In a world where every action has consequences and every decision is fraught with fears, it’s easy to get caught up in anxieties.
The purpose of strategic planning is to help you avoid those anxieties by outlining clear steps to take towards your goals without worry or regret. Let’s learn what the value of this approach might be for you.
Strategic planning is a process of developing and implementing plans for an organization. It includes identifying the goals, objectives, and strategies to achieve those goals. The “what is strategic planning” will help you understand what strategic planning is.
We’ve previously discussed a consulting mentor of ours who used to claim that strategic planning was the most critical work a company leader could perform while simultaneously being “a waste of time.” Of course, what he meant was that, like New Year’s resolutions, it’s not the making of the resolutions that counts, but whether or not you keep them.
Strategic planning may be nothing more than an intellectual exercise for corporate executives and planners who merely go through the motions.
However, for executives who approach strategic planning with genuine purpose and, more crucially, execute as a consequence, strategic planning may be the difference between realizing your company goal and meandering aimlessly – or worse, failing utterly.
The SONY Corporation, which defined the ambition “to become the firm best renowned for transforming the international image of Japanese goods as being of bad quality” among the ashes of post-WWII Japan, is perhaps the most remarkable example we know of.
That’s something to think about if you want to have eyesight and stamina.
Creating the Future You Want
Even less spectacularly, we’ve seen many instances where developing an integrated set of ideas and initiatives focused on a paramount, enterprise goal has made a significant difference in business performance and achievement over the course of more than two decades of strategic planning work with our own clients.
Although the principle is simple, it is also effective: On one side, there’s the ancient adage that “if you constantly do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.” On the other hand, if you take the time to think about the future and make strategic choices about the kind of future you want, you’ll have a far better chance of creating it rather than being molded by it.
Focus on the Big Picture
A well-thought-out strategic plan provides you with that all-important “guiding light.” You can now tell the difference between what is important to obtaining your ideal future state and what isn’t. This helps you to focus and optimize your resources by concentrating just on the strategic items you’ve selected. It’s a simple truth that knowing “what you want to be when you grow up” boosts your chances of getting there in business and in life.
Here are a few real-life samples from our customer files to demonstrate what we’re talking about:
- Rodale took on the task of becoming one of Fortune Magazine’s “100 finest places to work in America” after doing a thorough and objective examination of themselves – and accomplished it in less than two years!
- Recognizing that achieving their objectives would necessitate a much more scientific approach to implementation and measurement, Trout Unlimited established a national conservation measurement system and hired qualified scientists to implement it, steps that would not have been taken if their planning hadn’t crystallized the need.
- The Orvis Company, fueled by a clearer vision for the future and a clear path to get there, completed their first five-year plan in three years, dramatically speeding their development and successes well beyond what they would have been without such a motivating and catalytic strategy.
- Finally, as part of their strategy plan, Leominster Credit Union decided to analyze and enhance its critical business procedures. They did so, achieving substantial, demonstrable efficiency gains in several back-office and client-facing processes over the course of more than two years, freeing up important time to dedicate to more attentive customer support.
But, once again, and we cannot emphasize this enough, these companies were serious about their strategic planning. They meant what they stated, and they regularly and over a long period of time “walked the walk.”
You and your firm may clearly continue to play defense and respond to events as they occur. You may also set out to orchestrate a successful future for your company and organization by being crystal clear about your goals and taking continuous and relentless measures to achieve them. It’s up to you to make the strategic decision!
Watch This Video-
“strategic planning is done by” will be the title of this blog. It is about how strategic planning can benefit a company.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What are the 5 essential components of strategic planning?
A: The 5 essential components of strategic planning are resources, goals, objectives, constraints and options.
What to include in a strategic plan?
A: A strategic plan is a document that details how you will achieve your goals. It should include what the overall goal of the company or institution is, who else in charge of this and how it will be reached (strategic initiatives), specific measurable objectives for various departments/units within an organization, resources needed to reach those objectives and detailed timeframes for each step on achieving these steps
What is your idea of strategic planning?
A: My idea of strategic planning is to create a plan for the future that takes into account all possible outcomes and their consequences.
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