subject: Components of strategic planning [print this page] There are several different frameworks to think about and use while you're developing your strategic plan. Think of the frameworks as different lenses through which to view the strategic planning process. You don't always look through two or three lenses at once. Normally you use one at a time, and often you may not know that you're using certain frameworks that are embedded in your process. If you're trying to explain to your planning team how pieces of the puzzle fit together, first you must understand the following components of the strategic plan:
Strategy and culture: Your organization's culture is made up of people, processes, experiences, ideas, and attitudes. Your strategy is where your organization is headed, what path it takes, and how it gets there. You can't have strategy without culture or vice versa. Your culture is like your house, and if it's not in order, the best strategy in the world can't take your company anywhere.
Internal and external: Similar to the strategy and culture framework, you have an internal and external framework. The strategy is external. You gather information from your customers, competitors, industry, and environment to identify your opportunities and threats. Through employee surveys, board assessments, and financial statements, you identify your company's strengths and weaknesses, which are internal.
The Balanced Scorecard perspectives: The Balanced Scorecard is a framework used to develop goals and objectives in four areas (instead of departments): financial, customers, internal business processes, and people. The financial, internal business processes, and people areas are internal. The customer area is external.
Market focus: Growth comes from focusing on your customers and delivering superior value to them consistently year after year. Built into your strategic plan is a market-focus framework because of how critical this is to your organizational growth.
Where are we now? Where are we going? How will we get there?: Because it's easy to confuse how all the elements of a plan come together and where they go, this framework is a simple, yet clear way of looking at the whole plan. What are the most frequently asked strategic planning questions? Strategic planning can create a ton of questions. You're not alone if you have a long list. The following sections cover the answers to the most commonly asked questions.
Who usesstrategy plans?
Everyone - or at least every company and organization that wants to be successful. Companies in every industry, in every part of the country, and in most of the Fortune 500 use strategic plans. Organizations within the nonprofit, government, and small to big business sectors also have strategic plans. Does every strategic plan include the same elements? A strategic plan should include many elements:
A mission statement and vision statement
A description of the company's long-term goals and objectives
Strategies the company plans to use to achieve general goals and objectives
Action plans to implement the goals and objectives
Theplan may also identify external factors that can affect achievement of long-term goals. Plans may vary in detail and scope (depending on how big the organization is), but for the most part, a strategic plan includes the basic elements listed above.
Just exactly what is planning?
The term strategic planning refers to a coordinated and systematic process for developing a plan for the overall direction of your endeavor for the purpose of optimizing future potential. For a profit-making business, this process involves many questions:
What Is Planning Anyhow?
What is the mission and purpose of the business?
Where do we want to take the business?
What do we sell currently? What could we sell in the future?
To whom shall we sell it?
What do we do that is unique?
How shall we beat or avoid competition?
The central purpose of this process is to ensure that the course and direction is well thought out, sound, and appropriate. In addition, the process provides reassurance that the limited resources of the enterprise (time and capital) are sharply focused in support of that course and direction. The process encompasses both strategy formulation and implementation.
