participation at each level of the process boosts employees’ confidence in their individual talents as well as the organization’s overall success. Decentralizing the strategic planning process allows employees and lower-level managers from all departments to actively participate in the debate and contribute to overall organizational decision-making.

The Walt Disney Company is an example of a company that has accomplished this. The organization decided to shift strategic planning authority from a specialist section to its numerous operational units.

Track Progress Based on Strategic Goals

When you have a well-thought-out strategy in place, it is much easier to track your progress toward your goals. Top-down monitoring of key performance indicators (KPIs) is feasible if every department and team within an organization has a thorough awareness of the company’s overall strategy. This allows the outcomes of their efforts to have a direct impact on the organization’s financial performance. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are determined at the corporate level through strategic planning and the formulation of objectives.

As a next step, communicate these objectives to all relevant staff within the organization. Having everyone in your organization pull in the same direction should result in higher production and KPIs. In addition to dedication and a systematic approach, adaptability is a crucial component of an effective plan.

According to Clayton Christensen’s argument in his book “Disruptive Plan,” a company’s business strategy must be adaptable enough to effectively address emerging opportunities and difficulties. If the organization’s objectives change, you should be willing to update your key performance indicators (KPIs), and you should notify your workers of the changes.

Enhanced Communication

The implementation of effective communication systems is required for optimal strategic planning. Employees and managers must both exhibit their commitment to the organization’s success by actively participating in conversations and working together to achieve common goals. Managers and employees that put effort into strategic planning are more likely to care about the organization’s goals.

This is due to their understanding of the organization’s policies and logic. Strategic planning concertizes organizational goals and objectives, increasing employees’ understanding of the relationship between their performance, the firm’s success, and their remuneration. As a result, both employees and managers are more likely to think creatively, which is beneficial to the organization’s growth.

Is Strategic Planning Applicable to Small Business?

Small business owners frequently believe that strategic planning is only for firms with yearly revenues in the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. To achieve a prominent position , however, one must have a methodically planned strategy comprised of tangible acts that not only delineates the ultimate goal but also creates a mechanism for assessing progress. If you want to fight the bigger dogs, do this.

Why do we Need Strategic Planning?

Adopting a strategic planning approach is critical for steering an organization in the right direction. It keeps you focused and guarantees that everyone is working toward the same goal. Furthermore, one might gain understanding about strategic activities that will aid in the expansion of the business.

Which Comes First Strategic Planning Or?

A corporation must first define its strategy, as it serves as the framework for all future activities. After you’ve defined your company’s objectives, you can move on to developing a strategic plan and establishing a structure to carry it out.

Strategic planning is a process use by organizations to determine long-term goals, design strategies to achieve those goals, and establish an internal performance management system to monitor and assess progress. The majority of organizations and corporations do a SWOT or gap analysis to determine the factors influencing their current success. As a result, knowledge about high-leverage techniques that are most likely to provide the desired results is gained. The strategic planning has a strong role to play in the whole process which you should be aware of it while conducting various business activities.

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Strategic planning: what it is, how to do it, and examples

Letícia tagliamento | actio global.

Strategic planning, also known as a strategic plan, involves identifying opportunities, developing a strategy, and defining actions to achieve organizational objectives.

However, in a dynamic business environment where changes are constant and uncertainties are the norm, many managers wonder: is investing in strategic planning for a company’s future relevant? 

Although planning in the face of imminent contingencies may seem challenging, it is precisely in this context that strategic planning becomes an indispensable ally.

This post will explore why adopting planning strategies is essential for organizational success in a constantly evolving competitive market. 

So, if you are committed to high performance and the long-term success of your business, keep reading!

What you will see in this post:

What is strategic planning?

Strategic planning is a fundamental process for defining the best strategies and conditions in pursuit of business success. Additionally, it establishes a clear direction and develops the necessary actions to achieve positive results. 

In this context, its main focus is on strategic objectives, which guide and enable organizational processes. Based on these objectives, a strategy is developed to achieve them through careful planning. 

To do so, it is necessary to establish actions that represent the most appropriate path to achieve the objectives, considering the analysis of the current context, projecting future scenarios, and the company’s expectations for the coming years. 

However, remember: strategic planning can be done at different intervals , whether monthly, annually, or encompassing the long term, according to the specific needs of each business.

What is the importance of strategic planning?

Some managers may underestimate the importance of strategic planning, considering it a waste of time. However, going through this process i s fundamental to understanding and adapting to changes in the internal and external environment and identifying challenges and opportunities for improvement. 

Contrary to popular belief, strategic planning is not limited to a static document; it is a dynamic process of construction, analysis, and continuous adjustment of business strategy. 

Thus, the organization becomes more resilient and prepared to face market uncertainties. 

Furthermore, the lack of planning leaves room for improvisation and can result in a disordered direction. 

Therefore, it is essential to invest in the development and execution of a solid strategic plan, which serves as a guide for making informed decisions and achieving sustainable success. 

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How to do strategic planning?

If you already recognize the importance of strategic planning for your company’s success, it’s time to learn how to build it effectively. 

Here are four stages to assist you in this process:

1- Analysis of the current scenario

Before any strategy, conducting a comprehensive analysis of the company’s internal and external environment is crucial. 

This includes identifying its strengths and weaknesses concerning the market through a SWOT analysis. 

This detailed diagnosis provides a clear view of areas of excellence and opportunities for improvement, which is essential for guiding strategic planning effectively.

2- Definition of objectives

Based on the analysis performed, it is time to establish realistic yet ambitious strategic goals and objectives. 

However, remember that these objectives must be aligned with the company’s mission, vision, and values. 

A strategic map can be a valuable tool for visualizing and breaking down these objectives into tangible goals, stimulating employee commitment and engagement.

3- Creation of customized strategies

At this stage, developing specific strategies to achieve the defined objectives is essential. Moreover, it is crucial to involve leaders and employees in this process, as their perspectives can enrich the formulation of strategies. 

A well-crafted strategy considers the efficient allocation of resources, time management, and team effort, preparing the company to face challenges successfully.

4- Implementation and monitoring

Finally, remember that a strategic plan is only effective when implemented. This requires a clear action plan and constant monitoring of the results obtained. 

Furthermore, continuous monitoring allows for identifying deviations and making adjustments as necessary, ensuring that the company is always aligned with its strategic objectives to achieve its goals.

What are examples of business planning?

There are various types of business planning, each with its specific purpose and distinct approach. Below, see how each model works.

1- Strategic planning

As you may have already noticed, strategic planning is essential for establishing the company’s long-term vision and overall objectives. 

For example, a technology company may set the strategic goal of becoming a market leader in artificial intelligence solutions within the next five years. 

Thus, this plan would involve analyzing the competitive environment, identifying market opportunities, and formulating strategies to achieve this desired position.

2- Tactical planning

At the tactical level, the focus is on implementing strategies in specific areas of the company. 

For example, a tactical plan can be created within the marketing department to increase the brand’s presence on social media, with specific goals for follower growth and engagement over the next year. 

In other words, this tactical plan would help align department activities with the company’s strategic objectives.

3- Operational planning

Operational planning focuses on executing day-to-day tasks to achieve short-term objectives. 

For example, in an automobile factory, operational planning may involve scheduling weekly production, efficiently allocating resources, and implementing measures to ensure product quality. 

Thus, this type of planning is essential to ensure operational efficiency and consistent delivery to customers.

4- Contingency planning

Controversial planning becomes essential in unpredictable situations, such as pandemics, natural disasters, or economic crises. 

A logistics company, for example, may develop contingency plans to deal with disruptions in the supply chain, such as redirecting transport routes or seeking alternative suppliers in case of border closures. 

Furthermore, this type of planning helps the company prepare for the unexpected and respond effectively to adverse events.

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Although strategic planning is a powerful approach, it is essential to remember that its implementation requires the commitment and involvement of the entire organization to achieve significant results.

However, it’s not just that; using the right technology for your management processes is crucial to being effective. Get to know Tune by Actio , a software to manage projects in your company; with it, you ensure total control of all information, goals, and actions.

Frequently Asked Questions

1- what is the difference between strategic planning and operational planning.

Strategic planning focuses on an organization’s long-term objectives and overall strategies, while operational planning focuses on translating these strategies into specific actions and daily tasks.

2- What are the main challenges companies face during strategic planning?

Some primary challenges companies face during strategic planning include difficulty predicting the external environment; employee resistance to change, and the need to adapt the plan as circumstances change.

3- What is the role of leaders during the strategic planning process?

Leaders play a crucial role in the strategic planning process by providing a clear and inspiring vision for the company; aligning organizational objectives with the company’s mission and vision, and ensuring that all team members are engaged and committed to the strategic plan.

As you can see, strategic planning is essential for any organization to achieve long-term success. 

By setting clear goals, developing effective strategies, and involving the entire team in the process; companies can confidently face the challenges of the business environment with confidence and adaptability. 

Although challenges and uncertainties may exist, strategic planning provides a solid framework for navigating them and achieving the desired objectives. 

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Meaning of strategic planning in English

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Strategic planning definition and examples

In an organization, we often read and hear the terms of strategic planning definition and examples. Strategic planning is a process to define key elements of an organization. It allows all of the member of the organization to follow the right path for making daily decisions. The executives of the organization give a strategic planning map.

Strategic planning involves some strategic objectives, the short, the medium as well as long-term goals and the broad plans to get them. It usually starts with the vision and mission of the company or organization. After having a strategic planning definition and examples, every department from the company should follow it and try to define its operational procedure or tactic plans to achieve the company’s goals. Once the strategic planning is made, it will give the framework for taking all the decisions from the entire organization until new strategic planning is delivered. Not only every department that should know and follow the strategic planning of the company but every employee who works there is also encouraged to understand the strategic plan of their organization correctly. Most companies do their strategic planning for a year, but it usually varies since it depends on the company itself. Some companies take place their strategic planning monthly. Strategic planning needs leadership to be planned and executed in real life.

Terms used in strategic planning

Since strategic planning determines an organization’s priority areas (both internal and external), outcomes, and strategies needed to implement the mission to achieve the vision of a company. Thus, the terms which is used in strategic planning are priorities areas, outcomes, and strategies. Priority areas are areas that should be addressed to obtain the organizations’ goals. Priority areas could not be separated from the time frame for the organization to focus on achieving its target. Outcomes are another term used for strategic planning that has a definition of the highest-level change of a program. Outcomes usually have a similar meaning to goals. While strategies are the las term used in strategic planning means the high-level activities that can be done to reach the outcomes.

When talking about the case of strategic planning, it also refers to a strategic business plan example . One of the family businesses called Jolson & Barnt whose decision is made by three brothers who are the executives of the company. Recently, they got a problem regarding the right choice when they are trying to decide a product portfolio, price and image. Therefore, they need to have strategic planning definitions and examples to cut costs and investments.

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