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What is Corporate Strategic Planning?

Corporate Strategic Planning is a companywide approach at the business unit and corporate level for developing strategic plans to achieve a longer-term vision. The process includes defining the corporate strategic goals and intentions at the top and cascading them through each level of the organization. Many organizations confuse the annual budgeting process with corporate planning. Corporate strategic planning should come first and annual budgeting should be driven by the strategy, not by prior year’s budget spend.

Why is Corporate Strategy Important?

A corporate strategy can focus every employee and resource in a company on the same objectives, and it aims to use them all efficiently. It gives every employee a set of guidelines they can use in their everyday work to move toward certain targets, which promote the vision and mission of the company. Corporate level planning can also improve efficiency within the organization and help identify unseen bottlenecks or pain-points.

The corporate strategy gives leaders and employees ideas to use for the improvement of distinctive activities (processes and operations) that create a competitive advantage. The strategy can also help executives to protect the company from entering into costly or irrelevant opportunities. What are the steps involved in strategic corporate planning? Corporate strategic planning begins by clarifying the vision and mission of the organization and the space the business chooses to compete in. Clarifying the organizations position will help you develop and effective strategic planning framework.

1) Competitive Analysis

A competitive analysis needs to be conducted, to understand the trends that could impact the success of your strategy. Common factors that could be analyzed include political, legal, social, environmental, technological. There may be other factors you may want to consider that are relevant to your business and industry.

2) Strategic Goals & Priorities

Once you have completed a competitive analysis, the corporate leadership team will set the overarching strategic goals and priorities for the organization.

Once the strategic goals and priorities are finalized, each business unit needs to define its strategic goals and plans on how it can contribute to the overall direction of the enterprise. That includes not only what is to be accomplished, but how it will be accomplished including high level plans, budgets, human resources, etc.

3) Communication

Once business unit plans and directions have been set, the information needs to be communicated and shared with leadership inside the business unit so that priorities and plans can be aligned and integrated within a single budget.

What is Strategic Business Planning?

At the corporate level, an enterprise develops a portfolio of businesses they choose to compete in. This is a high-level analysis of a business’s competitive and core capabilities, and how each business contributes to the overarching corporate goals. Supported by the corporate strategic business planning process, these businesses are then set up, sponsored, and supported as business units at the operating level.

What Are The Types of Corporate Strategy?

When looking at the types of corporate strategy, it is important to consider a positioning grid that looks at the source of competitive advantage as well as the space where the business competes (markets, geography, size, etc).

Strategy 1: Low Cost Strategy

This type of strategy is one in which your source of advantage is simply competing on cost and being the low-cost provider. With this strategy an organization must exploit all sources of cost advantage. This includes things such as:

• Economies of scale
• Cost of inputs
• Operations excellence to help drive down costs
• This type of strategy requires an organization to compete more broadly (markets, geography, size)

Strategy 2: Differentiated Strategy

In a Differentiated Strategy, the focus is on competing by being unique or distinctively different in your industry. A differentiated strategy provides a product or service in more of a niche market where customers see the importance of offerings and are willing to pay a premium price. While this strategy still has a broad focus on how and where it competes (markets, geography, size), it serves its customers in a differentiated way. Differentiation can include factors such as:

• Technical superiority
• Customization
• Products or services that are difficult to copy
• Customer Service

Strategy 3: Segmented Strategy

A segmented strategy is one in which you have clearly differentiated yourself from the competition. The space in which you compete has a narrow focus. You serve a distinct group of customers with specialized needs. In this space, there are few product or service substitutes that can be offered and while you may not have the volume of customers, profit margins tend to be higher because of the lack of substitutes. and there are few substitutes for your offerings. It is important for every organization to understand where on a strategic position grid it currently sits and where it may want to be — adapted from Michael Porter

What Is the Difference Between Corporate Strategy and Business Strategy?

Corporate strategy, in contrast, involves the plans that a larger enterprise must form when it is composed of multiple smaller businesses or entities. For example a business unit may need to examine factors unique to the industry or competitive landscape that is fundamentally different than its corporate parent.

As a large enterprise, company, or private equity group takes on more acquisitions, it must work with its respective businesses to craft a business strategy and plan that is unique to them and drive competitive advantage through their products, services, and market positioning.

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Strategic Planning: How to Write a Strategic Plan That Works

Learn the essential steps to writing a strategic plan that delivers real results and aligns with your business objectives. Contact us for more information!

Strategic planning is essential for any organization aiming to achieve its long-term goals and sustain growth. ClearPoint Strategy offers a powerful platform that streamlines the strategic planning process, making it easier for your organization to develop, implement, and monitor your strategic initiatives.

See ClearPoint Strategy in action! Click here to watch a quick DEMO on the software

“Why isn’t my strategy working?”

Statistics around the failure rates of corporate strategies vary—some put it as high as 9 out of 10 while others say nearly 7 out of 10.

It doesn’t matter which number is right; both estimates are higher than they should be. That means the majority of organizations are floundering when it comes to crafting and executing their strategy. Many executives, when faced with these stats, are wondering, “How do I avoid coming up short in my strategy?”

But don’t worry—these abysmal statistics don’t mean you’re doomed to failure. You can be in the small percentage of businesses that actually achieve the goals in their strategic plans, and we’re here to tell you how. (You’re already a step ahead of your competitors simply by taking the time to research the problem!)

Over the years, we’ve helped hundreds of clients beat the odds using the steps outlined in the guide below. It covers everything you need to know about strategy planning and execution, from beginning to end, in each of the three critical phases:

• Preparing for strategic planning
• Creating your strategic plan
• Putting your strategic plan into practice

Based on our experience, we know that following this three-phase approach will significantly increase your odds of getting high-quality results. ‍

So let’s get started.

What is Strategic Planning and Why is It Important?

Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its direction and long-term goals, creating specific plans to achieve them, implementing those plans , and evaluating the results. On one hand, that definition makes strategy planning sound like a Business 101 concept—define your goals and a plan to achieve them. Unfortunately, the strategic planning process isn’t as straightforward as it seems, especially for large companies.

Some experts say there’s a simple explanation behind the dismal statistics mentioned above: companies are failing to strategize at all. They may talk a good game and be able to explain an innovative new mission, but they cannot articulate the processes and business models that will make it happen.

As a result, nothing about their way of doing business—including their priorities, projects, or culture—changes. Months or years later, strategic leaders are left wondering why the company never achieved what was intended.

This absence of a strategic plan demonstrates why having one is so important.

The strategic planning process is about looking forward, outside the immediate future for your organization, to reach a particular set of goals. But as noted in the definition above, it also involves laying out—step-by-step—how you’re going to get there. Without this foundation in place, you’ll either continue on a path to nowhere, or get caught up in a tornado of urgent activities that may not actually benefit your organization in the long term. Neither of these scenarios will give you the competitive edge you hoped for.

Why Strategic Planning Fails

There are also plenty of organizations that do take steps to fulfill the requirements of strategic planning, yet still fail to see results. These strategies fail for many reasons, including:

• Lack of communication : This is a big one. Research shows that 95% of most companies’ employees don’t understand their organization’s strategy, and 85% of executive leadership teams spend less than one hour per month discussing strategy.
• Poor research around customer trends, organizational threats, and market opportunities : Companies tend to spend more time on internal issues (resolving conflicts and reconciling budgets) than they do analyzing important external information.
• Lack of management support : Organizations neglect to rally support for middle managers, who are key to making sure strategy is executed on a daily basis.
• Ineffective or inefficient performance evaluations : Organizations dedicate all their time to coming up with a plan, but either forget to follow through by tracking progress or have no organized, reliable way to track performance data.
• Lack of clear priorities : Organizations try to do too much at once and/or fail to identify the right activities that will help them achieve their strategy.
• Insufficient resources : Companies don’t acquire new resources, or shift existing resources, to support identified priorities.
• Disjointed departmental goals and activities : There’s no alignment of departmental goals with organizational strategy. Without everyone working together, goals become more difficult to reach.

Whatever is preventing you from meeting your strategic goals—whether it’s the absence of a strategic plan altogether or an imperfect plan execution—it’s worth your time to address the issue.

Analysis has shown that strategic planning has a positive and significant impact on organizational performance. Most importantly, it enhances an organization’s ability to achieve its goals, but there’s more to it than that. Because strategic planning forces companies to adopt a long-term view, it helps them better prepare for the future, setting them up to initiate influence instead of just responding to situations.

It also strengthens communication between employers and employees. The participation and dialogue that takes place among managers and employees throughout the strategic planning process improves transparency and engagement on everyone’s part.

However, the same team that conducted the above analysis also noted that, for strategic planning to work, it requires some specific ingredients, including formal analysis of the internal and external environment, consideration of several strategic options, and careful consideration around whom to involve during the different steps of the strategic planning process. We’ll go through all these ingredients—and more—in the strategic planning guide that follows.

Claim your FREE eBook on 8 effective strategic planning templates here

1. preparing for strategic planning, - gather your team, set up meetings, and create a timeline, get the right people involved.

Let’s get one thing straight right now: If your organization has turned to you (or your department, a colleague, etc.) and requested that you “make a strategic plan and then report back to the leadership team when you’re done”—stop right where you are. That’s not an effective plan. Why? You need to have buy-in across your organization, and so you need leadership involvement from the beginning.

Now let’s talk about the major player needed for this process: The strategic planner. The strategic planner’s job is to align thoughts from the leadership team with a process the organization can use to execute on their strategy. If this is your role (or even if you’re just highly involved in the process), this guide will be immensely helpful as you navigate the coordination of the strategy.

The strategic planner will also need the help of a cross-functional team that involves members of the board or leadership, along with representatives from finance, human resources, operations, sales, and any other critical functions. We’ll discuss this further when we talk through the Office of Strategy Management.

Set up your strategy review meetings

This is also a good time to think about your strategy review meetings, which are a necessity for staying on track over the long haul. However, try to avoid adding yet another meeting onto everyone’s plates; instead, there may be a current meeting you can replace or redesign to make time for strategy discussion.

For now, decide how often you’ll meet and who should be involved. As for timing, there are three types of strategy review meetings:

• Monthly , where you review progress on projects and initiatives
• Quarterly , where you review progress on strategy and discuss key action items
• Annually , where you review year-to-date performance and adjust the strategy as needed

For each of these, you’ll want to send out calendar invites in advance and make sure people know these meetings are a top priority.

Monthly meetings typically include department heads and subject matter experts. Quarterly review meetings may include department heads and upper management. Annual refresh meetings may include upper levels of management and occasionally board members.

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

Create a reasonable timeline.

Next, you need to work out a timeline in which you can complete your strategic plan and move through the process. Reasonable is the key word here, as that depends on your organization’s maturity level with regard to strategic planning.

• If you refresh your strategic plan every year, you might be able to work through this process in 4-5 weeks .
• If you’ve never done strategic planning before, 6 months could be more realistic.

Whatever the case, don’t expect this to be done by the end of the week. You’ll be disappointed.

It’s important to understand strategy vs. tactics . Strategy is focused on the destination and how you are going to get there, and tactics are focused on the specific actions you plan to take along the way.

So while this whole process is focused on your overall strategy (i.e. your long-term goals and how you’ll achieve them), we’ll be placing a lot of emphasis on the smaller steps (i.e. practices, resources, initiatives) you’ll take to get there. Make sure your leadership team knows the difference between strategy and tactics going forward!

Sometimes it is smart to keep leadership out of the tactics, but other times, you might need a strong hand to guide the organization through some details.

- Gather the inputs to your Strategic Plan

Get appropriate background information for your strategic plan.

Now it’s time to dig into your internal and external information.

• Internal inputs : Do you know if one branch of your business is growing faster than another? If so, does this mean you’ll focus more energy on the faster growing area, or shift to help the underperforming areas? These are key questions you’ll have to assess. ‍
• External inputs : You may find that parts of your business have shifted, or outside factors are playing a role in where your business is headed. For example, in the late 1990s, the music industry evolved from albums to streaming, impacting many businesses who were associated with the industry. Or if you’re in the manufacturing industry and do a great deal of business overseas, political unrest or a trade dispute between your country and the foreign one you operate in could impact your strategy.

Once you’ve gathered up the quantitative data from the sources above, you’ll also want to get feedback from a number of different sources:

• Discuss the above findings with your leadership team and managers to see what their thoughts are about the future of the business.
• Talk with board members, customers, and industry experts to see what they think your organization is doing well and what needs improvement. These suggestions could deal with anything from operations to company culture.

Combined, all of this data will help you get a better grasp on the future of the business.

‍ Don’t reinvent the wheel—use our assortment of strategic planning templates to get your strategy up and running more easily. See our most popular templates here.

‍ A SWOT Analysis stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. This exercise offers a helpful way to think about and organize your internal and external data.

• What are your organization’s strong points?
• What are your organization’s weak points?
• Where are your biggest opportunities in the future?
• What are the largest threats to your business?

Sometimes it is helpful to use the SWOT analysis framework to organize your interview questions for your qualitative data gathering.

‍ Porter’s Five Forces is another tool used to find these inputs. It’s a time-honored strategy execution framework built around the competition in your industry. Who are your rivals? What are they doing? You then need to look at the threat of substitutes. Is there another product consumers could purchase instead of your industry’s product, for example, substituting natural gas or solar for coal when it comes to electricity generation?

Now that you’ve prepared for your strategy...

• You have a team of people who can help you with the strategic planning process.
• You have the raw material for strategy evaluation, including internal and external data.
• You can organize your raw data into a SWOT analysis, Porter’s Five Forces, or another strategy planning framework as you begin to create your strategic plan.

Pro tip You may have researched risk assessments, core competencies, scenario planning, or industry scans as part of your strategic planning. If you’re wondering where these tools fit, they’re all relevant to this first stage of strategic planning. They help you prepare to create the strategic plan. If you have worked through one of these tools before, the results can act as inputs to help you in the next stage.

2. Creating your strategic plan

You now have all the background information necessary to create your strategic plan! But this plan doesn’t live in a vacuum—so we’ll start by revisiting your mission and vision statements and then get into the nuts and bolts of the planning process.

- Confirm your mission and vision statements.

Mission & vision.

If you haven’t created formal mission and vision statements, this is the time to do so.

• Your mission statement describes what your company does and how it is different from other organizations in your competitive space
• Your vision statement describes a future state of what your organization wants to achieve over time.

Where the mission is timeless, your vision is time-bound and more tangible.

‍ Two tools that will help build your mission and vision statements:

• OAS statement : OAS stands for Objective, Advantage, Scope. Talking through these concepts as they apply to your organization will help formulate a vision that is tangible and interactive. Note that while this exercise may be helpful to you, it is optional. You can read more about creating your OAS statement here .
• Strategic shifts: A second tool some people find helpful is called Strategic Shifts. These are exercises for the leadership team to help them define today’s strategic priorities vs. tomorrow’s . For example, your leadership team may say, “We want to shift from central control to autonomy when it comes to our decision-making capability.” If the whole team can get on the same page with these shifts, it can help tremendously once you define your objectives, measures, and projects.

If you’ve already created mission and vision statements, confirm that both are aligned with your current strategy before proceeding to the next step.

During your search for strategic planning tools, you’ve almost certainly come across a Strategy Pyramid (shown below). This pyramid can be visualized in countless different ways, the order of the pyramid isn’t what’s important. The importance lies in ensuring you’ve chosen the elements in the pyramid that work best for your organization, and making sure those components are going to help you achieve strategic success.

- Build out your five-year plan

Develop the framework that will hold your high-level priorities.

You can use your OAS or Strategic Shift exercises to help you define your priorities and objectives—but more importantly, you need a way to manage these elements. The way to do that is by selecting and developing a strategy management framework that will bring all your priorities together in one cohesive format.

Using a framework such as Balanced Scorecard (BSC), Theory of Change (TOC), or Objectives and Key Results (OKR) is critical to your strategic success. Many management teams fail at this point simply because of their disorganization!

Note: Choose only one of these three frameworks, as they have numerous similarities!

The Balanced Scorecard

The Balanced Scorecard , developed by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, has been one of the world’s top strategy management frameworks since its introduction in the early 1990s. Those who use the BSC do so to bring their strategy to life, communicate it across their organization , and track their strategy progress and performance.

‍ The BSC divides up your objectives by perspectives—financial, customer, process, and people—and themes, like innovation, customer management, operational excellence, etc. (The idea of perspectives is fully developed in Norton and Kaplan’s book The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action .) Here’s an example:

• Financial goals —“What financial goals do we have that will impact our organization?”
• Customer goals —“What things are important to our customers, which will in turn impact our financial standing?”
• Process goals —“What do we need to do well internally, to meet our customer goals, that will impact our financial standing?”
• People (or learning and growth) goals —“What skills, culture, and capabilities do we need to have in our organization to execute on the process that would make our customers happy and ultimately impact our financial standing?”

For an in-depth look at how your organization could use the BSC, check out this Full & Exhaustive Balanced Scorecard Example .

Claim your FREE Balanced Scorecard Excel template for better strategic management

Theory Of Change (TOC)

The Theory of Change is a logic model that describes a step-by-step approach to achieving your vision. The TOC is focused on how to achieve the change you’re looking for , and is popular amongst mission-driven organizations who are describing a change they’re making in the world instead of putting change in their pockets.

The idea behind TOC is that if you have the right people doing the right activities, they’ll affect change on your customers, which will impact your financials, and bring you closer to your vision. A great example of a this theory of change is the nonprofit RARE .

According to the Harvard Family Research Project , the steps to create a TOC are:

• Identify a long-term goal.
• Conduct “backwards mapping” to identify the preconditions necessary to achieve that goal.
• Identify the interventions that your initiative will perform to create these preconditions.
• Develop indicators for each precondition that will be used to assess the performance of the interventions.
• Write a narrative that can be used to summarize the various moving parts in your theory.

Objectives & Key Results (OKR)

OKR was originally created by Intel and is used today in primarily two ways: At the enterprise/department level and at the personal performance level.

• Objectives are goals.
• Key results are quantitative measures that define whether goals have been reached.

Claim your FREE Excel OKR template to set and achieve key objectives here

The idea is that your defined objectives and measurements help employees, managers, and executives link to and align with overall strategic priorities. Not only does OKR strive to measure whether objectives are successful, but also how successful they are.

Define your objectives, measures, and projects.

‍ The strategic planning frameworks above are all meant, in different ways, to help you organize your objectives, measures, and projects. So it’s critical that these elements are well thought-out and defined.

Here’s how objectives, measures, and projects interact:

‍ You have a high-level goal in mind—your objective. Your measures answer the question, “How will I know that we’re meeting our goal?” From there, initiatives, or projects, are put in place to answer the question, “What actions are we taking to accomplish our goals?”

‍ We’ve defined each of these concepts more thoroughly below with a few business strategy examples:

• Objectives are high-level organizational goals. The typical BSC has 10-15 strategic objectives.

Examples include:

• Increase Market Share Through Current Customers (Financial)
• Be Service Oriented (Customer)
• Achieve Order Fulfillment Excellence Through On-Line Process Improvement (Internal)
• Align Incentives And Rewards With Employee Roles For Increased Employee Satisfaction (Learning & Growth)
• Measures help you understand if you’re accomplishing your objectives strategically. They force you to question things like, “How do I know that I’m becoming an internationally recognized brand?” Note that while your measures might change, your objectives will remain the same. You may select 1-2 measures per objective, so you are aiming to come up with 15-25 measures at the enterprise level.
• Cost Of Goods Sold
• Customer Satisfaction & Retention
• Percentage Of Product Defects
• Percentage Of Response To Open Positions
• Initiatives are key action programs developed to achieve your objectives. You’ll see initiatives referred to as “projects,” “actions,” or “activities outside of the Balanced Scorecard.” Most organizations will have 0-2 initiatives underway for every objective (with a total of 5-15 strategic initiatives).
• Develop Quality Management Program
• Install ERP System
• Revamp Supply Chain Process
• Develop Competencies Mode

- Create your strategy map or graphic strategic model

Whether or not you’re using a Balanced Scorecard as your strategy framework, you’ll benefit from using a graphic model to represent your strategic plan. While many people use a strategy map (shown in the example below), you could also use icons or a color-coding system to visually understand how the elements of your strategy work together.

If you’re just becoming familiar with how strategy mapping works, this article will teach you exactly how to read one—and what you need to do to create one.

Get your FREE eBook with Balance Scorecard strategy maps for better strategic visualization

Now that you’ve created your strategic vision...

• You have a fully-defined mission and vision to use as you move forward with your strategy implementation process.
• You have chosen a strategic framework that will hold your five-year strategic plan.
• You have defined objectives, measures, and projects, and you know how they work together.
• You have a graphic representation of your strategic model.

Feeling the strategic fatigue? It’s okay! This is a tiring process—so be careful to tailor everything in this section to what those in your organization will tolerate. Putting your strategic plan into practice (our final step) is the key to making it all work during the strategy implementation plan, and getting these details 80% right in a timely fashion is much more important than getting them 100% right in a year.

3. Putting your strategic plan into practice

You’ve made it this far—now you have to be sure you launch correctly! To do so, you need someone from the Office of Strategy Management to push that process, ensure resources are aligned to your strategy, put a solid strategy communication program in place, and get technology to keep you organized.

- Launch your strategy

Ensure the office of strategy management (osm) is pushing things forward.

The Office of Strategy Management is comprised of a group of people responsible for coordinating strategy implementation. This team isn’t responsible for doing everything in your strategy, but it should oversee strategy execution across the organization. Typically, the OSM lives in the finance department—or it could be its own separate division that reports directly to the CEO.

Create your internal and external strategy communication plan

Internal— Be sure all elements of your strategy—like strategy maps or logic models—are contained within a larger strategic plan document. (If you use strategy software , the strategic plan document will likely be contained there.) A great way to be sure your leadership team has a firm grasp on your strategy is to ensure they each have a copy of this document, and they can describe the strategy easily to someone who wasn’t involved in the creation process .

More broadly, the strategy must be communicated throughout your organization. You should be shouting it from the rooftops to keep it top-of-mind across your organization. People won’t give it a passing thought unless you engage them—so every department head should be charged with explaining how their team fits into the strategy and why it matters. For actionable tips, check out this article that highlights how you can effectively communicate your strategic plan across your organization.

‍ External— You also need to be sure you have a plan for communicating your strategy outside the organization—with board members, partners, or customers (particularly if your organization is municipal or nonprofit). Think through how it will be shared, and which parts of it are relevant to outside parties.

Align your resources to your strategy

In the short term—which would be your next budgeting cycle or something similar—work to structure the budget around the key components of your strategy. You don’t need to completely rewire your budget, but you do need to create direct linkages between how your resources are allocated and how those efforts support your strategy. Over time, the areas that contribute less directly to strategic goals will become clear, and you can work on gradually aligning everything you fund.

But even if your budget only extends through the fiscal year, consider how you’ll align your strategy to projects in the future. For future resource allocation, link your operations (what some refer to as the “work planning process”) to your strategy. Your expectation should be that the process of aligning your resources to your strategy can happen within year two of your strategic planning execution.

- Evaluate your strategy

At this point, your strategy has been launched: Now you need to know whether or not you’re making progress! Here’s how to do that.

Claim your FREE Measure & Goal Evaluation Toolkit for streamlined analysis

Create reports to highlight your results

Ten years ago, you may have evaluated your strategy annually. But in today’s business environment, that’s not a feasible option. At a minimum, you should be reporting on your entire strategy on a quarterly basis, or breaking down your strategy into pieces and reporting on one of those pieces each month.

The report you use should highlight progress on your measures and projects, and how those link to your objectives. The point is to show how all these elements fit together and relate to the strategic plan as a whole.

Hold regular strategy meetings

Report on strategy progress via the quarterly or monthly review meetings you scheduled early in the process.

It’s important to note that throwing together an impromptu meeting to go over results isn’t going to get you anywhere. Instead, your strategy review meetings should be meticulously organized and accompanied by an agenda. (See this article for a sample agenda.)

‍ Your meetings should revolve around three key issues:

• What is your organization trying to accomplish? This may include reiterating your mission and vision to add context around the conversation.
• Are you making progress toward these goals? You might review key metrics and the status of initiatives and milestones.
• What actions need to be taken to continue making progress? If metrics are off-track, for example, what can be done to get back on course.

Encourage candid dialogue and make sure the discussion stays focused.

You may want a facilitator for the first few meetings, and you may want to script a few open discussions where a goal owner explains why they are behind schedule (red) on their goal, and the business leader offers support, not criticism. This will generate the atmosphere you need for everyone to start reporting honestly and working together to achieve the organization’s goals.

Deploy strategy reporting software (if you haven’t already)

To make strategy execution work, reporting is unavoidable. While you might be able to track your first strategy meeting in Excel or give your first presentation via PowerPoint, you’ll quickly realize you need some kind of software to track the continuous gathering of data, update your projects, and keep your leadership team on the same page.

If you want to learn more about the major areas of responsibility you should be covering in your strategy management process—and how strategy software can help with that— take a look at our ClearPoint tour .

Here are two additional helpful pieces of content as you move forward:

You’ve probably seen reference to the “Plan, Do, Check, Act” framework before. If you want to integrate this checklist, this is the time to do so. Here’s a breakdown on what it means:

• Plan refers to creating your strategic plan.
• Do refers to making progress on or executing on the plan.
• Check refers to the reporting and monitoring process.
• Act refers to taking action through projects, work plans, or the budgeting process to continue to manage and execute on the strategy.

The Benefits Of Strategic Planning (& Challenges You Should Be Aware Of)

Done right, strategy planning can benefit your business tremendously, but a certain degree of stick-to-itiveness is required to get the job done. (As we noted at the beginning of this guide, organizations that actually meet their strategic objectives are in the minority. Don’t worry, though, yours can be one of the success stories.) But those that develop a disciplined approach to both planning and execution have been shown to improve performance significantly.

‍ Why is strategic planning so effective? Because it fosters healthy organizational practices that drive better outcomes. Engaging in strategic planning will benefit you in multiple ways:

1. You have quality data available to support better decisions

Setting goals and choosing the relevant metrics to track progress toward achieving them means you always have meaningful data to reference. That naturally leads to faster, more efficient decision-making, especially when that data is readily accessible to employees at every level.

Timely, valid, and actionable information is especially valuable in situations where organizations need to react quickly, so they can make the best decisions possible for all their stakeholders.

2. You allocate resources more effectively

In Chapter 3, we discussed structuring the budget around the key components of your strategy. Doing so helps ensure resources are allocated correctly, and in a way that aligns with your goals.

Tying the budget directly to goals also makes it easy to adjust when necessary, if circumstances change and new goals are prioritized over old. For example, a local government may have had a goal to develop a green infrastructure plan at the beginning of 2020, but then had to pivot with the onset of COVID-19.

To support a new goal of developing a COVID-19 response plan, they could simply review the resources used by current projects, evaluate those projects’ priorities and budget needs in comparison to the new goal, and reallocate funds as necessary.

3. You maintain focus

Having a strategic plan brings your main focus points to the forefront, so you don’t have to dig into the details of everything your organization is doing. That means there’s no time wasted analyzing irrelevant and extensive data points in strategic meetings; instead, everyone stays focused on what is most important or where improvements need to be made.

4. You improve communication and build employee engagement.

Strategic planning is intended to create a single, focused vision of where an organization is headed. When that shared vision is communicated clearly and consistently, it inspires employees to take ownership over their role in the plan, and they are typically more motivated to do their best work. High engagement will directly impact your organization’s financial health and profitability.

3 Things To Consider Before You Embark On A Strategic Plan

Having helped hundreds of organizations—for-profit, nonprofit, and local governments included—navigate through the strategic planning and implementation process, we’ve seen firsthand the many challenges that arise along the way. There’s no “typical” scenario, but there are some common pitfalls that have the power to make or break your chances of success. Below are three things you should be aware of going into the process.

1. Everything about strategic planning takes time

Don’t expect your plan to materialize after a few meetings. The initial planning activities usually unfold over the space of several months, but strategy execution itself is an ongoing process. Anticipate devoting extensive time and effort in particular to:

• Choosing the appropriate planning model . Before you can even begin to articulate your strategy, you need to choose a strategy framework that fits your organization’s needs. All models can be customized to suit the way your business works, but this is a key decision that will shape all your efforts going forward.
• Creating a plan that everyone agrees on. It’s crucial for your leadership team to support the plan’s objectives if you want it to be adopted. Making sure everyone on the team has been heard and gaining a consensus is a time-consuming process.
• Getting “buy-in” for the plan. Research shows that, on average, 95% of an organization’s employees don’t understand its strategy—there’s no surer way to guarantee failure than to neglect communicating your goals to your employees. You must continuously keep your strategy top-of-mind in a creative and meaningful way over the long term to gain the buy-in you need to succeed.

2. There is a danger of “analysis paralysis”

Data and analytics are an integral part of strategic planning. And while it may be tempting to use all your available metrics, charts, and graphs for every business decision, doing so unnecessarily can be a detriment to the decision-making process. It’s easy to find yourself drilling deeper into data when perhaps only a high-level view of the information is needed. Avoid squandering time and energy on excessive analysis by making sure the right people are focusing on the right data and actions:

Leadership should focus on organization-wide goals and progress. Teams should focus on the individual projects and daily tasks that are helping to accomplish those goals (and the data that goes with them).

3. Having a plan doesn’t mean your organization will execute on it

Good planning is only half the battle; the lion’s share of forward progress is in executing that plan. But the execution stage is where many organizations stumble. They aren’t prepared for the work involved with follow-through, both in terms of the time commitment and the tools necessary to support performance improvement. Strategy consultants are excellent guides for plan creation, but most offer no guidance on how to carry it out; as a result, organizations are left floundering.

It’s imperative to have a system in place that will measure and monitor your progress toward goals during the execution phase. Performance management tools like ClearPoint allow organizations to track a variety of metrics related to strategic projects, helping to maintain focus over the long term. And our team of strategy implementation experts is always available to provide guidance on every aspect of execution, from setting up an efficient management process to using our reporting tools optimally.

With the right plan in place, tools to support it, and committed leadership, every organization has a good chance of seeing their strategy come to life.

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

You’ve made it through these steps…..

...but be sure to place a great deal of emphasis on rightsizing this process for your own organization.

Did you recently do a SWOT analysis and create new vision and mission statements? Don’t do it again.

Do you already manage with a robust set of KPIs ? Use them.

Do you currently create reports for your board and management team? Modify them or use a strategy evaluation framework to make sure they’re focused and move on.

Rather than doing everything, it’s more important to realize there is overlap between these steps. Understand how they all fit into your own strategic planning process, and then move forward with the sections you’re missing.

And if you have any questions along the way, get in touch with us. We live and breathe strategic planning and are here to help!

Transform Your Strategic Planning with ClearPoint Strategy Software

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

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

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

Book your FREE 1-on-1 DEMO with ClearPoint Strategy

What are strategic planning tools.

Strategic planning tools are methodologies and frameworks that help organizations formulate, implement, and monitor their strategic plans. Common strategic planning tools include:

- SWOT Analysis: Identifies strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. - PESTEL Analysis: Examines political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal factors. - Balanced Scorecard: Links strategic objectives to performance metrics across financial, customer, internal processes, and learning and growth perspectives. - Porter’s Five Forces: Analyzes competitive forces within an industry to understand its attractiveness. - Scenario Planning: Envisions different future scenarios to plan for uncertainties. Gap Analysis: Identifies the gap between current performance and desired goals.

What are strategic planning techniques?

Strategic planning techniques are methods used to develop and implement strategies effectively. These include:

- Visioning: Creating a clear, compelling vision of the future state. - Benchmarking: Comparing performance against industry leaders or best practices. - Stakeholder Analysis: Identifying and understanding the needs and influences of stakeholders. - Environmental Scanning: Systematically analyzing external and internal environments. - Strategy Mapping: Visualizing the relationships between different strategic objectives and actions. - Resource Allocation: Determining the best use of resources to achieve strategic goals.

How can strategic planning improve the performance of an organization?

Strategic planning can improve the performance of an organization by:

- Providing Direction: Clarifies the long-term vision and mission, guiding all organizational activities. - Aligning Resources: Ensures that resources are allocated efficiently and effectively to priority areas. - Enhancing Coordination: Fosters better communication and collaboration across departments. - Facilitating Decision-Making: Supports informed, data-driven decisions aligned with strategic goals. - Tracking Progress: Establishes benchmarks and performance metrics to monitor progress and make necessary adjustments. - Encouraging Innovation: Promotes creative thinking and innovation to achieve competitive advantage.

What is strategic planning in healthcare?

Strategic planning in healthcare involves developing long-term goals and strategies to improve healthcare delivery, patient outcomes, and operational efficiency. It includes:

- Assessing Needs: Evaluating patient demographics, healthcare trends, and community needs. - Setting Objectives: Defining specific goals related to patient care, quality, and efficiency. - Resource Management: Allocating resources such as staff, technology, and funding to meet healthcare goals. - Implementing Policies: Developing and implementing policies and procedures to enhance healthcare services. - Monitoring Outcomes: Continuously tracking performance metrics to ensure goals are being met and to identify areas for improvement.

Why is strategic planning important in business?

Strategic planning is important in business because it:

- Provides Clarity and Focus: Establishes clear goals and priorities, aligning efforts toward achieving them. - Enhances Competitiveness: Helps businesses identify opportunities and threats, enabling them to stay competitive. - Improves Resource Allocation: Ensures that resources are used efficiently to achieve the most significant impact. - Fosters Long-Term Thinking: Encourages a forward-looking approach, preparing the organization for future challenges and opportunities. - Increases Accountability: Sets clear expectations and performance metrics, holding individuals and teams accountable for results. - Drives Growth and Innovation: Supports the development of new products, services, and processes to drive growth and innovation.

Ted Jackson

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

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• 7 strategic planning models, plus 8 fra ...

7 strategic planning models, plus 8 frameworks to help you get started

Strategic planning is vital in defining where your business is going in the next three to five years. With the right strategic planning models and frameworks, you can uncover opportunities, identify risks, and create a strategic plan to fuel your organization’s success. We list the most popular models and frameworks and explain how you can combine them to create a strategic plan that fits your business.

A strategic plan is a great tool to help you hit your business goals . But sometimes, this tool needs to be updated to reflect new business priorities or changing market conditions. If you decide to use a model that already exists, you can benefit from a roadmap that’s already created. The model you choose can improve your knowledge of what works best in your organization, uncover unknown strengths and weaknesses, or help you find out how you can outpace your competitors.

In this article, we cover the most common strategic planning models and frameworks and explain when to use which one. Plus, get tips on how to apply them and which models and frameworks work well together. 

Strategic planning models vs. frameworks

First off: This is not a one-or-nothing scenario. You can use as many or as few strategic planning models and frameworks as you like. 

When your organization undergoes a strategic planning phase, you should first pick a model or two that you want to apply. This will provide you with a basic outline of the steps to take during the strategic planning process.

During that process, think of strategic planning frameworks as the tools in your toolbox. Many models suggest starting with a SWOT analysis or defining your vision and mission statements first. Depending on your goals, though, you may want to apply several different frameworks throughout the strategic planning process.

For example, if you’re applying a scenario-based strategic plan, you could start with a SWOT and PEST(LE) analysis to get a better overview of your current standing. If one of the weaknesses you identify has to do with your manufacturing process, you could apply the theory of constraints to improve bottlenecks and mitigate risks. 

Now that you know the difference between the two, learn more about the seven strategic planning models, as well as the eight most commonly used frameworks that go along with them.

1. Basic model

The basic strategic planning model is ideal for establishing your company’s vision, mission, business objectives, and values. This model helps you outline the specific steps you need to take to reach your goals, monitor progress to keep everyone on target, and address issues as they arise.

If it’s your first strategic planning session, the basic model is the way to go. Later on, you can embellish it with other models to adjust or rewrite your business strategy as needed. Let’s take a look at what kinds of businesses can benefit from this strategic planning model and how to apply it.

Small businesses or organizations

Companies with little to no strategic planning experience

Organizations with few resources 

Write your mission statement. Gather your planning team and have a brainstorming session. The more ideas you can collect early in this step, the more fun and rewarding the analysis phase will feel.

Identify your organization’s goals . Setting clear business goals will increase your team’s performance and positively impact their motivation.

Outline strategies that will help you reach your goals. Ask yourself what steps you have to take in order to reach these goals and break them down into long-term, mid-term, and short-term goals .

Create action plans to implement each of the strategies above. Action plans will keep teams motivated and your organization on target.

Monitor and revise the plan as you go . As with any strategic plan, it’s important to closely monitor if your company is implementing it successfully and how you can adjust it for a better outcome.

2. Issue-based model

Also called goal-based planning model, this is essentially an extension of the basic strategic planning model. It’s a bit more dynamic and very popular for companies that want to create a more comprehensive plan.

Organizations with basic strategic planning experience

Businesses that are looking for a more comprehensive plan

Conduct a SWOT analysis . Assess your organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats with a SWOT analysis to get a better overview of what your strategic plan should focus on. We’ll give into how to conduct a SWOT analysis when we get into the strategic planning frameworks below.

Identify and prioritize major issues and/or goals. Based on your SWOT analysis, identify and prioritize what your strategic plan should focus on this time around.

Develop your main strategies that address these issues and/or goals. Aim to develop one overarching strategy that addresses your highest-priority goal and/or issue to keep this process as simple as possible.

Update or create a mission and vision statement . Make sure that your business’s statements align with your new or updated strategy. If you haven’t already, this is also a chance for you to define your organization’s values.

Create action plans. These will help you address your organization’s goals, resource needs, roles, and responsibilities. 

Develop a yearly operational plan document. This model works best if your business repeats the strategic plan implementation process on an annual basis, so use a yearly operational plan to capture your goals, progress, and opportunities for next time.

Allocate resources for your year-one operational plan. Whether you need funding or dedicated team members to implement your first strategic plan, now is the time to allocate all the resources you’ll need.

Monitor and revise the strategic plan. Record your lessons learned in the operational plan so you can revisit and improve it for the next strategic planning phase.

The issue-based plan can repeat on an annual basis (or less often once you resolve the issues). It’s important to update the plan every time it’s in action to ensure it’s still doing the best it can for your organization.

You don’t have to repeat the full process every year—rather, focus on what’s a priority during this run.

3. Alignment model

This model is also called strategic alignment model (SAM) and is one of the most popular strategic planning models. It helps you align your business and IT strategies with your organization’s strategic goals. 

You’ll have to consider four equally important, yet different perspectives when applying the alignment strategic planning model:

Strategy execution: The business strategy driving the model

Technology potential: The IT strategy supporting the business strategy

Competitive potential: Emerging IT capabilities that can create new products and services

Service level: Team members dedicated to creating the best IT system in the organization

Ideally, your strategy will check off all the criteria above—however, it’s more likely you’ll have to find a compromise. 

Here’s how to create a strategic plan using the alignment model and what kinds of companies can benefit from it.

Organizations that need to fine-tune their strategies

Businesses that want to uncover issues that prevent them from aligning with their mission

Companies that want to reassess objectives or correct problem areas that prevent them from growing

Outline your organization’s mission, programs, resources, and where support is needed. Before you can improve your statements and approaches, you need to define what exactly they are.

Identify what internal processes are working and which ones aren’t. Pinpoint which processes are causing problems, creating bottlenecks , or could otherwise use improving. Then prioritize which internal processes will have the biggest positive impact on your business.

Identify solutions. Work with the respective teams when you’re creating a new strategy to benefit from their experience and perspective on the current situation.

Update your strategic plan with the solutions. Update your strategic plan and monitor if implementing it is setting your business up for improvement or growth. If not, you may have to return to the drawing board and update your strategic plan with new solutions.

4. Scenario model

The scenario model works great if you combine it with other models like the basic or issue-based model. This model is particularly helpful if you need to consider external factors as well. These can be government regulations, technical, or demographic changes that may impact your business.

Organizations trying to identify strategic issues and goals caused by external factors

Identify external factors that influence your organization. For example, you should consider demographic, regulation, or environmental factors.

Review the worst case scenario the above factors could have on your organization. If you know what the worst case scenario for your business looks like, it’ll be much easier to prepare for it. Besides, it’ll take some of the pressure and surprise out of the mix, should a scenario similar to the one you create actually occur.

Identify and discuss two additional hypothetical organizational scenarios. On top of your worst case scenario, you’ll also want to define the best case and average case scenarios. Keep in mind that the worst case scenario from the previous step can often provoke strong motivation to change your organization for the better. However, discussing the other two will allow you to focus on the positive—the opportunities your business may have ahead.

Identify and suggest potential strategies or solutions. Everyone on the team should now brainstorm different ways your business could potentially respond to each of the three scenarios. Discuss the proposed strategies as a team afterward.

Uncover common considerations or strategies for your organization. There’s a good chance that your teammates come up with similar solutions. Decide which ones you like best as a team or create a new one together.

Identify the most likely scenario and the most reasonable strategy. Finally, examine which of the three scenarios is most likely to occur in the next three to five years and how your business should respond to potential changes.

5. Self-organizing model

Also called the organic planning model, the self-organizing model is a bit different from the linear approaches of the other models. You’ll have to be very patient with this method. 

This strategic planning model is all about focusing on the learning and growing process rather than achieving a specific goal. Since the organic model concentrates on continuous improvement , the process is never really over.

Large organizations that can afford to take their time

Businesses that prefer a more naturalistic, organic planning approach that revolves around common values, communication, and shared reflection

Companies that have a clear understanding of their vision

Define and communicate your organization’s cultural values . Your team can only think clearly and with solutions in mind when they have a clear understanding of your organization's values.

Communicate the planning group’s vision for the organization. Define and communicate the vision with everyone involved in the strategic planning process. This will align everyone’s ideas with your company’s vision.

Discuss what processes will help realize the organization’s vision on a regular basis. Meet every quarter to discuss strategies or tactics that will move your organization closer to realizing your vision.

6. Real-time model

This fluid model can help organizations that deal with rapid changes to their work environment. There are three levels of success in the real-time model: 

Organizational: At the organizational level, you’re forming strategies in response to opportunities or trends.

Programmatic: At the programmatic level, you have to decide how to respond to specific outcomes or environmental changes.

Operational: On the operational level, you will study internal systems, policies, and people to develop a strategy for your company.

Figuring out your competitive advantage can be difficult, but this is absolutely crucial to ensure success. Whether it’s a unique asset or strength your organization has or an outstanding execution of services or programs—it’s important that you can set yourself apart from others in the industry to succeed.

Companies that need to react quickly to changing environments

Businesses that are seeking new tools to help them align with their organizational strategy

Define your mission and vision statement. If you ever feel stuck formulating your company’s mission or vision statement, take a look at those of others. Maybe Asana’s vision statement sparks some inspiration.

Research, understand, and learn from competitor strategy and market trends. Pick a handful of competitors in your industry and find out how they’ve created success for themselves. How did they handle setbacks or challenges? What kinds of challenges did they even encounter? Are these common scenarios in the market? Learn from your competitors by finding out as much as you can about them.

Study external environments. At this point, you can combine the real-time model with the scenario model to find solutions to threats and opportunities outside of your control.

Conduct a SWOT analysis of your internal processes, systems, and resources. Besides the external factors your team has to consider, it’s also important to look at your company’s internal environment and how well you’re prepared for different scenarios.

Develop a strategy. Discuss the results of your SWOT analysis to develop a business strategy that builds toward organizational, programmatic, and operational success.

Rinse and repeat. Monitor how well the new strategy is working for your organization and repeat the planning process as needed to ensure you’re on top or, perhaps, ahead of the game. 

7. Inspirational model

This last strategic planning model is perfect to inspire and energize your team as they work toward your organization’s goals. It’s also a great way to introduce or reconnect your employees to your business strategy after a merger or acquisition.

Businesses with a dynamic and inspired start-up culture

Organizations looking for inspiration to reinvigorate the creative process

Companies looking for quick solutions and strategy shifts

Gather your team to discuss an inspirational vision for your organization. The more people you can gather for this process, the more input you will receive.

Brainstorm big, hairy audacious goals and ideas. Encouraging your team not to hold back with ideas that may seem ridiculous will do two things: for one, it will mitigate the fear of contributing bad ideas. But more importantly, it may lead to a genius idea or suggestion that your team wouldn’t have thought of if they felt like they had to think inside of the box.

Assess your organization’s resources. Find out if your company has the resources to implement your new ideas. If they don’t, you’ll have to either adjust your strategy or allocate more resources.

Develop a strategy balancing your resources and brainstorming ideas. Far-fetched ideas can grow into amazing opportunities but they can also bear great risk. Make sure to balance ideas with your strategic direction. 

Now, let’s dive into the most commonly used strategic frameworks.

8. SWOT analysis framework

One of the most popular strategic planning frameworks is the SWOT analysis . A SWOT analysis is a great first step in identifying areas of opportunity and risk—which can help you create a strategic plan that accounts for growth and prepares for threats.

SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Here’s an example:

9. OKRs framework

A big part of strategic planning is setting goals for your company. That’s where OKRs come into play. 

OKRs stand for objective and key results—this goal-setting framework helps your organization set and achieve goals. It provides a somewhat holistic approach that you can use to connect your team’s work to your organization’s big-picture goals.  When team members understand how their individual work contributes to the organization’s success, they tend to be more motivated and produce better results

10. Balanced scorecard (BSC) framework

The balanced scorecard is a popular strategic framework for businesses that want to take a more holistic approach rather than just focus on their financial performance. It was designed by David Norton and Robert Kaplan in the 1990s, it’s used by companies around the globe to: 

Communicate goals

Align their team’s daily work with their company’s strategy

Prioritize products, services, and projects

Monitor their progress toward their strategic goals

Your balanced scorecard will outline four main business perspectives:

Customers or clients , meaning their value, satisfaction, and/or retention

Financial , meaning your effectiveness in using resources and your financial performance

Internal process , meaning your business’s quality and efficiency

Organizational capacity , meaning your organizational culture, infrastructure and technology, and human resources

With the help of a strategy map, you can visualize and communicate how your company is creating value. A strategy map is a simple graphic that shows cause-and-effect connections between strategic objectives. 

The balanced scorecard framework is an amazing tool to use from outlining your mission, vision, and values all the way to implementing your strategic plan .

You can use an integration like Lucidchart to create strategy maps for your business in Asana.

11. Porter’s Five Forces framework

If you’re using the real-time strategic planning model, Porter’s Five Forces are a great framework to apply. You can use it to find out what your product’s or service’s competitive advantage is before entering the market.

Developed by Michael E. Porter , the framework outlines five forces you have to be aware of and monitor:

Threat of new industry entrants: Any new entry into the market results in increased pressure on prices and costs. 

Competition in the industry: The more competitors that exist, the more difficult it will be for you to create value in the market with your product or service.

Bargaining power of suppliers: Suppliers can wield more power if there are less alternatives for buyers or it’s expensive, time consuming, or difficult to switch to a different supplier.

Bargaining power of buyers: Buyers can wield more power if the same product or service is available elsewhere with little to no difference in quality.

Threat of substitutes: If another company already covers the market’s needs, you’ll have to create a better product or service or make it available for a lower price at the same quality in order to compete.

Remember, industry structures aren’t static. The more dynamic your strategic plan is, the better you’ll be able to compete in a market.

12. VRIO framework

The VRIO framework is another strategic planning tool designed to help you evaluate your competitive advantage. VRIO stands for value, rarity, imitability, and organization.

It’s a resource-based theory developed by Jay Barney. With this framework, you can study your firmed resources and find out whether or not your company can transform them into sustained competitive advantages. 

Firmed resources can be tangible (e.g., cash, tools, inventory, etc.) or intangible (e.g., copyrights, trademarks, organizational culture, etc.). Whether these resources will actually help your business once you enter the market depends on four qualities:

Valuable : Will this resource either increase your revenue or decrease your costs and thereby create value for your business?

Rare : Are the resources you’re using rare or can others use your resources as well and therefore easily provide the same product or service?

Inimitable : Are your resources either inimitable or non-substitutable? In other words, how unique and complex are your resources?

Organizational: Are you organized enough to use your resources in a way that captures their value, rarity, and inimitability?

It’s important that your resources check all the boxes above so you can ensure that you have sustained competitive advantage over others in the industry.

13. Theory of Constraints (TOC) framework

If the reason you’re currently in a strategic planning process is because you’re trying to mitigate risks or uncover issues that could hurt your business—this framework should be in your toolkit.

The theory of constraints (TOC) is a problem-solving framework that can help you identify limiting factors or bottlenecks preventing your organization from hitting OKRs or KPIs . 

Whether it’s a policy, market, or recourse constraint—you can apply the theory of constraints to solve potential problems, respond to issues, and empower your team to improve their work with the resources they have.

14. PEST/PESTLE analysis framework

The idea of the PEST analysis is similar to that of the SWOT analysis except that you’re focusing on external factors and solutions. It’s a great framework to combine with the scenario-based strategic planning model as it helps you define external factors connected to your business’s success.

PEST stands for political, economic, sociological, and technological factors. Depending on your business model, you may want to expand this framework to include legal and environmental factors as well (PESTLE). These are the most common factors you can include in a PESTLE analysis:

Political: Taxes, trade tariffs, conflicts

Economic: Interest and inflation rate, economic growth patterns, unemployment rate

Social: Demographics, education, media, health

Technological: Communication, information technology, research and development, patents

Legal: Regulatory bodies, environmental regulations, consumer protection

Environmental: Climate, geographical location, environmental offsets

15. Hoshin Kanri framework

Hoshin Kanri is a great tool to communicate and implement strategic goals. It’s a planning system that involves the entire organization in the strategic planning process. The term is Japanese and stands for “compass management” and is also known as policy management. 

This strategic planning framework is a top-down approach that starts with your leadership team defining long-term goals which are then aligned and communicated with every team member in the company. 

You should hold regular meetings to monitor progress and update the timeline to ensure that every teammate’s contributions are aligned with the overarching company goals.

Stick to your strategic goals

Whether you’re a small business just starting out or a nonprofit organization with decades of experience, strategic planning is a crucial step in your journey to success. 

If you’re looking for a tool that can help you and your team define, organize, and implement your strategic goals, Asana is here to help. Our goal-setting software allows you to connect all of your team members in one place, visualize progress, and stay on target.

Related resources

How Asana streamlines strategic planning with work management

How to create a CRM strategy: 6 steps (with examples)

What is management by objectives (MBO)?

Write better AI prompts: A 4-sentence framework

Jumpstart a better way to do strategy

This episode of the Inside the Strategy Room podcast features excerpts from an address that McKinsey senior partner Chris Bradley gave at our recent Global Business Leaders Forum. He discusses the eight practical shifts that executive teams can make to move their strategy into high gear. This is an edited transcript. You can listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or Google Podcasts .

Sean Brown: From McKinsey’s Strategy and Corporate Finance Practice, I’m Sean Brown. Welcome to Inside the Strategy Room . In today’s episode we will hear from Chris Bradley, a senior partner based in our Sydney office and one of the authors of McKinsey’s recent book Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick: People, Probabilities, and Big Moves to Beat the Odds (John Wiley & Sons, 2018). In our two earlier podcasts, Chris and his co-authors, Sven Smit and Martin Hirt, talked about how social dynamics and biases can undermine strategy development, and explained the power curve of economic profit , which shows how well—or how poorly—the strategies of the world’s largest companies are succeeding. We also heard about the most important strategic moves companies can make to rise up that power curve.

Today we’d like to share excerpts from a presentation Chris gave at our Global Business Leaders Forum in New York. Chris will take us through some of the practical changes that companies can make to their strategic planning process to unlock those bold moves.

Here’s Chris on how he and his co-authors approach the challenges faced by executive teams in the strategy room, and how they help them make the first shift.

Chris Bradley: Business books are notoriously boring. To make any story interesting, you need a villain. If your goal is to scale the power curve of economic profit and make big moves to beat the odds of strategic success, the villain is the thing that gets in your way of achieving that goal. What is it that gets in the way? It’s called the social side of strategy. This villain is a funny one. Rather than causing big catastrophes, it usually causes inertia, and the risk that your company moves slower than the market it’s in.

This is how it works. You start your strategy season with high hopes. You’re going to make the big moves. You will get on top of the trends. But when you get to the strategy room, you find it crowded with all sorts of stuff. There are negotiations, there are egos, there are last year’s plans. There are other people, and you want to look good to them. There is so much else going on than just strategy. So, we ended our book with a kind of manifesto for how you could manage your company differently.

What we need to do is reengineer the way we do strategy. There are eight shifts we propose (exhibit). The first one concerns planning. It’s extraordinarily important to know what is going to happen next month, what resources need to move, and what initiatives you have to launch. The problem is, that’s a different mode of thinking from strategy. As soon as you put strategy and planning together, planning will always win. The shift we suggest making is to go from this annual planning ritual to treating strategy as a journey.

Let me make that practical: you need a two-track process. First you need an efficient way of doing your plans—that’s really important, making sure the budget lines up every year. But you need a parallel track to do strategy, and that has completely different timing. By the time you come to planning, you should already have your strategy in mind.

I’m going to bring this to life through what we call micropractices. If you want to reengineer the way a company works, you can talk in themes and theories, but it tends to come down to lots of small things you do differently. For example, some companies have, outside of their normal strategy-planning season, a set of regular meetings with an evolving agenda of big strategic topics and stimulating discussions about them to make decisions, so you get into a discipline and a cadence of strategic conversations. That’s a micropractice. It’s very rare, but increasingly we’re seeing companies move to more agile ways of working, even outside of the tech space.

Strategy plans are often elaborate management ballets perfectly choreographed to do only one thing, and that’s get to a yes. Chris Bradley

Something fascinating happens when they go agile. They discover, “Oh, our planning processes actually don’t work anymore because we are now in this 90-day cycle.” I think agile is an exciting place for strategists to find inspiration because of this idea of having a story updated every 90 days that then cascades down into all the squads and tribes.

So, the idea with the first of the eight shifts is, how do I continually go from big goals to little goals in a much more robust way. This is strategy as a journey.

Sean Brown: The second shift Chris identified was about encouraging the strategy team to debate real alternatives rather than simply seeking to get a yes to the proposal on the table. Here is Chris again.

Chris Bradley: Strategy plans are often an elaborate management ballet that seems perfectly choreographed to do only one thing, and that’s get to a yes. That’s because what do you walk into the room with? A proposal. And if you walk into a room with a proposal, a good outcome is acceptance of your proposal—and usually it’s the last page that matters, which is where you ask for the resources you need.

This is just entirely the wrong place to start strategic planning. You need to debate real alternatives. Let me bring this to life with a bit of research I came across about how private-equity firms make investment decisions. An experiment put teams in two rooms. One evaluated investment decisions one at a time and the other compared two simultaneously. What they found was that there was a 30 percent difference in decisions between the two. Later, when they did a randomized trial, they found that the team with two alternatives to consider always made the better decision. The fact packs were the same, but the room weighing two alternatives did a better job of digging into the footnotes. That’s because the investment case always has the problems in it but usually they are summarized in the footnotes or the appendix. Having two alternatives to choose from just made it safer to dig into the cons.

In that sense, what I would argue is, this idea of working from a single proposal or the one-off plan introduces a 30 percent error into what you are doing. See, in the world of getting to a yes, everyone has high market share. There’s a famous story that Jack Welch, when he took over GE, said that every business had to be number one or number two in its segment. Of course that happened, by people playing the denominator game—everyone’s market got really small and so they became number one or number two instantly. He said then, “No, no, no. Now you have to define your market so that you have less than 10 percent market share.” He found a way to get through the problem with the proposals. But the reality is, most companies don’t work like this. They are not comparing alternative plans. Their strategies are framed more around promises and financial goals than they are around choices.

Sean Brown: In Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick , the authors emphasize the importance of making big, bold commitments to initiatives that can really elevate the company’s performance. But it’s hard for most companies to move resources around in a big way. Next, Chris addressed ways to get resources moving dynamically toward businesses with the greatest potential.

Chris Bradley: The harsh reality of the way we do strategic planning now is, there is a pot of money and we all compete for it. But when we did our research on companies that rose up the power curve, we found that it usually was not the whole company improving but one or two out of ten business units that disproportionately went up. It’s just a small part of the company that explosively grows.

That’s easy to logically understand, but when you’re in the strategy room and trying to be one of those winners, you may create a lot of losers. And you can see how, with the social side of strategy, that really becomes a problem. If you ask ten business-unit leaders in the room, “Which of you runs the bottom five units?” you will get a uniform answer: none of them is in the bottom five. But if you ask them which is the one business the company should disproportionately back, they usually know which it is.

So, what we want to do is go from spreading resources evenly like peanut butter, which is the enemy, to picking one-in-tens with breakout potential. That means we must deal with some tough stuff. An example is the Dutch semiconductor firm NXP. They went from around $2 billion market cap to $25 billion, and at the source of that were tough choices. They moved 70 percent of their R&D to backing just two of the 13 trajectories they had. But to do that, you create 11 losers. So how do we make winners out of losers? Reckitt Benckiser is an innovative consumer-goods company, and they are also quite innovative in their management practices. They have taken the concept of granularity and taken it to the extreme whereby they’re running 200 markets and 106 brands. That’s a big matrix. But what’s really interesting is that they have chosen 19 brands in 16 markets that they call “power cells.” These get disproportionately more resources.

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If you think about the level of visibility that such practices imply for resource allocation, it’s much different from what you get when you just roll up a bunch of business-unit (BU) plans—an order of magnitude of difference. Also the leadership style is very different, because instead of talking to each BU president and accepting their plan as a package deal, you actually have portfolio visibility at three or four levels down the organization.

Sean Brown: The next shift Chris explained is the transition from simply negotiating budgets to discussing the big moves a company needs to make.

Chris Bradley: Strategic planning is often just a cover for the real game, which is the three-year plan. Once you have anchored your strategic plan on the numbers, you’ve lost the plot because now you’re negotiating. What do you do about that? We go from budgets to moves, and what I mean by that is, don’t start with the numbers you’re going to achieve; start with the moves you’re going to make.

The enemy here is the base case, which is usually an extrapolation enabled by Excel, because when you click on a cell and you get the little crosshair and you drag it across, it’s easy just to extrapolate. The problem with it is that you extrapolate away the fact that the management team before you worked very hard to get those results—that’s not a base case. But you lay your strategic initiatives on top of it anyway, and then usually there is a gap in your waterfall chart to budget that says “stretch.”

That doesn’t work. What we propose instead is to ask, what is the momentum case of the business? In other words, if you just kept your current policies and capabilities, with no new initiative or investment, what would happen to the business? Some businesses do OK; they may have a lot of tailwind. For most businesses, however, the momentum case will be frightening. If you take your pedal off the metal, most companies will fade out pretty fast. So, if you’re a retailer and you stop refurbishing your stores, your comparable sales will fall quickly, and when your comp sales fall, that will very quickly leverage into your bottom line. It’s frightening, but that’s the right basis, because then you can calibrate. “OK, if that’s my momentum case, how much do I need to do to get to my aspiration? And what will get me there?” It focuses the discussion on the moves you need to make.

The most important thing to start with is, know your business really well. Often, we think the hard part of strategy is that we have to guess the future. I think the hard part of strategy is busting your own myths. The most important question a strategist can ask is, why do we make the money? I think of it like being on a dirt road in the Australian outback and you look in your rearview mirror. It’s very hard to see where you’ve been because a lot of dust has been kicked up. For the social side of strategy, this ambiguity about the past ends up being really useful, because you can say that when you did well, it was management prowess, and when things were tough, it was because of the weather. Remember, in the strategy room, it’s important to look good.

Rather than negotiating a financial promise, put some calibration around your moves. There is an increasing trend of basing investments purely on artificial intelligence, which judges an investment story based on many variables, then spits out a probability. That’s a good way of also getting the approving of budgets out of the way. And then AI [artificial intelligence] will tell you, based on how much you are investing and your technology and the sector you’re in, what your budget should be—as an outcome, not as an input.

If you want to drive strategic change in your company, you should be its chief liquidity officer. You can’t move resources that aren’t liquid. In other words, you cannot reallocate if you don’t also de-allocate. Chris Bradley

Sean Brown: Once the company has decided on which moves to make, the next challenge is following through and allocating sufficient resources to those priorities. That’s not easy. Chris talked about how to free up those resources. He then explained how managers can overcome sandbagging and risk aversion.

Chris Bradley: There is often a rude awakening. While we’ve all agreed that we will move resources to businesses B and C, on Monday morning we discover that we don’t have any resources to move. The reality is, most companies can’t responsibly move those levels of resources on a dime. In a recent survey my colleague Tim Koller did, only 30 percent of managers agreed that their budgets were aligned with the three-to-five-year plan. That’s a lot of dissonance.

So how do you create liquid resources? If you want to really drive strategic change in your company, you should be its chief liquidity officer. You can’t move resources that aren’t liquid. In other words, you cannot reallocate if you don’t also de-allocate. By the way, in a survey we did , this was the shift that respondents admitted they struggle with the most. Only 5 percent agreed that resources at their companies are freed up ahead of time to create a kitty of contestable funds in the annual budget.

A root cause of this is that managers are not charged an opportunity cost. I work a lot in retail, and I’m always bugging CEOs to measure their buyers on return on space, because otherwise they will never give shelves back to you. If they are measured on sales, they will always want more space. I’m sure you can apply the same principle in other businesses.

Here is another idea. Everyone has heard of zero-based budgeting, but it’s completely unrealistic. I can’t zero-base my bank branch network tomorrow because it’s already there. But what about 87-percent-based budgeting, or 93-percent-based budgeting? In other words, create a norm where you force contestability over that last bit of resources. A big part of this is about de-anchoring next year’s budget from being this year’s budget.

Let me introduce another problem. My colleague Dan Lovallo is a professor who works in applying psychology on biases to management topics. A simple test he did at an investment bank showed that if you applied the CEO’s risk tolerance to all the investment decisions made at lower levels rather than the more junior decision makers’ risk tolerance, the decisions would have had a 32 percent better outcome. So, there is this tax of risk aversion, and it makes sense: if you’re the CEO, you feel pretty diversified because there are probably 20 or 30 bets sitting in your portfolio, so you can afford a few fails. But you are asking your business-unit leaders to take undiversified risk, and then get killed on their key performance indicators when they don’t hit the numbers. It should be little surprise then that a lot of the risk gets edited out of the system.

The shift I want to encourage here is to go from this sandbagging to open risk portfolios. In other words, go from your strategy being lots of mini hockey sticks that you add together to one big hockey stick that has many risk trade-offs made at the enterprise level. There is a simple way of doing that: don’t have cross-subsidization by creating attacker units that report separately. That’s super-important in a world of digital disruption. Companies often try to protect their earnings core from growth businesses. One way to undo the package deal is to separate those different types of businesses.

Sean Brown: Chris then went on to explain how CEOs can promote the mind-set that will encourage business-unit leaders to take the risks that will help the overall company reach its aspiration.

Eight shifts that will take your strategy into high gear

Chris Bradley: We get what we incentivize. We ask our managers to hit their budgets 90 percent of the time and then criticize them for being too risk-averse. We love scenario analysis at strategy planning time, but who has ever seen that scenario analysis brought out again at performance review time?

One thing I propose is throwing out balanced scorecards. They are not very good because you end up having 20 goals, each at 5 percent, and therefore no individual one matters. Unbalanced scorecards are much better, because then the total potential bonus is driven by financial outcomes, but it may be reduced by how you got to that outcome. We have to reengineer how we evaluate people, particularly in risky contexts. Rather than “you are your numbers,” take a holistic performance view.

How do we make sure noble failures get rewarded and dumb luck does not? It’s interesting that in our survey, by far the most respondents said they believe their companies, when evaluating performance, penalize noble failures and don’t recognize the risks someone took. There is some missed wiring in the way the incentive system works, so it’s little surprise that we are not getting these big moves to happen. One innovation private equity brought in is basing incentives on having more skin in the game over a longer period of time.

Sean Brown: The final shift Chris discussed is the move from long-range planning to forcing the first step. He described how you can’t finish the strategy meeting until you have figured out what you will do tomorrow to start putting it into action.

Chris Bradley: I’ll describe this last shift with a story that’s relayed by my co-author Sven Smit. He was with insurance executives and everyone had just listened to this truly inspiring presentation about the paperless future of insurance. The CEO asked an inconvenient question: “I love this presentation, but how much paper are we budgeted to use next year?” And there was a bit of shuffling of feet, and I think someone had to go out of the room to find the number. The answer turned out to be 5 percent more paper. The CEO said, “I love the paperless future, but maybe next year can we do minus 5 percent paper use? Can we start there?”

So, a lot of this is about setting the most radical goal that’s achievable in a six-month period. That should be the first challenge.

I want to take the pressure down a bit here. These shifts are hard to do. If you get good at even a few of them, you are straightaway putting yourself into some seriously rare territory. There is a reason, aside from the fact that markets are competitive, that companies aren’t making big moves. It’s because the social side of strategy overwhelms them. Maybe make some of these shifts, think boldly, be aspirational, and do it not just by having fancier presentations and nicer-sounding initiatives but by really getting inside the social side of strategy in your company.

Sean Brown: Thank you for joining us for Inside the Strategy Room today. You can learn more about these shifts to the strategy-development process in “ Eight shifts that will take your strategy into high gear .” You can also do the Eight Shifts Diagnostic  to see how well your executive team is performing on each of the eight shifts and how your performance compares to other companies. And, of course, you can find more information in the book, Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick: People, Probabilities, and Big Moves to Beat the Odds .

Chris Bradley is a senior partner in the Sydney office, and Sean Brown is the firm’s global director of communications for strategy and corporate finance, based in the Boston office.

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What is Corporate Development?

Why is corporate development needed, internal vs external focus, structure of corporate development.

• Work Profile of a Corporate Development Team 

Implementing Strategies for Corporate Development

Metrics for evaluating the effectiveness of corporate development in an organization, additional corporate development resources, corporate development.

The group responsible for the company's strategic decisions and initiatives

Corporate Development (Corp Dev) is the group at a corporation responsible for strategic decisions to grow and restructure its business, establish strategic partnerships, and/or achieve organizational excellence. The purpose of Corp Dev is to create opportunities for the company through actions such as  mergers and acquisitions (M&A) , divestitures , and deals that leverage the value of the company’s business platform.

Corporate development is needed by a company to create and execute innovative strategies that will help the company harness its competitive advantage and thereby:

• Improve the financial and operating performance of the company
• Enable the company to outperform its competitors

In one sense, corporate development is an essential inward-looking function for an organization. It is required to fill gaps in the organization’s geographical outreach and product portfolio.

On the other hand, corporate development is also an essential outward-looking function for an organization. This is so because organizations are dynamic enterprises, with valuable assets, that can be monetized and grown through different combinations of deals and partnerships. Thus, the corporate development department is required to innovate and create a range of business partners and transaction alternatives.

#1 Centralized model

Typically, corporate development is a centralized function because this gives the Corp Dev team a birds-eye view of the organization which helps them to spot opportunities and threats. This allows the company to take advantage of being a first-mover in case of an opportunity, and take pre-emptive action against threats. Such a structure also allows the corporate development team to structure deals with other businesses that fit well into the company’s portfolio.

However, it should be noted that a centralized Corp Dev department does not imply that the department works in complete isolation from other operational groups within the company. For example, after acquiring a business, the corporate development team helps integrate the acquisition into the company by collaborating with support functions and business lines within the company and with vendors outside the company.

#2 Hybrid model

Under this organizational model, the corporate development department is lean – i.e., it consists of very few Corp Dev professionals. This lean team depends on a network of external and internal resources for providing subject matter expertise when evaluating potential partnerships and strategic transactions.

#3 Decentralized model

A decentralized Corp Dev organizational model actually means there is no core corporate development department. Instead, a corporate development team is put together on a case-by-case, or ad hoc, basis, and is made up of individuals from various internal departments.

The exact composition of the team is determined by the expertise required for the specific corporate development project. For example, if the project were a divestiture, then the Corp Dev team would be heavily populated with individuals from the corporate finance and legal departments.

The centralized model is the most popular model of corporate development, while the decentralized model is the least popular model.

Work Profile of a Corporate Development Team  

Corporate development groups are responsible for a wide range of functions, and the range of functions may vary significantly from company to company. Many people think of Corp Dev as solely involved in  mergers and acquisitions (M&A) , but – especially at large corporations – Corp Dev is typically engaged in a number of other projects besides just M&A.

Some of the most common responsibilities of Corp Dev include the following:

• Achieving operational excellence
• Analyzing and investing in new strategic initiatives (this encompasses mergers, acquisitions, and also strategic divestitures)
• Creating forecast models and budgets to determine asset allocations and monitor the performance of the company
• Dealing with government and/or industry regulators
• Ensuring capital adequacy
• Identifying and handling non-core business assets
• Improving client/customer experience
• Optimizing firm productivity
• Participating in financial conferences, shareholder meetings, Investor Days, and earnings releases in order to communicate the company’s strategy to shareholders
• Product development and market penetration
• Portfolio management
• Understanding key drivers of revenues and expenses; identifying the most important Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure and evaluate company performance

The following strategies are commonly used to achieve the goals of corporate development:

#1 Mergers and Acquisitions

Large companies often acquire/buy out smaller firms that have skills, knowledge, customers, revenue, earnings, and/or cash flow that can significantly benefit the acquiring company. In other cases, a company may acquire a firm that it thinks has potential and then revamp its business model to take it in a new, and hopefully, profitable direction. To carry out such acquisitions, corporate development professionals need to be skilled at corporate valuation , risk management, financial modeling , negotiation, and integration.

When carrying out mergers and acquisitions, corporate development teams: (1) create a target list, (2) value the companies in a financial model, (3) negotiate terms of the deal, and (4) integrate the acquisition into the company. For more on this, please see our guide on the M&A Process .

For successful integrations, Corp Dev teams often create a Transition Services Agreement (TSA) between the buyer and the seller. A TSA specifies the nature of and duration for which the seller will continue to provide services to the business which has been purchased. This creates value for the buyer as it provides them with time to integrate the newly purchased business.  It also helps the seller as it allows them to mitigate stranded costs and restructure their systems (especially if only a part of their business has been acquired by the buyer).

#2 Long-term Partnerships

Having a reputation in the marketplace as a “partner” of choice provides a company with a competitive advantage. This is because stable partnerships, comprised of a number of organizations, provide all the partners with economies of scale. Furthermore, in order to avoid a price war/a race to the bottom with a potential competitor, companies often prefer establishing partnerships with them.

Also, forming partnerships is (usually) much less capital intensive than acquiring a firm. Thus, given the demand for establishing partnerships in innovative ways, knowing how to establish sustainable partnerships with other organizations creates a competitive advantage.

#3 Divestitures and Carve-outs

Companies face both internal and external pressure to make sure that the portfolios of the company are using capital in an efficient manner. As a result, divestitures and carve-outs have become an increasingly important strategy for companies.

Offloading assets in a planned fashion, based on regular reviewing of the company portfolio, can result in a high return for the company. This is another Corp Dev function that requires extensive financial modeling, Excel skills, and a strong understanding of business valuation techniques.

#5 Strategic Alliances

Strategic alliances enable the companies involved in the alliance to manage their risk better, leverage core capabilities and assets, and speed up entry into new markets. Strategic alliances are especially prudent vehicles for entering emerging markets like India, China, and Brazil because they help the company entering the new country form the required business relationships and learn the relevant business practices faster than would have been possible otherwise.

Furthermore, strategic alliances often result in more efficient use of capital, as the cost of the investment is shared and the risk dispersed among the partners in accordance with their skill set/asset contribution.

#6 Creative Transactions for Optimizing Shareholder Value

Activist shareholders and hedge funds often exert external pressure on a company by stating their preferences and views regarding the company’s performance and strategic direction. The demands put forth by such investors act as incentives for the corporate development team to engineer new kinds of deals for optimizing shareholder value.

The most commonly used metrics for measuring the performance of a company’s corporate development department are:

• Net Present Value (NPV): The higher the NPV , the better the performance of the company’s Corp Dev team is perceived to be.
• Return on Investment (ROI): Like NPV, an increasingly higher ROI indicates a solid Corp Dev department.
• Internal Rate of Return (IRR): The better that Corp Dev performs, then the higher the margin by which the IRR will exceed the company’s required rate of return.
• Revenue growth: Revenue growth is another metric that is used to evaluate the performance of a Corp Dev department.
• Strategic Factor Analysis: A higher score for the company in its strategic factor analysis indicates the operational efficiency of the corporate development department.
• Synergy Capture: If after a merger and acquisition, the performance and value of the two organizations combined are greater than the performance and value of the two organizations separately, the company is said to have captured synergy. The synergetic effect of a transaction/deal is often most easily seen in stock share prices – if the synergetic effect is positive, share prices increase.
• Dilution/accretion analysis: If a dilution/accretion analysis shows that earnings per share will increase after an M&A, the Corp Dev team is considered to be good at creating shareholder value.
• Customer retention: Since part of Corp Dev’s responsibility is working to improve the customer/client experience, higher customer retention rates reflect the Corporate Development team’s success in that area of endeavor.
• Employee turnover: Corporate development, by helping to create business success and operational efficiency, can also contribute to achieving, and then maintaining, a low employee turnover rate.

An effective Corp Dev department has the ability to assess value and risk accurately, generate a significant number of deals, acquire targets, and drive an optimal and successful business strategy.

Source: M&A financial modeling course from CFI.

Corp Dev helps a company define the strategy optimal for its growth. You can learn more by exploring these additional resources, freely provided by CFI:

• Financial Modeling Guide
• M&A Process Overview
• Term Sheet Template
• Peter Principle
• See all management & strategy resources
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Who's Responsible for Strategic Planning?

• 20 Dec 2022

A business thrives when its leaders can define its vision, execute its strategy, and measure its performance. Strategic planning is key to this process. According to intelligence services company IntelliBridge , however, only 10 percent of organizations successfully implement and execute strategic planning, and 50 percent of leadership teams dedicate little to no time to it.

So, what does strategic planning entail, and who’s responsible for it? The short answer is that it requires involving everyone within an organization, regardless of their career level or experience.

Below, you’ll learn what strategic planning is, how it impacts an organization at every level, and how to successfully create a strategic vision.

Access your free e-book today.

What Is Strategic Planning?

Strategic planning is the ongoing, long-term organizational process that defines a company's goals by using available knowledge to document its intended direction. It’s leveraged to prioritize efforts, allocate resources, align stakeholders and employees on goals, and ensure that data collected supports those goals.

Strategic plans help guide projects’ execution and the daily actions that lead to an organization’s overall success.

According to the online course Business Strategy , taught by Harvard Business School Professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee, strategic plans require four key perspectives: financial, customer, internal, and learning and growth. These perspectives should ask and define the following questions:

• How do our customers view us?
• Where should the company excel?
• Where can we continue to improve and create value for our customers?
• How do our shareholders view us?

In Business Strategy, Oberholzer-Gee says these questions prompt organizations to focus on creating value for customers, employees, and suppliers.

Who Should Be Involved in Strategic Planning?

Leaders and board members execute strategic planning by tying it to their organization’s vision. Managers, individual contributors, and stakeholders also play pivotal roles in decision-making as businesses strive to increase employee engagement .

This process is referred to as “Hoshin Kanri,” a strategic deployment method that helps ensure strategic goals drive success throughout an entire organization. According to Business Strategy , “Hoshin” loosely translates to “purpose” or “direction,” and “Kanri” to “management” or “control.”

“The company’s goal should be to drive widespread employee engagement, so management communicates strategic objectives throughout the organization,” Oberholzer-Gee says in Business Strategy. “By setting short-term goals within a longer-term framework, Hoshin Kanri allows companies to tackle bigger challenges in achievable ways.”

Stakeholders can influence decision-making around operations, sales, and investments, while managers can provide direction and guidance to their direct reports. Individual contributors work toward company goals daily and can offer perspective, insight, and analysis related to ongoing projects.

Here’s a more comprehensive overview of how different roles are involved in an organization’s business strategy .

Senior Leadership & Management

When it comes to strategic planning, senior leaders and managers—such as the CEO, executive team, and board of directors—set the early stages in motion by determining their organization’s vision and the guiding principles behind its mission, ethos, and operational goals. Once those are defined, they set strategic priorities and measure success using key performance indicators (KPIs) .

It’s recommended that leadership teams review their company’s vision and its guiding principles annually and update them every five years. They should also assess and shift smaller goals and KPIs yearly, depending on strategic priorities and performance.

Employees at all levels play critical roles in strategic planning and execution. For instance, department leaders and managers may not be as involved in defining the company’s vision, but they establish goals and KPIs that support it. They must also communicate business strategies and track their success to ensure their team members are aligned.

Individual contributors are essential in strategic planning, too. They help their organization achieve its goals by executing critical day-to-day operations. They’re often tasked with creating action plans that, with guidance from their managers, are rooted in company milestones that directly support strategic planning goals .

Individual contributors are uniquely positioned to offer feedback and data on which daily, monthly, and quarterly tactics are effective. As a result, managers should ask for their feedback and perspective to inform future strategies and ensure they feel valued and empowered.

Related: 7 Ways to Empower Your Employees

Stakeholders

Stakeholders have a vested interest in strategic planning. They can be internal (such as customers, employees, board members, and contractors) or external (such as stock owners, suppliers, vendors, and even governments or local communities).

To determine which stakeholders should be part of strategic planning, leaders must consider who has the greatest “investment” in the company’s success, along with the most influence and interest. For example, a CEO has a high degree of interest and influence, while a department manager may have a high degree of interest but a low level of influence.

Keeping open lines of communication with highly influential and interested stakeholders during the strategic planning process is essential. Since a business strategy must address stakeholders’ needs, company leaders should understand their goals and select the right metrics and KPIs to capture past organizational achievements and predict future performance. Keep this in mind when considering short- and long-term wins for stakeholders.

Strategic Planning Is an Organizational Effort

A company's success often hinges on its leaders, employees, and stakeholders understanding and effectively implementing a strategic plan . Using a strategy that leverages all positions within an organization can create an environment of continuous improvement and customer value .

Are you interested in learning more about strategic planning? Explore our online course Business Strategy and download our free e-book on strategy formulation .

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6 Steps to Make Your Strategic Plan Really Strategic

• Graham Kenny

You don’t need dozens of strategic goals.

Many strategic plans aren’t strategic, or even plans. To fix that, try a six step process: first, identify key stakeholders. Second, identify a specific, very important key stakeholder: your target customer. Third, figure out what these stakeholders want from you. Fourth, figure out what you want from them. Fifth, design your strategy around these requirements. Sixth, focus on continuously improving this plan.

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

• Graham Kenny is the CEO of Strategic Factors and author of Strategy Discovery . He is a recognized expert in strategy and performance measurement who helps managers, executives, and boards create successful organizations in the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors. He has been a professor of management in universities in the U.S. and Canada.

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Strategy Development FAQ: Definition, Components, & Benefits

What to read next:

Strategy development is the beating heart of effective business management. It’s about understanding your business’s current position, defining the path toward your business ambitions, and tailoring it to the business environment, using objectives and goals as milestones along the way. Without a robust strategy creation approach, your business risks navigating rocky market environments aimlessly, vulnerable to unexpected risks and missed opportunities.  

Below, we cover quick-fire FAQs on strategy development, unpacking its definition, elements, and advantages to help you deliver the best results in today’s business landscape.  

What is strategy development?

Strategy development involves assessing your business within its environment, considering both internal and external factors. It covers:  

• Tailored business strategies aimed at value creation  
• Comprehensive mitigation plans based on identified risks, scenarios, and trade-offs  
• Clear communication and execution of plans using defined strategic goals and success metrics  

What is the role of a strategic plan?

A strategic plan guides your business toward its long-term goals by focusing resources, actions, and priorities on a united purpose. It creates a shared understanding of the company’s direction among company leaders, stakeholders, and staff, ensuring they synchronize their efforts to serve a desired outcome.  

Explore our step-by-step guide to strategic planning

What is the difference between strategy development and strategic planning?

Strategy development involves continuously analyzing, developing strategies, and refining business strategy based on the business's current state, risks, and emerging opportunities. Strategic planning is a subset of strategy development focused on creating resilient strategies for long-term business sustainability. Both processes are integral to the planning process, with company leaders playing a vital role in guiding and overseeing their execution.  

What are some key reasons strategy development is important in business?

Strategy development is essential for several reasons. It:   

• Establishes clear direction and purpose , helping employees understand the ‘why’ behind their work   
• Identifies organizational strengths and weaknesses , aiding in effective resource allocation  
• Allows your business to adapt to changing environments , repositioning it to suit shifting markets and circumstances   
• Enhances decision-making , serving as a framework for evaluating performance and progress  
• Promotes innovation , fostering a competitive advantage through continuous improvement based on feedback loops  
• Facilitates organizational alignment , ensuring conflicting efforts are reduced as departments work cohesively toward shared goals  
• Guides risk management , offering a structured approach to assessing and mitigating risks  

How do you develop a strategic plan?

The development of a strategic plan involves several key steps:  

• Analyze : Assess your business's current state to understand its strengths and opportunities while minimizing weaknesses and threats  
• Develop strategy : Create a strategic plan that navigates your business toward its desired state, identifying strategic options for risks and outlining financial planning concerning resources, budgets, and trade-offs  
• Align and communicate : Communicate your business's vision, mission , and long-term goals, aligning these using a goal-setting framework like OKRs  
• Create action plans : Detail execution plans, establishing responsibilities and timelines for accountability   

Implementing your strategic plan requires successful execution that emphasizes measurability. This serves as a continuous feedback loop that drives the strategy creation’s adaptation and optimization, ensuring your strategy doesn’t miss out on market opportunities.   

Why should past strategic performance be part of strategy development?

Past strategic performance provides insights into what worked and what didn’t, enabling your business to refine future strategies, embrace practical approaches, and steer clear of prior errors. Historical data also nurtures organizational know-how, empowering your company to evolve and enhance strategy creation effectiveness as it gathers knowledge over time. Frameworks such as key performance indicators (KPIs) and OKRs can be valuable tools in evaluating past performance and informing future strategy, helping company leaders make informed decisions.  

Which approach to strategy development is most likely to produce competitive advantage?

A strategy built on innovation and ongoing adaptation is a great way to gain a competitive advantage. Innovation is critical, driving differentiation to secure a competitive advantage. This involves introducing novel ideas, products, or processes that set your business apart from competitors.  

Yet, an innovative spirit can fall short if it’s not aligned with the business environment.  The crux lies with senior executives and their capacity to leverage critical, comprehensive, and timely data, as this dictates business agility and enables your business to tackle market shifts as they come.

What can hold back the realization of a strategic development plan?

Strategy development plans typically lack robust feedback loops, hindering continuous evaluation and adaptation. This absence results in stagnant plans unsuitable to dynamic markets, rendering them obsolete.   

To maintain agile and relevant strategy development plans, and to avoid strategic planning pitfalls , you need real-time feedback — and technology-driven feedback loops powered by AI are an effective way to stay ahead. AI enables rapid data analysis , supporting adaptive decision-making in dynamic environments. As such, using it for strategic insights allows your business to adapt plans to market changes, analyze trends, and incorporate internal insights, ensuring ongoing relevance, resilience, and success in your strategy development approach.  

How creative should strategy development be?

Creativity fuels strategy development. It empowers your business to innovate, explore new paths, and craft unique value propositions. However, creative strategic concepts must be substantiated to ensure alignment with market realities. Powering your creative ideas with data-backed insights can refine and validate these, providing empirical support for strategy creation. As such, a blend of creativity and data-driven strategies is essential to creating validated visionary strategies primed for success.  

How does strategic alignment between departments contribute to successful strategy implementation?

Alignment between different departments or units within your business is essential for effective strategy execution . When various parts of the organization work cohesively towards common strategic objectives, you minimize conflicts, optimize resource allocation, and enhance overall efficiency, contributing to successful strategy implementation. Effective alignment requires active involvement and leadership from company leaders to ensure coherence across the organization.  

What is the difference between a deliberate and an emergency strategy development process?

Deliberate strategy development is a pre-planned strategic approach aligned with long-term objectives. Think of it as a systematic process focused on structured planning and execution. In contrast, emergency strategy development is reactive, responding to unforeseen events or crises. It requires quick decision-making and implementation to navigate immediate challenges and mitigate their impact.  

The best strategy development approach blends deliberate, long-term planning with the flexibility to pivot, optimize, and refine based on data-driven insights. At Quantive, we call this the Always-On Strategy model .  

Powered by ongoing measurements and continuous optimizations, the Always-On Strategy operates as a dynamic loop, continuously developing, executing, and evaluating strategies. It prioritizes business agility and alignment with market shifts, emphasizing continual strategic readiness to avoid surprises and prevent strategies from becoming obsolete. By leveraging real-time insights, the Always-On Strategy model enables swift, informed decisions and ongoing refinements, ensuring your business strategy remains relevant and adaptable.  

Discover the Always-On Strategy model

What is strategy deployment? How does it differ from strategy development?

Strategy deployment involves translating your formulated strategy into actionable steps and ensuring its effective implementation across all business levels. Strategy development is the process preceding strategy deployment and consists of the conceptualization, formulation, and planning of business strategies.  

How often should strategy development occur?

While many companies stick to traditional annual strategy reviews, this approach is typically inflexible, rigid, and time-consuming. Instead, focus on creating a dynamic strategy by consistently revisiting and optimizing it to ensure continuous alignment with the evolving market and business landscape.   

By setting an ongoing schedule for strategic optimizations using best practices such as pre-scheduled planning and regular reviews, you emphasize the significance of strategic agility for stakeholders. Moreover, this approach enables ongoing strategic reassessments while avoiding unnecessary or impulsive changes.  

Should companies seek external support when developing their strategy?

While not always necessary, a fresh pair of impartial eyes can be immensely valuable to your strategy development process, offering expertise and experience that might not be available internally. This can include support with activities such as strategic analysis, market research, problem-solving, and industry-specific best practices — all of which can enrich your strategy development process.   

Read more on the success of centralized vs. decentralized strategies

Similarly, the right technology can significantly enhance strategic development. AI-powered solutions not only enable you to analyze your market environment and sift through large amounts of existing data quickly, but also contribute to data-driven strategic decisions. This not only aligns your business with market threats and opportunities but also helps with eliminating biases and navigating organizational politics often associated with this process.  

Who owns strategy development?

Strategy development isn't a one-person job. It's a collaborative effort that involves strategic management from key decision-makers who draw on insights from across the organization. This helps your business account for diverse perspectives and contributions to ensure your strategy development plan is well-rounded and comprehensive.  

How is strategy development evolving?

Integrating technology and ESG in strategy development is becoming the norm.    

The right tech tools, such a strategic intelligence platform , can help your business navigate the onslaught of business uncertainties using the right data. AI, machine learning, and big data play a pivotal role in rapidly analyzing your business environment to drive quick, informed decision-making that seamlessly align your strategy with changing market needs and improve your bottom line . Additionally, the push for sustainability and social responsibility push for ESG-aligned strategic initiatives as part of strategic development.    

Quantive empowers modern organizations to turn their ambitions into reality through strategic agility. It's where strategy, teams, and data come together to drive effective decision-making, streamline execution, and maximize performance.     

As your company navigates today’s competitive landscape, you need an Always-On Strategy to continuously bridge the gap between current and desired business outcomes. Quantive brings together the technology, expertise, and passion to transform your strategy and playbooks from a static formulation to a feedback-driven engine for growth.     

Whether you’re a fast-growing scale-up, a mid-market business looking to conquer, or a large enterprise looking for innovation, Quantive keeps you ahead – every step of the way. For more information, visit www.quantive.com .  

Additional resources

How top companies are closing the strategy execution gap, what is an always-on strategy, 6 signs of strategy failure.

Strategic Planning Process: Why Is Strategic Planning Important for Organizations in 2024?

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The 5 steps of the strategic planning process

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

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

What is strategic planning?

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

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

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

Related: Learn how to hold an effective strategic planning meeting

Why do I need a strategic plan?

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

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

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

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

Before you begin: Pick a brainstorming method

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

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

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

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

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

Related: Brainstorming and ideation template

1. Define your vision

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

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

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

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

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

Related: Vision board template

2. Assess where you are

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

What is SWOT analysis?

SWOT analysis is an exercise where you define:

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

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

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

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

Related: SWOT analysis template

3. Determine your priorities and objectives

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

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

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

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

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

Related: Project kickoff template

4. Define tactics and responsibilities

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

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

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

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

Related: OKR planning template  

5. Manage, measure, and evaluate

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

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

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

Related: Retrospective radar template

Retrospectives are typically divided into three parts:

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

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

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

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

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

Related: Quarterly business review template

Conclusions

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

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

Related: 5 Tips for Holding Effective Post-mortems

Why Mural for strategic planning

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

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

Learn more about strategic planning with Mural.

About the authors

Bryan Kitch

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Strategic planning: Read this before it's that time again

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What is strategic planning?

What is strategic plan management?

Benefits of robust strategic planning and management

10 steps in the strategic planning process.

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: How to set and meet your long-term goals

July 1, 2024 - 10 min read

Strategic planning is an ongoing process that defines your business goals and creates a roadmap for achieving them. Done well, strategic planning will help you focus on your long-term business development, instead of just reacting to changes and challenges in the market.

Strategic planning is important for:

• Creating a framework to track your progress
• Defining the KPIs to measure your performance effectively
• Identifying and eliminating mistakes in your planning
• Proactively identifying new opportunities and threats to your business
• Informing your resource allocation
• Aligning your stakeholders around a shared purpose and objective, even when they're working across departments

It’s important to remember that strategic planning is a tool that informs your decision-making process rather than a list of steps set in stone at the start of a new business phase. Strategic plans are also different from tactical plans, which are action-oriented steps to take, or project plans, which relate to a specific aspect of your company’s work.

So, in this post, we’ll show you the  essential parts of a truly flexible and responsive strategic plan , take you through the steps to create one, and show you how to implement it in a way that supports your team.

Essential elements of a strategic plan

Let’s start with the common elements of a strategic plan and the things you can consider as you lay one out. 

The more you understand these aspects, the easier it will be to create a plan that bridges the gap between your planned strategy and the real-world work it entails. 

Values statement

Your values are the principles that guide your professional behavior and the decisions you make. In a values statement, you define what’s important to your organization and how you want to conduct business. 

Values statements influence the way businesses work internally as well as the way they build relationships with their customers. For example, values can inform everything from workplace communications , to the training and support you provide, to the way you recognize achievements within your team. 

There’s a lot of overlap between business values and company culture , and this internalization is what makes values so central to strategic planning. 

When you look at your goals for the next three to five years (the period typically covered by a strategic plan), you should make sure your plans align with the way you want your employees and customers to experience your business. 

Clarifying your values at the beginning of the strategic planning process helps you keep this in mind, even if your plan evolves.  

Vision statement

Your organization’s vision statement sets out your long-term aspirations, focusing on what you want to achieve in the future. Vision statements should be concise, aspirational, and connected to your business’s core values — like the ones you laid out in the first section of your strategic plan. 

Because of the motivational element of a vision statement, it can be helpful to involve different stakeholders from across your organization (and even your client base) when you write it. This helps create a vision statement everyone feels represented by, which you can rally around when your work runs into challenges later. 

Mission statement

In contrast to the vision statement, your organization’s mission statement describes why it exists, who it serves, and what it does. It also explains — in a nutshell — how you intend to achieve your vision. 

For example, a creative and design agency’s vision statement might be:

“ To be the premier creative agency in our city, transforming businesses through innovative visual experiences. ” 

This could translate into a mission statement of: 

“ To create exceptional, user-centric designs that combine creativity and modern techniques to drive client success. ” 

As you can see, the mission statement switches focus from the ideals laid out in the vision to the practical steps that make those ideals a reality. 

SWOT analysis

SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. SWOT analysis helps you understand the internal factors that could impact your strategic plan (your strengths and weaknesses). It also gives you a broader understanding of how your organization fits into the business landscape (the opportunities and threats). 

Another useful term for some business models is “PEST analysis,” which stands for political, economic, social, and technological. This type of “environmental scan” can give business leaders a deeper understanding of the external factors that could influence the entire organization during their next planning cycle. 

Understanding the internal and external pressures on your business before you start implementing your strategic plan will help you position yourself for success, develop strategies to gain a competitive advantage, and manage potential risks .

The business goals section of a strategic plan explains what your company wants to achieve in concrete terms. 

One of the most popular ways to approach goal setting is to use SMART principles , choosing goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. 

With SMART goals, you gain a clear sense of purpose (from the specificity of the plan), motivation (from the achievability and relevance of the goals), and an additional push from a deadline. What’s more, the measurable aspect means you can gauge your progress and compare your achievements to the anticipated results. 

Other goal-setting techniques used by businesses include: 

• The balanced scorecard (or BSC) approach, which considers the goals from four perspectives: financial, customer, internal process, and learning and growth. This aligns the planned business activities with the company’s core vision and values, not just the finances.
• Objectives and key results (OKR) frameworks, which look at the history, benefits, and key components of your goals to determine your focus. 
• Management by objectives (MBO), which emphasizes the importance of clear goals, involves employees in decision making, and bases evaluations on whether the goals were achieved. 

Your objectives are the actions you’ll take to achieve your goals. 

To return to the agency example above, if one of the goals was to build long-term relationships with clients to ensure their ongoing success, the objectives could include:

• Establishing a system for gathering feedback and reviews 
• Conducting regular client satisfaction surveys 
• Regularly sharing actionable client insights with your wider team 

Objectives start to put your strategic plan into more practical terms, so you can order or categorize them as you lay them out. Grouping or prioritizing your objectives will make it far easier to manage your resources, delegate tasks, and show your team which of the objectives they should address first. 

Action plans

Finally, your action plans , which are sometimes described as “tactics” or “approaches,” outline the specific steps you’ll take to achieve your objectives. These plans break your objectives down into actionable tasks and subtasks — the stepping stones that take you through your strategic plan.

Action plans address the way the rubber hits the road, so it can be helpful to include some buffer room in this area of your strategic plan. Some businesses even make contingency plans at this stage before introducing the plan to their team members. 

Considering contingencies now means that when changes occur, you should be able to adjust your plan rather than starting from scratch once the emergency has passed. 

When you truly get to grips with these elements, you’re more likely to see the benefits of strategic planning when work begins. These benefits include: 

• A clear direction and focus for your team
• Increased engagement from teams that understand their roles and goals
• Effective decision making informed by up-to-date information
• A proactive management approach , set up to take advantage of opportunities and address challenges as they arise
• Long-term sustainability , based on an understanding of the business environment and risk mitigation 

Having said this, it’s essential to remember that any of these aspects could change over the course of the years you’ve planned for. Considering the vision, values, and opportunities that drive your business — and the steps you’ll take to put them into practice — should be an ongoing process as your work develops. 

When you get to grips with the idea of using your strategic business plan as a shared reference rather than a rulebook, you’re ready to create a plan of your own. 

Now, we’ll look at the strategic planning process in more detail. The examples here will show you how to bring an effective strategic plan together, align your  work with your goals, and put your team in the best position to focus, prioritize, and achieve their ongoing goals.

How to make a strategic plan: Step-by-step guide

The steps we detail here can help you create a solid but responsive strategic plan. 

1. Assess your business environment

• Analyze internal pressures within your business 
• Research the external environment you’re operating in
• Gather data and feedback on your team’s past performance 

Strategy formulation starts with a thorough understanding of what’s going on inside your business and in the external environment. Alongside the SWOT analysis we discussed above, many strategic frameworks start with an analysis of your company’s current position, including your performance in the previous fiscal year or planning cycle. 

With this assessment, you’ll set yourself up to create and measure the short- and long-term goals that can bring your company’s vision to life. 

To make these judgments more accurately, strategic planners often pull up the following records at the very beginning of the process (and then continue to reference them as time goes on): 

• Time tracking reports to assess what the team has been able to achieve in their billable hours and identify areas for improved efficiency 
• Cash flow data to assess their budget, find out where investments can be made, and identify areas where they need to reduce waste
• Feedback reports from customers, clients, or their team to quantify what the business does well, and identify areas where they’re not fully addressing a pain point 
• Resource allocation, including the way tasks are delegated among the number of team members available (this information is particularly useful for human resources teams at the start of a new phase, as they may have to, for example, hire additional employees to tackle a larger project)

Once you’ve identified any issues with past performance, you can consider areas for improvement, what you can realistically achieve, and take the other factors that will impact your desired outcomes into account. 

2. Define goals, strategic objectives, and performance metrics  

• Write out your long-term goals and break them into achievable steps
• Decide how best to measure and compare your progress 
• Find a logical way to visualize your tasks and your progress to keep your team on track

With the groundwork in place, you can turn your focus to operational planning and strategy development. 

In this planning phase, you consider the common goals shared across your organization. Then, you start to break them down into the short-term tasks you’ll need to achieve, and even the milestones that could make up those individual projects. 

With the goals as a framework, the next stage is to plan how to measure and visualize your progress. 

Consider which teams or team members need an overview and how to present the information in a way that fits their work. For example, while a marketing team might view a product launch as a series of dependent steps, the development team behind the scenes might be dealing with a backlog of tickets or bugs, where a linear overview doesn’t fit their more cyclical methodology. 

Finally, identify the first tasks in your strategic plan and decide who to delegate them to, how to communicate this, and how you’ll make sure the team members have the tools they need to start. This will make the execution phase much smoother. 

3. Implement and share your plan

• Onboard your team
• Delegate tasks 
• Ask for initial feedback 

Prior to this stage of the process, strategic planning was largely the responsibility of senior leadership. Now, you move to strategy implementation, where you bring your team members up to speed, assign ownership of the different aspects of the plan, and give them the tools they need to track their work and collaborate. 

Your exact strategy execution depends on the size of your organization, the planning tools you prefer to use, and the structure of your teams. 

For example, you might share a plan document, explaining the next steps while emphasizing your intention to adjust the steps if necessary. Other teams might invite employees to a shared workspace where they’ll find the goals and milestones. Some teams might hold a formal meeting to launch the new strategy, whereas others will see it as an extension of their current work.

However you approach this implementation, once the team is up to speed, you can start working toward your strategic goals. Remember, it can be beneficial to ask for feedback from your team, even at this early stage, to promote transparency and make sure you’re on track. 

4. Revise and restructure 

• Gather data on your progress 
• Create and share reports with your team and key stakeholders 
• Respond to changes and communicate the updated strategic plan

As we said above, successful strategic planning can respond to change. When you set out to create a strategic plan rather than a project plan or an annual business plan, you expect to adjust it as you learn more. The framework you create in the first three steps puts you in a strong position to do this. 

As your team starts to work through the action plans, you should monitor: 

• Task status data , which can help you identify or preempt delays and bottlenecks
• Your team’s capacity , to avoid burnout, reassign tasks, or adjust resource allocation
• Your KPIs , to see how your real-time performance matches up to any projections or expectations you created in the initial planning phases 

Sharing reports with this information with stakeholders can motivate your team, help them adjust their priorities, and invite suggestions for improvements. The most useful reports will be based on real-time data, so you know you’re acting on the latest information, staying agile, and adjusting your plan as necessary. 

It is possible to plan for and implement these steps with spreadsheets, emails, and shared documents, but it’s not ideal. 

With several potential versions of your plan in play, it can be difficult to locate the most up-to-date information in email chains, announcements, or shared documents.

With work shared across your company, it can be hard to communicate and share resources without creating delays, bottlenecks, and information silos. 

And with collaborative, aspirational goals, you need to find a way to unite your team around your shared purpose.  

So now, let’s turn to the software features that can help you assess, define, implement, and refine your strategic planning and support your team as you put it into action.

Get the essential tools for strategic planning with Wrike

With Wrike, you can: 

• Assess a wealth of data relating to your work , whether you’re making a new strategic plan or adapting as you go
• Implement your plan easily , and help your team see how their tasks contribute to your organization’s goals
• Align your entire team , even when multiple, distinct departments have a role to play 

Note: Wrike gathers data on your team’s work, performance, and capacity as they move through their tasks, and we use this information to generate the highly detailed, targeted insights you need for ongoing strategic planning. You can also import data from XLS spreadsheets , Outlook Tasks, or MS Project when you set up Wrike, so you can start with all this essential planning data at your fingertips. 

Generate comprehensive overviews and reports to align your teams

Wrike’s real-time, dynamic workspaces make it effortless to set and share your organizational goals. In your workspace, you can list every task that makes up an objective and every milestone that represents a goal, and make sure everyone on your team knows the role they have to play. 

Most importantly, Wrike gives you multiple ways to create a business strategy map, so every subteam — and even the individuals who make them up — can view their progress in a way that makes sense for them. 

Try adding some of these views to your organization’s workspace:  

• The Table view gives you a spreadsheet-style overview of your tasks, folders, projects, or spaces.
• A project dashboard is configured with widgets to filter your work management data to show the headline statistics, track your key performance indicators, alert you to risks, and show you the project status information you need to plan your approach.
• A Gantt chart helps you visualize your project timeline , find the critical path , and plan for the task dependencies that inevitably arise when a large team collaborates.
• The Kanban board represents your tasks as cards, giving you an instant overview, helping you identify bottlenecks, and visualizing where each task sits in your workflow.
• Wrike’s workload management tools help you accurately assess your team’s capacity and easily reassign tasks to help you meet your deadlines and goals.

Cross-tagging for effortless resource sharing 

Wrike’s unique cross-tagging feature is a game changer for organizations that need to bring scattered or cross-team employees together. 

Put simply, cross-tagging simplifies asset management, leads to better connectivity within and across teams, and dismantles the information silos that can slow a project down. 

Seamless communication in one platform

With Wrike, you can communicate seamlessly across your entire organization, with an intuitive system of notifications and automations. 

For example, whenever someone in your workspace is assigned a new task, they’ll receive a notification in Wrike, and also through one of the messaging platforms Wrike integrates with if you choose. The task (along with all the files and information they need to get started) will automatically appear in their personal dashboard, and they can start planning their approach straight away.

This is a fantastic way to speed up your review and approval workflows . Simply set tasks to notify designated approvers when they reach a certain status, or tag requested changes to team members with a simple @mention. 

This system speeds up your work and saves the confusion of endless internal email chains. It also builds the accountability and sense of ownership that can help keep your team on track to achieve their strategic goals. 

Strategic planning templates to get started fast

With Wrike, you can build a custom, automated workspace that meets all your team’s needs. 

Whether you’re looking for a single platform to track progress for a compact team or you need to scale up as you grow, Wrike helps you draw your strategic plan from a central source of truth and keeps everyone in the loop as you work toward your goals. 

To make strategic planning even easier, Wrike includes templates to help you build your workspace with your goals in mind. 

For example: 

• The strategic action plan template gives you features to optimize your task management , with departmental folders; daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly dashboards; and a clear picture of your objectives.
• The OKR template helps you define and work toward your objectives and key results at an earlier stage of the strategic planning process. This template is set up to record specific goals and metrics and determine the tactics to help you achieve them in Wrike. 
• The business goals template will help you set clear objectives and simplify your internal strategic planning. This template focuses on assigning accountability and tracking your project milestones, so you can set solid targets, communicate effectively, and collaborate cohesively from the very beginning of your new planning cycle.

Plan strategically, optimize with Wrike 

Strategic planning requires oversight, nuanced understanding, and an element of flexibility. When your team works in Wrike, you access all this, and more, with ease. 

Take a look at some of the results our customers have seen: 

• Staffing and recruiting company Aerotek cut weeks from its planning time and reduced internal emails by 85–90% .
• Manufacturing and technology specialist House of Design saved 16,600 hours in three years by streamlining its workflows and collaboration systems.
• TV advertising agency Marketing Architects slashed the response time on approvals from one day to only 20 minutes .
• Health, technology, and software company Fitbit is saving over 400 hours in meetings each year, and spending 50% less time on timeline building and management. 

From your first goal-setting meetings, to bringing your team on board, to honing your plans as you learn more, Wrike gives you all the tools you need to make your strategic planning successful. 

Morgan Jones

As a Content Marketing Manager at Wrike, Morgan is focused on developing and creating content for various channels, including blog posts, articles, social media copy, and email newsletters. With 10+ years of marketing experience, she has created content and marketing materials for various industries, including tech, franchise operations, financial institutions, and an international professional association. Her interests are in communication, collaboration, and productivity. She lives outside Orlando, Florida, with her husband and three children.

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How to Use a Business Roadmap Template for Strategic Planning

Strategic planning plays a crucial role in the success of any business. It allows organizations to set clear goals, align resources, define priorities, and make informed decisions. However, developing a strategic plan from scratch can be a daunting and time-consuming task. That's where a business roadmap template comes in handy. In this article, we will explore the importance of strategic planning in business and delve into the details of using a business roadmap template effectively. What is Strategic Planning? Strategic planning is the process of charting a course for the future of an organization. It involves analyzing the current state of the business, identifying opportunities and threats, and defining a clear direction for future growth. Without a well-defined strategic plan, businesses can easily lose focus, miss opportunities, and fail to adapt to changing market conditions. Similar to a roadmap, a strategic plan lays out the plan for achieving the organization's long-term objectives. It includes a framework for decision-making, helps allocate resources effectively, and assists in anticipating and adapting to any changes in the market. Key Elements of Effective Strategic Planning Clear vision and mission statements: These statements define the organization's purpose, values, and aspirations. They provide a sense of direction and inspire employees to work towards a common goal. Situational analysis: This involves assessing the internal and external factors that may impact the business. By understanding the business's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, businesses can make informed decisions and develop strategies that leverage their strengths and mitigate potential risks. Goals and objectives: These are specific, measurable targets that the organization aims to achieve. Setting clear goals and objectives provides a sense of focus and direction, enabling employees to align their efforts towards achieving them. Strategies and action plans: These outline the approach and steps required to achieve the goals. Strategies provide a roadmap for how the organization will reach its objectives, while action plans break down the strategies into actionable steps, assigning responsibilities and timelines. Performance measurement: This requires tracking progress towards the goals and making necessary adjustments. By regularly monitoring key performance indicators and evaluating the effectiveness of strategies, organizations can identify areas for improvement and make informed decisions to stay on track. What Are Business Roadmap Templates? A business roadmap template is a pre-designed document that outlines the strategic goals, activities, timelines, and dependencies of a project or initiative. It serves as a visual representation of the planned journey towards achieving the desired outcomes, and it typically includes sections for defining goals, identifying tasks, allocating resources, and tracking progress. These templates tend to come in various formats, like spreadsheets, presentations, and online tools. Factors to Consider When Choosing a Template Choosing the right business roadmap template is essential so that it aligns with the organization's goals and requirements. When making a selection, it is important to consider several factors that can contribute to the effectiveness and usability of the chosen template. Flexibility: Confirm the template allows for customization and adapts to the unique needs of your business. A flexible template can accommodate changes and updates as the organization's goals and strategies evolve over time. User-friendly: Look for a template that is intuitive and easy to use, even for users with limited technical skills. A user-friendly interface can save time and reduce the learning curve, enabling teams to focus on the content and analysis rather than struggling with the tool itself. Compatibility: Verify that the template can be easily integrated into your existing tools and workflows. Compatibility with commonly used software platforms, such as Microsoft Office or project management tools, can streamline the process of creating and sharing the roadmap. Visual appeal: A visually appealing template can help engage stakeholders and make the information more accessible. Clear and attractive visuals, such as charts, graphs, and icons, can enhance comprehension and retention of the roadmap's content. Common Types of Business Roadmap Templates There are various types of business roadmap templates available, depending on the specific needs and goals of the organization. Each template serves a different purpose and provides a framework for planning and tracking different aspects of the business. Strategic roadmap: This template focuses on long-term strategic goals and the initiatives required to achieve them. It provides a high-level overview of the organization's vision, mission, and key objectives. The strategic roadmap helps align teams and departments towards a common goal, so everyone is working towards the same strategic direction. Product roadmap: This template is used to plan and track the development of a specific product or service. It outlines the product's lifecycle, from concept to launch and beyond, highlighting key milestones, features, and enhancements. A product roadmap helps product managers and development teams prioritize tasks, allocate resources, and communicate the product's roadmap to stakeholders. Technology roadmap: This template outlines the adoption and integration of technology within the organization. It identifies the technology initiatives, upgrades, and investments necessary to support the company's strategic objectives. A technology roadmap helps IT departments and decision-makers plan for future technology needs, for a smooth transition and alignment with the overall business strategy. Marketing roadmap: This template helps plan and coordinate marketing activities and campaigns. It outlines the marketing objectives, target audience, key messages, channels, and timelines. A marketing roadmap allows marketing teams to visualize their strategies, allocate resources effectively, and track the progress of their campaigns. It guarantees that marketing efforts are aligned with the overall business goals and objectives. Step-by-Step Guide to Using a Business Roadmap Template for Strategic Planning Now that you understand the importance of strategic planning and how to choose the right business roadmap template, let's dive into the step-by-step process of using the template effectively: Setting Your Strategic Goals Consider the long-term objectives of your business and identify specific outcomes you want to achieve. Make sure your goals are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound) and aligned with your vision and mission statements. Filling Out Your Business Roadmap Template Enter the goals in the designated section and break them down into smaller, actionable tasks. Assign owners, set deadlines, and establish dependencies between tasks. Use visual elements such as timelines, Gantt charts, or progress bars to make the information easier to understand. Reviewing and Adjusting Your Strategic Plan Monitor progress towards your goals, track key performance indicators, and gather feedback from stakeholders. Based on these reviews, make necessary adjustments to the plan and update the roadmap template accordingly. Overall, strategic planning is essential for business success, and a business roadmap template can greatly simplify and streamline the process. By understanding the importance of strategic planning, choosing the right template, and following a step-by-step guide, businesses can effectively utilize a business roadmap template for their strategic planning needs. Leverage a business roadmap template with Wrike's strategic planning tools. Start a free trial today and guide your business towards strategic success. Note: This article was created with the assistance of an AI engine. It has been reviewed and revised by our team of experts to ensure accuracy and quality. 

Strategic Success: Overcoming Common Hurdles in Implementing Organizational Strategies

The successful implementation of organizational strategies is key to achieving strategic success. However, this is often easier said than done, as organizations face various hurdles along the way. In this article, we will explore the common hurdles in strategy implementation and provide insights into how organizations can overcome them to achieve their desired outcomes. Understanding Organizational Strategies Organizational strategies are the plans and actions that organizations put in place to achieve their long-term goals and objectives. These strategies provide a detailed outline for how an organization will allocate its resources, compete in the market, and ultimately achieve success. Organizational strategies are not just limited to large corporations. They are equally important for small businesses, non-profit organizations, and even government agencies. Regardless of the size or nature of the organization, having a well-defined strategy is crucial for long-term success. The Importance of Strategic Planning Helps organizations anticipate and adapt to changes in the business environment. By conducting a thorough analysis of internal and external factors, organizations can identify potential opportunities and threats.  Assists in aligning the efforts of employees and departments. When everyone in the organization is aware of the overall goals and strategies, they can work together towards achieving them.  Provides a roadmap for resource allocation. By setting clear goals and objectives, organizations can prioritize their resources and investments.  Common Hurdles in Strategy Implementation Despite careful planning and preparation, organizations often face hurdles when it comes to implementing their strategies. These hurdles can hinder progress and prevent organizations from realizing the full potential of their strategic initiatives. Let's explore some of the common hurdles in strategy implementation. Lack of Clear Communication When the strategic goals and objectives are unclear or not effectively communicated to all levels of the organization, it can result in confusion and employees not understanding their roles and responsibilities. This lack of clarity can greatly impact the successful implementation of the strategy. Clear communication is essential in ensuring that everyone in the organization is on the same page. It helps align everyone's efforts towards the common goal, and it fosters a sense of unity and purpose. Overall, this can be accomplished by providing regular updates and feedback to employees. Open and transparent communication channels create an environment of trust and collaboration, enabling employees to contribute their ideas and concerns, ultimately enhancing the strategy implementation process. Resistance to Change Employees may resist changes that come with the implementation of new strategies due to fear of the unknown, concerns about job security, or the perception that the changes may not be in their best interest. As such, overcoming resistance to change requires effective change management strategies. Leaders need to address employees' concerns and fears by providing clear explanations of why the change is necessary and how it will benefit both the organization and the individuals within it.  Additionally, creating a supportive and inclusive culture that embraces change is crucial. Leaders should encourage open dialogue, provide training and development opportunities, and recognize and reward employees' efforts and contributions during the implementation process. Insufficient Resources Without the necessary resources, organizations may struggle to execute their strategic initiatives successfully. Therefore, it becomes imperative to secure sufficient resources and then allocate them accordingly. All of this involves careful planning, as organizations need to assess their current resource capabilities and identify any gaps that need to be filled. What's more, they need to prioritize and allocate resources based on the critical areas that will have the most significant impact on the strategy's success.  In addition, companies can explore partnerships and collaborations to access additional resources. By leveraging external expertise and resources, organizations can overcome resource limitations and enhance their strategy implementation capabilities. Overcoming the Hurdles While these hurdles can be daunting, there are strategies that organizations can employ to overcome them and ensure successful strategy implementation. Let's explore some of these strategies. Building a Strong Communication Framework Effective communication is key to overcoming the hurdle of lack of clear communication. It is essential for organizations to establish a strong communication framework that ensures the strategic goals and objectives are clearly communicated to all employees. This involves regular communication channels, such as team meetings, email updates, and intranet platforms, to keep everyone informed and aligned. In addition, organizations can leverage technology to facilitate communication. They can invest in collaboration tools that enable real-time communication and document sharing across teams and departments. These tools not only improve efficiency but also promote collaboration and knowledge sharing, which are crucial for successful strategy implementation. Managing Change Effectively To address resistance to change, organizations must manage the change process effectively. This involves providing employees with the necessary information, training, and support to help them adapt to the changes brought about by the implementation of new strategies. Engaging employees in the change process and addressing their concerns can significantly reduce resistance and increase buy-in. One effective strategy for managing change is to create a change management team or committee within the organization. This team can be responsible for developing and implementing a comprehensive change management plan that includes clear communication, training programs, and support mechanisms. Businesses can also provide ongoing support to employees during the change process. This can mean coaching or mentoring programs to help individuals navigate the challenges associated with change.  Allocating Resources Wisely Organizations should carefully allocate their resources to maximize the chances of successful strategy implementation. This involves conducting a thorough resource analysis to identify any resource gaps and then allocating resources in a strategic and prioritized manner. Effective resource allocation ensures that the necessary tools, technology, and talent are available to support the execution of the organizational strategies. Companies can consider leveraging partnerships and collaborations to optimize resource allocation. By forging strategic alliances with external organizations or industry experts, organizations can access additional resources and expertise that may be otherwise unavailable. Furthermore, organizations can invest in continuous learning and development programs to enhance the skills and capabilities of their workforce. By providing employees with opportunities to expand their knowledge and acquire new competencies, organizations can strengthen their resource base and increase their capacity to execute strategies effectively. The Role of Leadership in Strategy Implementation Effective leadership plays a crucial role in driving successful strategy implementation. For instance, leaders must clearly articulate the vision and purpose behind the organizational strategies. They need to craft a compelling narrative that resonates with employees and inspires them to actively participate in the implementation process. By providing a clear sense of direction, leaders can create alignment and drive momentum towards the achievement of strategic goals. Leaders must also encourage team collaboration, by creating an environment that fosters open communication and values diverse perspectives. By promoting teamwork and collaboration, leaders can leverage the collective intelligence and creativity of their teams, leading to innovative solutions and successful strategy implementation. Implementing organizational strategies is a complex process that requires careful planning, effective communication, and perseverance. By understanding the common hurdles faced during strategy implementation and employing the strategies outlined in this article, organizations can overcome these hurdles and achieve strategic success. Through clear communication, effective change management, and resource allocation, organizations can navigate the path towards successful strategy implementation, ultimately driving sustainable growth and competitive advantage. Unravel strategic success by overcoming common hurdles in implementing organizational strategies with Wrike. Start your free trial now and set your organization on the path to success. Note: This article was created with the assistance of an AI engine. It has been reviewed and revised by our team of experts to ensure accuracy and quality.

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Corporate Development Vs. Corporate Strategy

by Agile Blogger | Apr 17, 2023 | Agile Coaching

Employing corporate development strategies alongside corporate strategy is essential for the successful operation of a business. Still, each profession comes with its unique set of challenges. As Business Leaders and decision-makers, it’s essential to understand how corporate development and strategy work together to ensure that your business reaches its optimal performance level as cost-effectively and efficiently as possible. In this blog post, we’ll explore the nuances between these two functions, provide an overview of their respective roles in your organization, discuss why they need to work in concert with one another, and share tips on how you can maximize the impact of both by leveraging them strategically.

Corporate development performs initiatives like new product development, business model innovation, and strategic partnerships to gain a competitive advantage and achieve business growth. It helps businesses increase the value they can provide to the target audience.

On the other hand, the corporate strategy function advises senior leadership on various strategic initiatives and things like financial modeling, resource allocation, and competitive positioning. Like an internal consulting group, it adds value by identifying barriers and developing an approach that allows you to achieve desired objectives.

Corporate development and corporate strategy serve different purposes. But in essence, they are complementary concepts that work together to help companies achieve their long-term goals and create value for their stakeholders. So, here is an article highlighting their core differences and how they can work together for maximum success.

What is corporate development?

Corporate development is a field within the giant umbrella of corporate strategy. It is concerned with the financial modeling of a company and the creation of synergies between different departments within an organization. Capital markets are also a key focus as corporate developers strive to gain a competitive advantage for their firms.

Typically, corporate development guides a company’s overall direction and business decisions through specific initiatives like mergers & acquisitions, divestitures, and investments.

It involves internal restructuring and leveraging external opportunities.

An example of internal restructuring could be combining two departments that can work together into one. Through this corporate restructuring , organizations foster a harmonious environment in the corporate entity, leading to more efficient use of resources and ultimately boosting revenues or lowering long-term costs.

An example of leveraging external opportunity could be an investment banking organization acquiring a smaller corporate finance organization or a start-up company.

Thus, corporate development is the how of a company’s business decisions. Corporate developers focus not only on the operational details of achieving the company goals but also on the sales aspect and ROI.>

What is a corporate strategy?

A corporate strategy is a long-term plan for the growth and development of a company. It sets out the company’s overall objectives and how they will be achieved. Corporate strategy has an internal strategy team that encompasses the company’s organizational structure, financial policy, and approach to risk management. The team is concerned with how individual business units thrive in delivering value to their customers in product/service/market segments.

The corporate strategy looks at the big picture and defines where the company wants to be. It should include short-term and long-term initiatives, each supporting the other. An excellent corporate strategist creates strategic plans, helps organizations achieve their business goals and targets, and improves financial viability.

“Corporate strategy portrays a general strategy in a company and focuses on its business portfolio to add more value. Its planning involves focusing on the organization’s structure and identifying the problems in different business areas. The responsibility for appropriate strategy formulation lies with the top-level managers of the company. They discuss, analyze and finalize strategies to move forward in the market.”

– Source – https://www.wallstreetmojo.com/corporate-strategy/#h-corporate-strategy-explained .

Most large companies have a vice president of corporate strategy, who is responsible for developing and overseeing the execution of the company’s strategy. Part of the corporate strategy process is due diligence when a company researches another company before acquiring or investing. Growth strategies are also crucial in corporate strategy, as companies must determine how to grow their business to remain competitive.

What does corporate development do?

Corporate development is the group within a company responsible for strategic decisions and executing transactions through sourcing, including mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, financings, and partnerships. The corporate development team works closely with the CEO and other members of the executive team to identify and explore new markets and pursue opportunities to create shareholder value.

Corporate development is focused on executing transactions that will improve the company’s competitive position and create shareholder value. That means identifying potential acquisition targets, negotiating deals, and managing post-acquisition integration. It also includes raising capital to finance these transactions and maintaining relationships with key stakeholders such as shareholders, lenders, and partners.

Excellent communication skills in corp dev are essential as you will interact with individuals across varied functions, all experts in their domain. The skill to effectively receive and interpret information or data will help you as a business strategist. You will work with different business units as a corp dev team. 

In short, corporate development is responsible for making deals to help a company achieve its strategic objectives.

Difference between corporate development and corporate strategy

Corporate development and strategy are two terms often used interchangeably, but there is a big difference between the two. Corporate strategy is the overall game plan for the company, including the goals and objectives that guide decision-making. On the other hand, corporate development is responsible for executing that strategy through mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, and partnerships.

While corporate strategy provides the overall direction for the company, corporate development ensures that this direction is translated into tangible actions that create shareholder value. One significant difference between the two functions is thus valuation: corporate strategy determines which businesses or products are worth pursuing. In contrast, corporate development uses valuation techniques to execute transactions at optimal prices.

One of the most important considerations for corporate strategists is understanding the business model and how it creates value. This means they need to have a strong understanding of the competitive landscape and what drives customer behavior. They also need to be able to identify new growth opportunities and develop a plan to seize them. Skills set for corporate strategists typically include financial analysis, forecasting, and market research.

In other words, corporate strategy is about setting the direction for the company, while corporate development is about achieving that vision through specific actions. 

The relationship between corporate strategy and development can be summarized like this: corporate strategy defines where the company wants to go, and corporate development figures out how to get it there.

While both roles are essential for driving growth within a company, they require different skill sets and focus on various aspects of the business. Corporate strategists need to be able to see the big picture and identify growth opportunities. In contrast, corporate developers must be experts in valuation and negotiation to get the best deals for their companies.

How do corporate development and corporate strategy work together?

Corporate development and strategy functions work together to ensure a company can achieve its long-term goals. The corporate strategy sets the direction for the company. It outlines the overall plan for how the company will achieve its goals. Corporate development then works to implement the system, ensuring that the company has the resources and capabilities to execute the plan.

The two functions are closely linked, as the high-level decision made by the corporate strategy team is usually a relatively seamless handoff to corporate development. For example, suppose a company decides to enter a new market. In that case, it will be up to the corporate development team to find an acquisition target or joint venture partner. Similarly, suppose a company decides to divest itself of a business unit. In that case, it will be up to corporate development to find a buyer and negotiate the sale.

For both functions to be successful, there must be alignment between them. This means that the management team needs to have a shared understanding of the company’s overall strategy and how each function contributes to it. Additionally, metrics need to be in place so that progress toward strategic objectives can be tracked and monitored. By working together, corporate strategy and development can create shareholder value and help take the company forward.

The corporate strategy function is often housed within the larger company’s investment banking or private equity group. This is because these groups often have expertise in deal structuring and execution and access to capital. The corporate strategy team works with the management team to identify attractive opportunities and then with the investment bankers or private equity investors to execute those opportunities.

The two teams need to be closely aligned to ensure that the company is moving in the right direction and progressing toward its goals. Corporate strategy should be regularly revisited and updated to keep corporate development on track. Suppose there are changes in the market or within the company. In that case, the corporate strategy may need to be adjusted for corporate development to continue working towards achieving the company’s goals.

Corporate development and corporate strategy are two distinct but related management areas. Corporate development is focused on the activities that create value for the company over time, while corporate strategy outlines how to achieve those goals. Understanding their differences will enable you to manage your organization’s resources best, develop efficient processes and practices, and ensure long-term success.

With a deep understanding of both areas, businesses can reap the most benefit from each activity and create an environment where employees work together towards a common goal.

This article is a great resource for anyone looking to understand the nuances between corporate development and corporate strategy. With the help of Leadership Tribe’s agile training services, businesses can ensure their teams are well-equipped to maximize the impact of both roles and create an environment where employees work together towards a common goal. Leadership Tribe’s agile transformation provides interactive, hands-on workshops that equip teams with the skills and techniques needed to stay ahead of the competition.

If you’re interested in learning more about how Leadership Tribe’s agile training services can help your business thrive, please visit our contact us page to get in touch with our team. We look forward to hearing from you!

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Management Trainee Programme - Strategic Planning and Corporate Development - Hang Seng Bank (HK)

Offers “hsbc”.

• Hong Kong ( Central And Western District )
• Bachelor's Degree

Job description

Make that Change See a new Path at Hang Seng Bank Career opportunitites in Strategic Planning and Corporate Development Strategic Planning and Corporate Development Department functions as the central planning and strategy development group of the Bank and addresses topics at the top of senior management agendas. Our professional Business Strategists are dedicated to formulating Hang Seng Bank's strategies and development plan, and providing recommendations to senior management and support on strategic business opportunities including acquisition and disposals or other corporate development projects. We seek high-calibre individuals who are eager to join us in expanding our business in a dynamic market through strategy development, strategic analyses and corporate development. Join a winning team and contribute to Hang Seng Bank's continued success while furthering your career. Your PATH to Success - Hang Seng Bank Management Trainee Programme If you are looking for a high-flying career in the banking industry that will provide the opportunity to work on different initiatives across all Businesses and Functions, our Management Trainee Programme is an excellent place to begin your journey. Offered in Strategic Planning and Corporate Development Department, this fast-track three-year programme is intense and challenging. It provides comprehensive classroom training, exposure to China and overseas business, job attachments, support in attaining professional qualifications and senior management mentorship across disciplines. Most importantly, the programme gives you exposure to the best global banking practices and the opportunity to develop your career in a financial institution that was ranked as the ‘World's Strongest Bank'* and the ‘Best Domestic Bank in Hong Kong' for the 18 th consecutive year*. * The Asset Magazine (2018)

Desired profile

Qualifications : We are looking for driven individuals who can make that CHANGE in taking the Bank to the next level to join as 2018 MT intakes: ·  Bachelor's degree or above in Accounting, Finance, Economics, Business Administration or a related discipline from an accredited university ·  Less than three years' working experience ·  Professional qualifications or in the process of obtaining qualifications such as CPA, CB, CFA, CIIA and PMI an asset ·  Strong business acumen, analytical ability and problem-solving skills ·  Committed, self-motivated and action-oriented personality with ownership to drive business performance and the success of strategy development and implementation ·  Potentials to build a trusted-advisor relationship with working partners and senior executives ·  Excellent written communication, presentation and interpersonal skills ·  Well-versed in MS Office including Excel and PowerPoint ·  Proficiency in both written and spoken English, Cantonese and Mandarin ·  Capable of serving as a role model for displaying openness, teamwork and integrity

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Development co-operation

The OECD designs international standards and guidelines for development co-operation, based on best practices, and monitors their implementation by its members. It works closely with member and partner countries, and other stakeholders (such as the United Nations and other multilateral entities) to help them implement their development commitments. It also invites developing country governments to take an active part in policy dialogue.

• Development Co-operation Report
• Official development assistance (ODA)

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Key messages, charting development co-operation trends and challenges.

The OECD keeps track of key trends and challenges for development co-operation providers and offers practical guidance. It draws from the knowledge and experience of Development Assistance Committee (DAC) members and partners, as well as from independent expertise, with the ultimate goal of advancing reforms in the sector, and achieving impact. Using data, evidence, and peer learning, this work is captured in publications and online tools that are made publicly available.

Making development co-operation more effective and impactful

The OECD works with governments, civil society organisations, multilateral organisations, and others to improve the quality of development co-operation. Through peer reviews and evaluations, it periodically assesses aid programmes and co-operation policies, and offers recommendations to improve their efficiency. The OECD also brings together multiple stakeholders to share good and innovative practices and discuss progress.

Strengthening development co-operation evaluation practices and systems

The OECD helps development co-operation providers evaluate their actions both to better learn from experience and to improve transparency and accountability. Innovative approaches, such as using smart and big data, digital technology and remote sensing, help gather evidence and inform policy decisions. With in-depth analysis and guidance, the Organisation helps providers manage for results by building multi-stakeholder partnerships and adapting to changing contexts and crisis situations. 

Civil society engagement in development co-operation

National and international civil society organisations (CSOs) are key partners in monitoring development co-operation policies and programmes. Development co-operation can also be channelled to or through CSOs: 

Aid is characterized as going to CSOs when it is in the form of core contributions and contributions to programmes, with the funds programmed by the CSOs. 

Aid is characterized as going through CSOs when funds are channeled through these organisations to implement donor-initiated projects. This is also known as earmarked funding.

Development co-operation TIPs - Tools, Insights, Practices

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Director Development Unit Management

About the role.

The Director Development Unit Operations will work with Head Portfolio Strategy & Operations (HPSO) to drive Development Unit (DU) portfolio strategy and operations and helps to oversee program execution by actively partnering with Global Program Heads (GPHs), Global Program Management, Biomedical Research (BR), Development Line Functions, Strategy & Growth, and Commercial to maximize the portfolio value and deliver as per plan. 

You will drive reporting on portfolio and pipeline progress to internal and external stakeholders (in close collaboration with Investor Relations). Help driving key strategic initiatives within the DU and beyond. Supports creation of strategic and competitive insights in close collaboration with Global Program Teams (GPTs) and key strategic functions across the enterprise as relevant for the DU.

Your responsibilities will include;

• Contributes to DU portfolio & strategy related activities and requests regarding DU pipeline progress with internal focus (e.g., IMB prioritization, early portfolio progress, executive reporting, tollgates) as well as external focus (e.g. MNM, R&D Day and Investor Relations etc.), and partnering closely with HPSO, GPHs, Global Program Teams (GPTs), BR, Medical Affairs, Commercial, Communication, Investor Relations.
• Leads operations of Development Leadership Team (DULT) incl. meeting agenda, logistics, minutes to facilitate portfolio related decision making; provides meeting preparation guidance for GPTs.
• Provides guidance to GPTs regarding project governance processes.
• Designs, implements and maintains business processes to enable product portfolio prioritization, resource allocation and portfolio risk management.
• Tracks Development Leadership Team and DULT objectives jointly with GPTs and flags risks to DULT
• Reviews portfolio risks for transparency, consistency and flag any gaps, imbalances/overdue risks
• Leads process of transfer of mature assets to In-Market Brands/Global Health Development Units.
• Fosters DU identity and sense of community and collaboration along the RDC continuum by contributing to strategic communication plan creation and execution, e.g. co-organizing Townhall meetings, contributions to newsletters, and proposes / drives / supports other initiatives to foster exchange in the DU and with BR and Commercial partners.
• Ensures exchange with Operations teams of other DUs on best practices, processes and standards
• Leads or contributes to ad-hoc initiatives aiming at improving Development processes and operational performance.
• Deputizes for HPSO as applicable.

Minimum requirements

• Master’s degree or Doctorate in life sciences (or MBA with bachelor’s degree, or equivalent experience in life science)
• 7+ years pharma industry experience in a multi-disciplinary environment or in a drug development Line Function
• 5+ years people and matrix management is desirable.
• Previous track record of success in working with international large scale and complex multi-/ cross-functional drug development teams.
• Advanced knowledge in drug development (including early and late-stage development across the development spectrum)
• Advanced project management skills with demonstrated success in planning and executing cross-functional projects
• Advanced knowledge of international business practices
• Strength demonstrated in scenario evaluation and contingency planning
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills and strong relationship builder and communicator with experience leading diverse work teams, driving program excellence, engaging functional partners, and partnering with senior leaders e.g., GPHs
• Strong written & verbal communication skills
• Strong problem-solving, negotiation and conflict resolutions skills

Why Novartis: Helping people with disease and their families takes more than innovative science. It takes a community of smart, passionate people like you. Collaborating, supporting and inspiring each other. Combining to achieve breakthroughs that change patients’ lives. Ready to create a brighter future together? https://www.novartis.com/about/strategy/people-and-culture

Join our Novartis Network: Not the right Novartis role for you? Sign up to our talent community to stay connected and learn about suitable career opportunities as soon as they come up: https://talentnetwork.novartis.com/network

Business Journal Daily | The Youngstown Publishing Company

JobsOhio Releases 2023 Annual Report and 2024 Strategic Plan

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The state is being propelled toward “a future of sustained growth and prosperity,” according to JobsOhio’s 2023 Annual Report and 2024 Strategic Plan .

The state secured $14.4 billion in capital expenditure commitments last year and ranked No. 3 in both announced deals and capital investment and No. 7 in new jobs, according to the report. Ohio is the only state to rank in the top five for both total projects and per capita projects since 2019.

In 2023, the state secured 327 project wins, 16,457 jobs created and $1.1 billion in new payroll, while retaining 27,836 jobs and $1.78 billion in payroll.

Here are some other highlights from 2023:

• Ohio earned “AAA/Aaa” ratings from all three rating agencies, the first time in history.
• Ohio’s venture capital investment total, $1.33 billion, is higher than the year-end totals for 2006-2019, returning to pre-pandemic trends.
• Ohio had a strong year in foreign direct investment, ranking No. 9 in the U.S. in FDI CapEx ($4.2 billion), No. 9 in projects (59) and No. 14 in jobs created (4,050).
• Ohio ranked No. 9 in the U.S. for industrial diversity with a value of 0.86 (U.S. = 1).

“Due to high tax rates, expensive real estate prices, and more stringent regulations, a significant amount of businesses are seeking to move their operations away from coastal states and into other regions such as the Midwest,” the report states. “With advantageous financial conditions, like a diverse economic environment, a highly productive workforce, and a central location, many business owners are looking at Ohio as a serious contender to house their operations and foster their future prospects.”

The full report is available HERE .

Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.

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40 Facts About Elektrostal

Written by Lanette Mayes

Modified & Updated: 01 Jun 2024

Reviewed by Jessica Corbett

Elektrostal is a vibrant city located in the Moscow Oblast region of Russia. With a rich history, stunning architecture, and a thriving community, Elektrostal is a city that has much to offer. Whether you are a history buff, nature enthusiast, or simply curious about different cultures, Elektrostal is sure to captivate you.

This article will provide you with 40 fascinating facts about Elektrostal, giving you a better understanding of why this city is worth exploring. From its origins as an industrial hub to its modern-day charm, we will delve into the various aspects that make Elektrostal a unique and must-visit destination.

So, join us as we uncover the hidden treasures of Elektrostal and discover what makes this city a true gem in the heart of Russia.

Key Takeaways:

• Elektrostal, known as the “Motor City of Russia,” is a vibrant and growing city with a rich industrial history, offering diverse cultural experiences and a strong commitment to environmental sustainability.
• With its convenient location near Moscow, Elektrostal provides a picturesque landscape, vibrant nightlife, and a range of recreational activities, making it an ideal destination for residents and visitors alike.

Known as the “Motor City of Russia.”

Elektrostal, a city located in the Moscow Oblast region of Russia, earned the nickname “Motor City” due to its significant involvement in the automotive industry.

Home to the Elektrostal Metallurgical Plant.

Elektrostal is renowned for its metallurgical plant, which has been producing high-quality steel and alloys since its establishment in 1916.

Boasts a rich industrial heritage.

Elektrostal has a long history of industrial development, contributing to the growth and progress of the region.

Founded in 1916.

The city of Elektrostal was founded in 1916 as a result of the construction of the Elektrostal Metallurgical Plant.

Located approximately 50 kilometers east of Moscow.

Elektrostal is situated in close proximity to the Russian capital, making it easily accessible for both residents and visitors.

Known for its vibrant cultural scene.

Elektrostal is home to several cultural institutions, including museums, theaters, and art galleries that showcase the city’s rich artistic heritage.

A popular destination for nature lovers.

Surrounded by picturesque landscapes and forests, Elektrostal offers ample opportunities for outdoor activities such as hiking, camping, and birdwatching.

Hosts the annual Elektrostal City Day celebrations.

Every year, Elektrostal organizes festive events and activities to celebrate its founding, bringing together residents and visitors in a spirit of unity and joy.

Has a population of approximately 160,000 people.

Elektrostal is home to a diverse and vibrant community of around 160,000 residents, contributing to its dynamic atmosphere.

Boasts excellent education facilities.

The city is known for its well-established educational institutions, providing quality education to students of all ages.

A center for scientific research and innovation.

Elektrostal serves as an important hub for scientific research, particularly in the fields of metallurgy , materials science, and engineering.

Surrounded by picturesque lakes.

The city is blessed with numerous beautiful lakes , offering scenic views and recreational opportunities for locals and visitors alike.

Well-connected transportation system.

Elektrostal benefits from an efficient transportation network, including highways, railways, and public transportation options, ensuring convenient travel within and beyond the city.

Famous for its traditional Russian cuisine.

Food enthusiasts can indulge in authentic Russian dishes at numerous restaurants and cafes scattered throughout Elektrostal.

Home to notable architectural landmarks.

Elektrostal boasts impressive architecture, including the Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord and the Elektrostal Palace of Culture.

Offers a wide range of recreational facilities.

Residents and visitors can enjoy various recreational activities, such as sports complexes, swimming pools, and fitness centers, enhancing the overall quality of life.

Provides a high standard of healthcare.

Elektrostal is equipped with modern medical facilities, ensuring residents have access to quality healthcare services.

Home to the Elektrostal History Museum.

The Elektrostal History Museum showcases the city’s fascinating past through exhibitions and displays.

A hub for sports enthusiasts.

Elektrostal is passionate about sports, with numerous stadiums, arenas, and sports clubs offering opportunities for athletes and spectators.

Celebrates diverse cultural festivals.

Throughout the year, Elektrostal hosts a variety of cultural festivals, celebrating different ethnicities, traditions, and art forms.

Electric power played a significant role in its early development.

Elektrostal owes its name and initial growth to the establishment of electric power stations and the utilization of electricity in the industrial sector.

Boasts a thriving economy.

The city’s strong industrial base, coupled with its strategic location near Moscow, has contributed to Elektrostal’s prosperous economic status.

Houses the Elektrostal Drama Theater.

The Elektrostal Drama Theater is a cultural centerpiece, attracting theater enthusiasts from far and wide.

Popular destination for winter sports.

Elektrostal’s proximity to ski resorts and winter sport facilities makes it a favorite destination for skiing, snowboarding, and other winter activities.

Promotes environmental sustainability.

Elektrostal prioritizes environmental protection and sustainability, implementing initiatives to reduce pollution and preserve natural resources.

Home to renowned educational institutions.

Elektrostal is known for its prestigious schools and universities, offering a wide range of academic programs to students.

Committed to cultural preservation.

The city values its cultural heritage and takes active steps to preserve and promote traditional customs, crafts, and arts.

Hosts an annual International Film Festival.

The Elektrostal International Film Festival attracts filmmakers and cinema enthusiasts from around the world, showcasing a diverse range of films.

Encourages entrepreneurship and innovation.

Elektrostal supports aspiring entrepreneurs and fosters a culture of innovation, providing opportunities for startups and business development .

Offers a range of housing options.

Elektrostal provides diverse housing options, including apartments, houses, and residential complexes, catering to different lifestyles and budgets.

Home to notable sports teams.

Elektrostal is proud of its sports legacy , with several successful sports teams competing at regional and national levels.

Boasts a vibrant nightlife scene.

Residents and visitors can enjoy a lively nightlife in Elektrostal, with numerous bars, clubs, and entertainment venues.

Promotes cultural exchange and international relations.

Elektrostal actively engages in international partnerships, cultural exchanges, and diplomatic collaborations to foster global connections.

Surrounded by beautiful nature reserves.

Nearby nature reserves, such as the Barybino Forest and Luchinskoye Lake, offer opportunities for nature enthusiasts to explore and appreciate the region’s biodiversity.

Commemorates historical events.

The city pays tribute to significant historical events through memorials, monuments, and exhibitions, ensuring the preservation of collective memory.

Promotes sports and youth development.

Elektrostal invests in sports infrastructure and programs to encourage youth participation, health, and physical fitness.

Hosts annual cultural and artistic festivals.

Throughout the year, Elektrostal celebrates its cultural diversity through festivals dedicated to music, dance, art, and theater.

Provides a picturesque landscape for photography enthusiasts.

The city’s scenic beauty, architectural landmarks, and natural surroundings make it a paradise for photographers.

Connects to Moscow via a direct train line.

The convenient train connection between Elektrostal and Moscow makes commuting between the two cities effortless.

A city with a bright future.

Elektrostal continues to grow and develop, aiming to become a model city in terms of infrastructure, sustainability, and quality of life for its residents.

In conclusion, Elektrostal is a fascinating city with a rich history and a vibrant present. From its origins as a center of steel production to its modern-day status as a hub for education and industry, Elektrostal has plenty to offer both residents and visitors. With its beautiful parks, cultural attractions, and proximity to Moscow, there is no shortage of things to see and do in this dynamic city. Whether you’re interested in exploring its historical landmarks, enjoying outdoor activities, or immersing yourself in the local culture, Elektrostal has something for everyone. So, next time you find yourself in the Moscow region, don’t miss the opportunity to discover the hidden gems of Elektrostal.

Q: What is the population of Elektrostal?

A: As of the latest data, the population of Elektrostal is approximately XXXX.

Q: How far is Elektrostal from Moscow?

A: Elektrostal is located approximately XX kilometers away from Moscow.

Q: Are there any famous landmarks in Elektrostal?

A: Yes, Elektrostal is home to several notable landmarks, including XXXX and XXXX.

Q: What industries are prominent in Elektrostal?

A: Elektrostal is known for its steel production industry and is also a center for engineering and manufacturing.

Q: Are there any universities or educational institutions in Elektrostal?

A: Yes, Elektrostal is home to XXXX University and several other educational institutions.

Q: What are some popular outdoor activities in Elektrostal?

A: Elektrostal offers several outdoor activities, such as hiking, cycling, and picnicking in its beautiful parks.

Q: Is Elektrostal well-connected in terms of transportation?

A: Yes, Elektrostal has good transportation links, including trains and buses, making it easily accessible from nearby cities.

Q: Are there any annual events or festivals in Elektrostal?

A: Yes, Elektrostal hosts various events and festivals throughout the year, including XXXX and XXXX.

Elektrostal's fascinating history, vibrant culture, and promising future make it a city worth exploring. For more captivating facts about cities around the world, discover the unique characteristics that define each city . Uncover the hidden gems of Moscow Oblast through our in-depth look at Kolomna. Lastly, dive into the rich industrial heritage of Teesside, a thriving industrial center with its own story to tell.

The European Green Deal

• Find out what progress the von der Leyen Commission has made so far with the European Green Deal towards becoming climate-neutral by 2050.

Striving to be the first climate-neutral continent

Climate change and environmental degradation are an existential threat to Europe and the world. To overcome these challenges, the European Green Deal will transform the EU into a modern, resource-efficient and competitive economy, ensuring:

• no net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050
• economic growth decoupled from resource use
• no person and no place left behind

The European Green Deal is also our lifeline out of the COVID-19 pandemic. One third of the €1.8 trillion  investments from the NextGenerationEU Recovery Plan, and the EU’s seven-year budget will finance the European Green Deal.

The European Commission has adopted a set of proposals to make the EU's climate, energy, transport and taxation  policies fit for reducing net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030 , compared to 1990 levels. More information on  Delivering the European Green Deal .

Discover the European Green Deal visual story

12 March 2024 - The Commission has published a Communication on managing climate risks in Europe that sets out how the EU and its countries can implement policies that save lives, cut costs, and protect prosperity. It comes as a direct response to the first-ever European Climate Risk Assessment by the European Environment Agency. It also addresses the concerns that many Europeans have following last’s year record temperatures and extreme weather events. The Commission is calling for action from all levels of government, the private sector and civil society to improve governance and tools for climate risk owners, manage risks across sectors and set the right preconditions to finance climate resilience.

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Reintroduction of planning permission appeals may reduce legal challenges to large developments

Report by department of public expenditure says under strategic housing development initiative judicial review process may have been acting as ‘pseudo-appeals mechanism’.

The reintroduction of a mechanism to appeal planning permission granted for large-scale residential developments may reduce legal challenges and obstacles to such schemes, a new paper released by the Department of Public Expenditure has suggested

The reintroduction of a mechanism to appeal planning permission granted for large-scale residential developments may reduce legal challenges and obstacles to such schemes, a new paper released by the Department of Public Expenditure has suggested.

The report maintains that under the previous strategic housing development initiative – where developers brought their plans directly to An Bord Pleanála – judicial reviews could have been “acting as a pseudo-appeals mechanism”.

The report, drawn up by staff of the Irish Government Economic Evaluation Service (IGEES), says that the strategic housing development aimed at providing a fast-track planning process to incentivise large-scale projects.

The scheme was not extended by the Government beyond February 2022.

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The paper concludes that the strategic housing development process was “significantly faster compared to the processing time for large-scale developments before 2017 in cases where judicial reviews were not sought by those challenging the granting of planning permission.

“Where judicial reviews have occurred, the strategic housing development process has still been on average 10- 19 weeks faster than the traditional two-tiered local authority process for large scale developments.”

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“However, the high prevalence of judicial reviews among strategic housing development applications presents a risk to the achievement of shorter planning time frames. The average time between planning decision and judicial review outcome was here found to be 38.3 weeks with significant variation around this average ranging from a minimum of 11 weeks to a maximum of 104 weeks.”

It says that given the large number of judicial reviews that have yet to conclude, “it is difficult to definitively access whether the strategic housing development process was successful in achieving reduced planning time frames”.

The report says under the rules of the strategic housing development scheme, decisions on planning permission were ultimately at the discretion of An Bord Pleanála. It said the lack of an appeals mechanism left judicial review as the only means by which interested parties could potentially halt a development.

It says that 23.4 per cent of strategic housing developments had been subject to judicial review.

“The vast majority (95 per cent) of judicial reviews occurred following the granting of a strategic housing development planning permission, with the analysis finding a positive relationship between the number of observations submitted regarding a strategic housing development application and the occurrence of judicial review.”

“This suggests that applications that received more public attention in the form of observations were more likely to be subject to judicial review, indicating that the judicial review process could have been acting in part as a pseudo-appeal mechanism.”

“In this sense, re- introducing the appeals mechanisms for large scale residential development planning applications following the expiration of the strategic housing development process can be considered a positive development which may reduce the prevalence of judicial reviews into the future, alongside the new Planning and Development Bill published in December 2023.”

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Martin Wall

Martin Wall is the former Washington Correspondent of The Irish Times. He was previously industry correspondent

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State Housing Inspectorate of the Moscow Region

Phone 8 (496) 575-02-20 8 (496) 575-02-20

Phone 8 (496) 511-20-80 8 (496) 511-20-80

Public administration near State Housing Inspectorate of the Moscow Region

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Geographic coordinates of Elektrostal, Moscow Oblast, Russia

Coordinates of elektrostal in decimal degrees, coordinates of elektrostal in degrees and decimal minutes, utm coordinates of elektrostal, geographic coordinate systems.

WGS 84 coordinate reference system is the latest revision of the World Geodetic System, which is used in mapping and navigation, including GPS satellite navigation system (the Global Positioning System).

Geographic coordinates (latitude and longitude) define a position on the Earth’s surface. Coordinates are angular units. The canonical form of latitude and longitude representation uses degrees (°), minutes (′), and seconds (″). GPS systems widely use coordinates in degrees and decimal minutes, or in decimal degrees.

Latitude varies from −90° to 90°. The latitude of the Equator is 0°; the latitude of the South Pole is −90°; the latitude of the North Pole is 90°. Positive latitude values correspond to the geographic locations north of the Equator (abbrev. N). Negative latitude values correspond to the geographic locations south of the Equator (abbrev. S).

Longitude is counted from the prime meridian ( IERS Reference Meridian for WGS 84) and varies from −180° to 180°. Positive longitude values correspond to the geographic locations east of the prime meridian (abbrev. E). Negative longitude values correspond to the geographic locations west of the prime meridian (abbrev. W).

UTM or Universal Transverse Mercator coordinate system divides the Earth’s surface into 60 longitudinal zones. The coordinates of a location within each zone are defined as a planar coordinate pair related to the intersection of the equator and the zone’s central meridian, and measured in meters.

Elevation above sea level is a measure of a geographic location’s height. We are using the global digital elevation model GTOPO30 .

Elektrostal , Moscow Oblast, Russia