Essential Guide to the Strategic Planning Process

By Joe Weller | April 3, 2019 (updated November 13, 2023)

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In this article, you’ll learn the basics of the strategic planning process and how a strategic plan guides you to achieving your organizational goals. Plus, find expert insight on getting the most out of your strategic planning.

Included on this page, you'll discover the importance of strategic planning , the steps of the strategic planning process , and the basic sections to include in your strategic plan .

What Is Strategic Planning?

Strategic planning is an organizational activity that aims to achieve a group’s goals. The process helps define a company’s objectives and investigates both internal and external happenings that might influence the organizational path. Strategic planning also helps identify adjustments that you might need to make to reach your goal. Strategic planning became popular in the 1960s because it helped companies set priorities and goals, strengthen operations, and establish agreement among managers about outcomes and results.

Strategic planning can occur over multiple years, and the process can vary in length, as can the final plan itself. Ideally, strategic planning should result in a document, a presentation, or a report that sets out a blueprint for the company’s progress.

By setting priorities, companies help ensure employees are working toward common and defined goals. It also aids in defining the direction an enterprise is heading, efficiently using resources to achieve the organization’s goals and objectives. Based on the plan, managers can make decisions or allocate the resources necessary to pursue the strategy and minimize risks.

Strategic planning strengthens operations by getting input from people with differing opinions and building a consensus about the company’s direction. Along with focusing energy and resources, the strategic planning process allows people to develop a sense of ownership in the product they create.

John Bryson

“Strategic planning is not really one thing. It is really a set of concepts, procedures, tools, techniques, and practices that have to be adapted to specific contexts and purposes,” says Professor John M. Bryson, McKnight Presidential Professor of Planning and Public Affairs at the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota and author of Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations: A Guide to Strengthening and Sustaining Organizational Achievement . “Strategic planning is a prompt to foster strategic thinking, acting, and learning, and they all matter and they are all connected.”

What Strategic Planning Is Not

Strategic planning is not a to-do list for the short or long term — it is the basis of a business, its direction, and how it will get there.

“You have to think very strategically about strategic planning. It is more than just following steps,” Bryson explains. “You have to understand strategic planning is not some kind of magic solution to fixing issues. Don’t have unrealistic expectations.”

Strategic planning is also different from a business plan that focuses on a specific product, service, or program and short-term goals. Rather, strategic planning means looking at the big picture.

While they are related, it is important not to confuse strategic planning with strategic thinking, which is more about imagining and innovating in a way that helps a company. In contrast, strategic planning supports those thoughts and helps you figure out how to make them a reality.

Another part of strategic planning is tactical planning , which involves looking at short-term efforts to achieve longer-term goals.

Lastly, marketing plans are not the same as strategic plans. A marketing plan is more about introducing and delivering a service or product to the public instead of how to grow a business. For more about marketing plans and processes, read this article .

Strategic plans include information about finances, but they are different from financial planning , which involves different processes and people. Financial planning templates can help with that process.

Why Is Strategic Planning Important?

In today’s technological age, strategic plans provide businesses with a path forward. Strategic plans help companies thrive, not just survive — they provide a clear focus, which makes an organization more efficient and effective, thereby increasing productivity.

Stefan Hofmeyer

“You are not going to go very far if you don’t have a strategic plan. You need to be able to show where you are going,” says Stefan Hofmeyer, an experienced strategist and co-founder of Global PMI Partners . He lives in the startup-rich environment of northern California and says he often sees startups fail to get seed money because they do not have a strong plan for what they want to do and how they want to do it.

Getting team members on the same page (in both creating a strategic plan and executing the plan itself) can be beneficial for a company. Planners can find satisfaction in the process and unite around a common vision. In addition, you can build strong teams and bridge gaps between staff and management.

“You have to reach agreement about good ideas,” Bryson says. “A really good strategy has to meet a lot of criteria. It has to be technically workable, administratively feasible, politically acceptable, and legally, morally, and ethically defensible, and that is a pretty tough list.”

By discussing a company’s issues during the planning process, individuals can voice their opinions and provide information necessary to move the organization ahead — a form of problem solving as a group.

Strategic plans also provide a mechanism to measure success and progress toward goals, which keeps employees on the same page and helps them focus on the tasks at hand.

When Is the Time to Do Strategic Planning?

There is no perfect time to perform strategic planning. It depends entirely on the organization and the external environment that surrounds it. However, here are some suggestions about when to plan:

If your industry is changing rapidly

When an organization is launching

At the start of a new year or funding period

In preparation for a major new initiative

If regulations and laws in your industry are or will be changing

“It’s not like you do all of the thinking and planning, and then implement,” Bryson says. “A mistake people make is [believing] the thinking has to precede the acting and the learning.”

Even if you do not re-create the entire planning process often, it is important to periodically check your plan and make sure it is still working. If not, update it.

What Is the Strategic Planning Process?

Strategic planning is a process, and not an easy one. A key is to make sure you allow enough time to complete the process without rushing, but not take so much time that you lose momentum and focus. The process itself can be more important than the final document due to the information that comes out of the discussions with management, as well as lower-level workers.

Jim Stockmal

“There is not one favorite or perfect planning process,” says Jim Stockmal, president of the Association for Strategic Planning (ASP). He explains that new techniques come out constantly, and consultants and experienced planners have their favorites. In an effort to standardize the practice and terms used in strategic planning, ASP has created two certification programs .

Level 1 is the Strategic Planning Professional (SPP) certification. It is designed for early- or mid-career planners who work in strategic planning. Level 2, the Strategic Management Professional (SMP) certification, is geared toward seasoned professionals or those who train others. Stockmal explains that ASP designed the certification programs to add structure to the otherwise amorphous profession.

The strategic planning process varies by the size of the organization and can be formal or informal, but there are constraints. For example, teams of all sizes and goals should build in many points along the way for feedback from key leaders — this helps the process stay on track.

Some elements of the process might have specific start and end points, while others are continuous. For example, there might not be one “aha” moment that suddenly makes things clear. Instead, a series of small moves could slowly shift the organization in the right direction.

“Don’t make it overly complex. Bring all of the stakeholders together for input and feedback,” Stockmal advises. “Always be doing a continuous environmental scan, and don’t be afraid to engage with stakeholders.”

Additionally, knowing your company culture is important. “You need to make it work for your organization,” he says.

There are many different ways to approach the strategic planning process. Below are three popular approaches:

Goals-Based Planning: This approach begins by looking at an organization’s mission and goals. From there, you work toward that mission, implement strategies necessary to achieve those goals, and assign roles and deadlines for reaching certain milestones.

Issues-Based Planning: In this approach, start by looking at issues the company is facing, then decide how to address them and what actions to take.

Organic Planning: This approach is more fluid and begins with defining mission and values, then outlining plans to achieve that vision while sticking to the values.

“The approach to strategic planning needs to be contingent upon the organization, its history, what it’s capable of doing, etc.,” Bryson explains. “There’s such a mistake to think there’s one approach.”

For more information on strategic planning, read about how to write a strategic plan and the different types of models you can use.

Who Participates in the Strategic Planning Process?

For work as crucial as strategic planning, it is necessary to get the right team together and include them from the beginning of the process. Try to include as many stakeholders as you can.

Below are suggestions on who to include:

Senior leadership

Strategic planners

Strategists

People who will be responsible for implementing the plan

People to identify gaps in the plan

Members of the board of directors

“There can be magic to strategic planning, but it’s not in any specific framework or anybody’s 10-step process,” Bryson explains. “The magic is getting key people together, getting them to focus on what’s important, and [getting] them to do something about it. That’s where the magic is.”

Hofmeyer recommends finding people within an organization who are not necessarily current leaders, but may be in the future. “Sometimes they just become obvious. Usually they show themselves to you, you don’t need to look for them. They’re motivated to participate,” he says. These future leaders are the ones who speak up at meetings or on other occasions, who put themselves out there even though it is not part of their job description.

At the beginning of the process, establish guidelines about who will be involved and what will be expected of them. Everyone involved must be willing to cooperate and collaborate. If there is a question about whether or not to include anyone, it is usually better to bring on extra people than to leave someone out, only to discover later they should have been a part of the process all along. Not everyone will be involved the entire time; people will come and go during different phases.

Often, an outside facilitator or consultant can be an asset to a strategic planning committee. It is sometimes difficult for managers and other employees to sit back and discuss what they need to accomplish as a company and how they need to do it without considering other factors. As objective observers, outside help can often offer insight that may escape insiders.

Hofmeyer says sometimes bosses have blinders on that keep them from seeing what is happening around them, which allows them to ignore potential conflicts. “People often have their own agendas of where they want to go, and if they are not aligned, it is difficult to build a strategic plan. An outsider perspective can really take you out of your bubble and tell you things you don’t necessarily want to hear [but should]. We get into a rhythm, and it’s really hard to step out of that, so bringing in outside people can help bring in new views and aspects of your business.”

An outside consultant can also help naysayers take the process more seriously because they know the company is investing money in the efforts, Hofmeyer adds.

No matter who is involved in the planning process, make sure at least one person serves as an administrator and documents all planning committee actions.

What Is in a Strategic Plan?

A strategic plan communicates goals and what it takes to achieve them. The plan sometimes begins with a high-level view, then becomes more specific. Since strategic plans are more guidebooks than rulebooks, they don’t have to be bureaucratic and rigid. There is no perfect plan; however, it needs to be realistic.

There are many sections in a strategic plan, and the length of the final document or presentation will vary. The names people use for the sections differ, but the general ideas behind them are similar: Simply make sure you and your team agree on the terms you will use and what each means.

One-Page Strategic Planning Template

“I’m a big fan of getting a strategy onto one sheet of paper. It’s a strategic plan in a nutshell, and it provides a clear line of sight,” Stockmal advises.

You can use the template below to consolidate all your strategic ideas into a succinct, one-page strategic plan. Doing so provides you with a high-level overview of your strategic initiatives that you can place on your website, distribute to stakeholders, and refer to internally. More extensive details about implementation, capacity, and other concerns can go into an expanded document.

One Page Strategic Planning Template

Download One-Page Strategic Planning Template Excel | Word | Smartsheet

The most important part of the strategic plan is the executive summary, which contains the highlights of the plan. Although it appears at the beginning of the plan, it should be written last, after you have done all your research.

Of writing the executive summary, Stockmal says, “I find it much easier to extract and cut and edit than to do it first.”

For help with creating executive summaries, see these templates .

Other parts of a strategic plan can include the following:

Description: A description of the company or organization.

Vision Statement: A bold or inspirational statement about where you want your company to be in the future.

Mission Statement: In this section, describe what you do today, your audience, and your approach as you work toward your vision.

Core Values: In this section, list the beliefs and behaviors that will enable you to achieve your mission and, eventually, your vision.

Goals: Provide a few statements of how you will achieve your vision over the long term.

Objectives: Each long-term goal should have a few one-year objectives that advance the plan. Make objectives SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, and time-based) to get the most out of them.

Budget and Operating Plans: Highlight resources you will need and how you will implement them.

Monitoring and Evaluation: In this section, describe how you will check your progress and determine when you achieve your goals.

One of the first steps in creating a strategic plan is to perform both an internal and external analysis of the company’s environment. Internally, look at your company’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as the personal values of those who will implement your plan (managers, executives, board members). Externally, examine threats and opportunities within the industry and any broad societal expectations that might exist.

You can perform a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis to sum up where you are currently and what you should focus on to help you achieve your future goals. Strengths shows you what you do well, weaknesses point out obstacles that could keep you from achieving your objectives, opportunities highlight where you can grow, and threats pinpoint external factors that could be obstacles in your way.

You can find more information about performing a SWOT analysis and free templates in this article . Another analysis technique, STEEPLE (social, technological, economic, environmental, political, legal, and ethical), often accompanies a SWOT analysis.

Basics of Strategic Planning

How you navigate the strategic planning process will vary. Several tools and techniques are available, and your choice depends on your company’s leadership, culture, environment, and size, as well as the expertise of the planners.

All include similar sections in the final plan, but the ways of driving those results differ. Some tools are goals-based, while others are issues- or scenario-based. Some rely on a more organic or rigid process.

Hofmeyer summarizes what goes into strategic planning:

Understand the stakeholders and involve them from the beginning.

Agree on a vision.

Hold successful meetings and sessions.

Summarize and present the plan to stakeholders.

Identify and check metrics.

Make periodic adjustments.

Items That Go into Strategic Planning

Strategic planning contains inputs, activities, outputs, and outcomes. Inputs and activities are elements that are internal to the company, while outputs and outcomes are external.

Remember, there are many different names for the sections of strategic plans. The key is to agree what terms you will use and define them for everyone involved.

Inputs are important because it is impossible to know where you are going until you know what is around you where you are now.

Companies need to gather data from a variety of sources to get a clear look at the competitive environment and the opportunities and risks within that environment. You can think of it like a competitive intelligence program.

Data should come from the following sources:

Interviews with executives

A review of documents about the competition or market that are publicly available

Primary research by visiting or observing competitors

Studies of your industry

The values of key stakeholders

This information often goes into writing an organization’s vision and mission statements.

Activities are the meetings and other communications that need to happen during the strategic planning process to help everyone understand the competition that surrounds the organization.

It is important both to understand the competitive environment and your company’s response to it. This is where everyone looks at and responds to the data gathered from the inputs.

The strategic planning process produces outputs. Outputs can be as basic as the strategic planning document itself. The documentation and communications that describe your organization’s strategy, as well as financial statements and budgets, can also be outputs.

The implementation of the strategic plan produces outcomes (distinct from outputs). The outcomes determine the success or failure of the strategic plan by measuring how close they are to the goals and vision you outline in your plan.

It is important to understand there will be unplanned and unintended outcomes, too. How you learn from and adapt to these changes influence the success of the strategic plan.

During the planning process, decide how you will measure both the successes and failures of different parts of the strategic plan.

Sharing, Evaluating, and Monitoring the Progress of a Strategic Plan

After companies go through a lengthy strategic planning process, it is important that the plan does not sit and collect dust. Share, evaluate, and monitor the plan to assess how you are doing and make any necessary updates.

“[Some] leaders think that once they have their strategy, it’s up to someone else to execute it. That’s a mistake I see,” Stockmal says.

The process begins with distributing and communicating the plan. Decide who will get a copy of the plan and how those people will tell others about it. Will you have a meeting to kick off the implementation? How will you specify who will do what and when? Clearly communicate the roles people will have.

“Before you communicate the plan [to everyone], you need to have the commitment of stakeholders,” Hofmeyer recommends. Have the stakeholders be a part of announcing the plan to everyone — this keeps them accountable because workers will associate them with the strategy. “That applies pressure to the stakeholders to actually do the work.”

Once the team begins implementation, it’s necessary to have benchmarks to help measure your successes against the plan’s objectives. Sometimes, having smaller action plans within the larger plan can help keep the work on track.

During the planning process, you should have decided how you will measure success. Now, figure out how and when you will document progress. Keep an eye out for gaps between the vision and its implementation — a big gap could be a sign that you are deviating from the plan.

Tools are available to assist with tracking performance of strategic plans, including several types of software. “For some organizations, a spreadsheet is enough, but you are going to manually enter the data, so someone needs to be responsible for that,” Stockmal recommends.

Remember: strategic plans are not written in stone. Some deviation will be necessary, and when it happens, it’s important to understand why it occurred and how the change might impact the company's vision and goals.

Deviation from the plan does not mean failure, reminds Hofmeyer. Instead, understanding what transpired is the key. “Things happen, [and] you should always be on the lookout for that. I’m a firm believer in continuous improvement,” he says. Explain to stakeholders why a change is taking place. “There’s always a sense of re-evaluation, but do it methodically.”

Build in a schedule to review and amend the plan as necessary; this can help keep companies on track.

What Is Strategic Management?

Strategic planning is part of strategic management, and it involves the activities that make the strategic plan a reality. Essentially, strategic management is getting from the starting point to the goal effectively and efficiently using the ongoing activities and processes that a company takes on in order to keep in line with its mission, vision, and strategic plan.

“[Strategic management] closes the gap between the plan and executing the strategy,” Stockmal of ASP says. Strategic management is part of a larger planning process that includes budgeting, forecasting, capital allocation, and more.

There is no right or wrong way to do strategic management — only guidelines. The basic phases are preparing for strategic planning, creating the strategic plan, and implementing that plan.

No matter how you manage your plan, it’s key to allow the strategic plan to evolve and grow as necessary, due to both the internal and external factors.

“We get caught up in all of the day-to-day issues,” Stockmal explains, adding that people do not often leave enough time for implementing the plan and making progress. That’s what strategic management implores: doing things that are in the plan and not letting the plan sit on a shelf.

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The strategic planning process in 4 steps, to help you throughout our strategic planning framework, we have created a how-to guide on the basics of a strategic plan, which we will take you through step-by-step..

Free Strategic Planning Guide

What is Strategic Planning?

Strategic Planning is when organizations define a bold vision and create a plan with objectives and goals to reach that future. A great strategic plan defines where your organization is going, how you’ll win, who must do what, and how you’ll review and adapt your strategy development.

What

Overview of the Strategic Planning Process:

The strategic management process involves taking your organization on a journey from point A (where you are today) to point B (your vision of the future).

Part of that journey is the strategy built during strategic planning, and part of it is execution during the strategic management process. A good strategic plan dictates “how” you travel the selected road.

Effective execution ensures you are reviewing, refreshing, and recalibrating your strategy to reach your destination. The planning process should take no longer than 90 days. But, move at a pace that works best for you and your team and leverage this as a resource.

To kick this process off, we recommend 1-2 weeks (1-hour meeting with the Owner/CEO, Strategy Director, and Facilitator (if necessary) to discuss the information collected and direction for continued planning.)

Strategic Planning Guide and Process

Questions to Ask:

  • Who is on your Planning Team? What senior leadership members and key stakeholders are included? Checkout these links you need help finding a strategic planning consultant , someone to facilitate strategic planning , or expert AI strategy consulting .
  • Who will be the business process owner (Strategy Director) of planning in your organization?
  • Fast forward 12 months from now, what do you want to see differently in your organization as a result of your strategic plan and implementation?
  • Planning team members are informed of their roles and responsibilities.
  • A strategic planning schedule is established.
  • Existing planning information and secondary data collected.

Action Grid:

What

Step 1: Determine Organizational Readiness

Set up your plan for success – questions to ask:

  • Are the conditions and criteria for successful planning in place at the current time? Can certain pitfalls be avoided?
  • Is this the appropriate time for your organization to initiate a planning process? Yes or no? If no, where do you go from here?

Step 2: Develop Your Team & Schedule

Who is going to be on your planning team? You need to choose someone to oversee the strategy implementation (Chief Strategy Officer or Strategy Director) and strategic management of your plan? You need some of the key individuals and decision makers for this team. It should be a small group of approximately 12-15 people.

OnStrategy is the leader in strategic planning and performance management. Our cloud-based software and hands-on services closes the gap between strategy and execution. Learn more about OnStrategy here .

Step 3: Collect Current Data

All strategic plans are developed using the following information:

  • The last strategic plan, even if it is not current
  • Mission statement, vision statement, values statement
  • Past or current Business plan
  • Financial records for the last few years
  • Marketing plan
  • Other information, such as last year’s SWOT, sales figures and projections

Step 4: Review Collected Data

Review the data collected in the last action with your strategy director and facilitator.

  • What trends do you see?
  • Are there areas of obvious weakness or strengths?
  • Have you been following a plan or have you just been going along with the market?

Conclusion: A successful strategic plan must be adaptable to changing conditions. Organizations benefit from having a flexible plan that can evolve, as assumptions and goals may need adjustments. Preparing to adapt or restart the planning process is crucial, so we recommend updating actions quarterly and refreshing your plan annually.

Strategic Planning Pyramid

Strategic Planning Phase 1: Determine Your Strategic Position

Want more? Dive into the “ Evaluate Your Strategic Position ” How-To Guide.

Action Grid

Step 1: identify strategic issues.

Strategic issues are critical unknowns driving you to embark on a robust strategic planning process. These issues can be problems, opportunities, market shifts, or anything else that keeps you awake at night and begging for a solution or decision. The best strategic plans address your strategic issues head-on.

  • How will we grow, stabilize, or retrench in order to sustain our organization into the future?
  • How will we diversify our revenue to reduce our dependence on a major customer?
  • What must we do to improve our cost structure and stay competitive?
  • How and where must we innovate our products and services?

Step 2: Conduct an Environmental Scan

Conducting an environmental scan will help you understand your operating environment. An environmental scan is called a PEST analysis, an acronym for Political, Economic, Social, and Technological trends. Sometimes, it is helpful to include Ecological and Legal trends as well. All of these trends play a part in determining the overall business environment.

Step 3: Conduct a Competitive Analysis

The reason to do a competitive analysis is to assess the opportunities and threats that may occur from those organizations competing for the same business you are. You need to understand what your competitors are or aren’t offering your potential customers. Here are a few other key ways a competitive analysis fits into strategic planning:

  • To help you assess whether your competitive advantage is really an advantage.
  • To understand what your competitors’ current and future strategies are so you can plan accordingly.
  • To provide information that will help you evaluate your strategic decisions against what your competitors may or may not be doing.

Learn more on how to conduct a competitive analysis here .

Step 4: Identify Opportunities and Threats

Opportunities are situations that exist but must be acted on if the business is to benefit from them.

What do you want to capitalize on?

  • What new needs of customers could you meet?
  • What are the economic trends that benefit you?
  • What are the emerging political and social opportunities?
  • What niches have your competitors missed?

Threats refer to external conditions or barriers preventing a company from reaching its objectives.

What do you need to mitigate? What external driving force do you need to anticipate?

Questions to Answer:

  • What are the negative economic trends?
  • What are the negative political and social trends?
  • Where are competitors about to bite you?
  • Where are you vulnerable?

Step 5: Identify Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths refer to what your company does well.

What do you want to build on?

  • What do you do well (in sales, marketing, operations, management)?
  • What are your core competencies?
  • What differentiates you from your competitors?
  • Why do your customers buy from you?

Weaknesses refer to any limitations a company faces in developing or implementing a strategy.

What do you need to shore up?

  • Where do you lack resources?
  • What can you do better?
  • Where are you losing money?
  • In what areas do your competitors have an edge?

Step 6: Customer Segments

What

Customer segmentation defines the different groups of people or organizations a company aims to reach or serve.

  • What needs or wants define your ideal customer?
  • What characteristics describe your typical customer?
  • Can you sort your customers into different profiles using their needs, wants and characteristics?
  • Can you reach this segment through clear communication channels?

Step 7: Develop Your SWOT

What

A SWOT analysis is a quick way of examining your organization by looking at the internal strengths and weaknesses in relation to the external opportunities and threats. Creating a SWOT analysis lets you see all the important factors affecting your organization together in one place.

It’s easy to read, easy to communicate, and easy to create. Take the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats you developed earlier, review, prioritize, and combine like terms. The SWOT analysis helps you ask and answer the following questions: “How do you….”

  • Build on your strengths
  • Shore up your weaknesses
  • Capitalize on your opportunities
  • Manage your threats

What

Strategic Planning Process Phase 2: Developing Strategy

Want More? Deep Dive Into the “Developing Your Strategy” How-To Guide.

Step 1: Develop Your Mission Statement

The mission statement describes an organization’s purpose or reason for existing.

What is our purpose? Why do we exist? What do we do?

  • What are your organization’s goals? What does your organization intend to accomplish?
  • Why do you work here? Why is it special to work here?
  • What would happen if we were not here?

Outcome: A short, concise, concrete statement that clearly defines the scope of the organization.

Step 2: discover your values.

Your values statement clarifies what your organization stands for, believes in and the behaviors you expect to see as a result. Check our the post on great what are core values and examples of core values .

How will we behave?

  • What are the key non-negotiables that are critical to the company’s success?
  • What guiding principles are core to how we operate in this organization?
  • What behaviors do you expect to see?
  • If the circumstances changed and penalized us for holding this core value, would we still keep it?

Outcome: Short list of 5-7 core values.

Step 3: casting your vision statement.

What

A Vision Statement defines your desired future state and directs where we are going as an organization.

Where are we going?

  • What will our organization look like 5–10 years from now?
  • What does success look like?
  • What are we aspiring to achieve?
  • What mountain are you climbing and why?

Outcome: A picture of the future.

Step 4: identify your competitive advantages.

How to Identify Competitive Advantages

A competitive advantage is a characteristic of an organization that allows it to meet its customer’s need(s) better than its competition can. It’s important to consider your competitive advantages when creating your competitive strategy.

What are we best at?

  • What are your unique strengths?
  • What are you best at in your market?
  • Do your customers still value what is being delivered? Ask them.
  • How do your value propositions stack up in the marketplace?

Outcome: A list of 2 or 3 items that honestly express the organization’s foundation for winning.

Step 5: crafting your organization-wide strategies.

What

Your competitive strategy is the general methods you intend to use to reach your vision. Regardless of the level, a strategy answers the question “how.”

How will we succeed?

  • Broad: market scope; a relatively wide market emphasis.
  • Narrow: limited to only one or few segments in the market
  • Does your competitive position focus on lowest total cost or product/service differentiation or both?

Outcome: Establish the general, umbrella methods you intend to use to reach your vision.

What

Phase 3: Strategic Plan Development

Want More? Deep Dive Into the “Build Your Plan” How-To Guide.

Strategic Planning Process Step 1: Use Your SWOT to Set Priorities

If your team wants to take the next step in the SWOT analysis, apply the TOWS Strategic Alternatives Matrix to your strategy map to help you think about the options you could pursue. To do this, match external opportunities and threats with your internal strengths and weaknesses, as illustrated in the matrix below:

TOWS Strategic Alternatives Matrix

Evaluate the options you’ve generated, and identify the ones that give the greatest benefit, and that best achieve the mission and vision of your organization. Add these to the other strategic options that you’re considering.

Step 2: Define Long-Term Strategic Objectives

Long-Term Strategic Objectives are long-term, broad, continuous statements that holistically address all areas of your organization. What must we focus on to achieve our vision? Check out examples of strategic objectives here. What are the “big rocks”?

Questions to ask:

  • What are our shareholders or stakeholders expectations for our financial performance or social outcomes?
  • To reach our outcomes, what value must we provide to our customers? What is our value proposition?
  • To provide value, what process must we excel at to deliver our products and services?
  • To drive our processes, what skills, capabilities and organizational structure must we have?

Outcome: Framework for your plan – no more than 6. You can use the balanced scorecard framework, OKRs, or whatever methodology works best for you. Just don’t exceed 6 long-term objectives.

Strategy Map

Step 3: Setting Organization-Wide Goals and Measures

What

Once you have formulated your strategic objectives, you should translate them into goals and measures that can be communicated to your strategic planning team (team of business leaders and/or team members).

You want to set goals that convert the strategic objectives into specific performance targets. Effective strategic goals clearly state what, when, how, and who, and they are specifically measurable. They should address what you must do in the short term (think 1-3 years) to achieve your strategic objectives.

Organization-wide goals are annual statements that are SMART – specific, measurable, attainable, responsible, and time-bound. These are outcome statements expressing a result to achieve the desired outcomes expected in the organization.

What is most important right now to reach our long-term objectives?

Outcome: clear outcomes for the current year..

Strategic Planning Outcomes Table

Step 4: Select KPIs

What

Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are the key measures that will have the most impact in moving your organization forward. We recommend you guide your organization with measures that matter. See examples of KPIs here.

How will we measure our success?

Outcome: 5-7 measures that help you keep the pulse on your performance. When selecting your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), ask, “What are the key performance measures we need to track to monitor if we are achieving our goals?” These KPIs include the key goals you want to measure that will have the most impact on moving your organization forward.

Step 5: Cascade Your Strategies to Operations

NPS Step #5

To move from big ideas to action, creating action items and to-dos for short-term goals is crucial. This involves translating strategy from the organizational level to individuals. Functional area managers and contributors play a role in developing short-term goals to support the organization.

Before taking action, decide whether to create plans directly derived from the strategic plan or sync existing operational, business, or account plans with organizational goals. Avoid the pitfall of managing multiple sets of goals and actions, as this shifts from strategic planning to annual planning.

Questions to Ask

  • How are we going to get there at a functional level?
  • Who must do what by when to accomplish and drive the organizational goals?
  • What strategic questions still remain and need to be solved?

Department/functional goals, actions, measures and targets for the next 12-24 months

Step 6: Cascading Goals to Departments and Team Members

Now in your Departments / Teams, you need to create goals to support the organization-wide goals. These goals should still be SMART and are generally (short-term) something to be done in the next 12-18 months. Finally, you should develop an action plan for each goal.

Keep the acronym SMART in mind again when setting action items, and make sure they include start and end dates and have someone assigned their responsibility. Since these action items support your previously established goals, it may be helpful to consider action items your immediate plans on the way to achieving your (short-term) goals. In other words, identify all the actions that need to occur in the next 90 days and continue this same process every 90 days until the goal is achieved.

Examples of Cascading Goals:

What

Phase 4: Executing Strategy and Managing Performance

Want more? Dive Into the “Managing Performance” How-To Guide.

Step 1: Strategic Plan Implementation Schedule

Implementation is the process that turns strategies and plans into actions in order to accomplish strategic objectives and goals.

How will we use the plan as a management tool?

  • Communication Schedule: How and when will you roll-out your plan to your staff? How frequently will you send out updates?
  • Process Leader: Who is your strategy director?
  • Structure: What are the dates for your strategy reviews (we recommend at least quarterly)?
  • System & Reports: What are you expecting each staff member to come prepared with to those strategy review sessions?

Outcome: Syncing your plan into the “rhythm of your business.”

Once your resources are in place, you can set your implementation schedule. Use the following steps as your base implementation plan:

  • Establish your performance management and reward system.
  • Set up monthly and quarterly strategy meetings with established reporting procedures.
  • Set up annual strategic review dates including new assessments and a large group meeting for an annual plan review.

Now you’re ready to start plan roll-out. Below are sample implementation schedules, which double for a full strategic management process timeline.

Strategic Planning Calendar

Step 2: Tracking Goals & Actions

Monthly strategy meetings don’t need to take a lot of time – 30 to 60 minutes should suffice. But it is important that key team members report on their progress toward the goals they are responsible for – including reporting on metrics in the scorecard they have been assigned.

By using the measurements already established, it’s easy to make course corrections if necessary. You should also commit to reviewing your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) during these regular meetings. Need help comparing strategic planning software ? Check out our guide.

Effective Strategic Planning: Your Bi-Annual Checklist

What

Never lose sight of the fact that strategic plans are guidelines, not rules. Every six months or so, you should evaluate your strategy execution and strategic plan implementation by asking these key questions:

  • Will your goals be achieved within the time frame of the plan? If not, why?
  • Should the deadlines be modified? (Before you modify deadlines, figure out why you’re behind schedule.)
  • Are your goals and action items still realistic?
  • Should the organization’s focus be changed to put more emphasis on achieving your goals?
  • Should your goals be changed? (Be careful about making these changes – know why efforts aren’t achieving the goals before changing the goals.)
  • What can be gathered from an adaptation to improve future planning activities?

Why Track Your Goals?

  • Ownership: Having a stake and responsibility in the plan makes you feel part of it and leads you to drive your goals forward.
  • Culture: Successful plans tie tracking and updating goals into organizational culture.
  • Implementation: If you don’t review and update your strategic goals, they are just good intentions
  • Accountability: Accountability and high visibility help drive change. This means that each measure, objective, data source and initiative must have an owner.
  • Empowerment: Changing goals from In Progress to Complete just feels good!

Step 3: Review & Adapt

Guidelines for your strategy review.

The most important part of this meeting is a 70/30 review. 30% is about reviewing performance, and 70% should be spent on making decisions to move the company’s strategy forward in the next quarter.

The best strategic planners spend about 60-90 minutes in the sessions. Holding meetings helps focus your goals on accomplishing top priorities and accelerating the organization’s growth. Although the meeting structure is relatively simple, it does require a high degree of discipline.

Strategy Review Session Questions:

Strategic planning frequently asked questions, read our frequently asked questions about strategic planning to learn how to build a great strategic plan..

Strategic planning is when organizations define a bold vision and create a plan with objectives and goals to reach that future. A great strategic plan defines where your organization is going, how you’ll win, who must do what, and how you’ll review and adapt your strategy..

Your strategic plan needs to include an assessment of your current state, a SWOT analysis, mission, vision, values, competitive advantages, growth strategy, growth enablers, a 3-year roadmap, and annual plan with strategic goals, OKRs, and KPIs.

A strategic planning process should take no longer than 90 days to complete from start to finish! Any longer could fatigue your organization and team.

There are four overarching phases to the strategic planning process that include: determining position, developing your strategy, building your plan, and managing performance. Each phase plays a unique but distinctly crucial role in the strategic planning process.

Prior to starting your strategic plan, you must go through this pre-planning process to determine your organization’s readiness by following these steps:

Ask yourself these questions: Are the conditions and criteria for successful planning in place now? Can we foresee any pitfalls that we can avoid? Is there an appropriate time for our organization to initiate this process?

Develop your team and schedule. Who will oversee the implementation as Chief Strategy Officer or Director? Do we have at least 12-15 other key individuals on our team?

Research and Collect Current Data. Find the following resources that your organization may have used in the past to assist you with your new plan: last strategic plan, mission, vision, and values statement, business plan, financial records, marketing plan, SWOT, sales figures, or projections.

Finally, review the data with your strategy director and facilitator and ask these questions: What trends do we see? Any obvious strengths or weaknesses? Have we been following a plan or just going along with the market?

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strategic planning guide for managers

  • Business strategy |
  • 7 strategic planning models, plus 8 fra ...

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

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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.

[Inline illustration] Strategic planning models vs. frameworks (Infographic)

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.

[Inline illustration] The seven strategic planning models (Infographic)

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:

[Inline illustration] SWOT analysis (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:

[Inline illustration] Porter’s Five Forces framework (Infographic)

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

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The beginner’s guide to business process management (BPM)

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How to improve strategic planning

In conference rooms everywhere, corporate planners are in the midst of the annual strategic-planning process. For the better part of a year, they collect financial and operational data, make forecasts, and prepare lengthy presentations with the CEO and other senior managers about the future direction of the business. But at the end of this expensive and time-consuming process, many participants say they are frustrated by its lack of impact on either their own actions or the strategic direction of the company.

This sense of disappointment was captured in a recent McKinsey Quarterly survey of nearly 800 executives: just 45 percent of the respondents said they were satisfied with the strategic-planning process. 1 1. “ Improving strategic planning: A McKinsey Survey ,” The McKinsey Quarterly , Web exclusive, September 2006. The survey, conducted in late July and early August 2006, received 796 responses from a panel of executives from around the world. All panelists have mostly financial or strategic responsibilities and work in a wide range of industries for organizations with revenues of at least $500 million. Moreover, only 23 percent indicated that major strategic decisions were made within its confines. Given these results, managers might well be tempted to jettison the planning process altogether.

But for those working in the overwhelming majority of corporations, the annual planning process plays an essential role. In addition to formulating at least some elements of a company’s strategy, the process results in a budget, which establishes the resource allocation map for the coming 12 to 18 months; sets financial and operating targets, often used to determine compensation metrics and to provide guidance for financial markets; and aligns the management team on its strategic priorities. The operative question for chief executives is how to make the planning process more effective—not whether it is the sole mechanism used to design strategy. CEOs know that strategy is often formulated through ad hoc meetings or brand reviews, or as a result of decisions about mergers and acquisitions.

Our research shows that formal strategic-planning processes play an important role in improving overall satisfaction with strategy development. That role can be seen in the responses of the 79 percent of managers who claimed that the formal planning process played a significant role in developing strategies and were satisfied with the approach of their companies, compared with only 21 percent of the respondents who felt that the process did not play a significant role. Looked at another way, 51 percent of the respondents whose companies had no formal process were dissatisfied with their approach to the development of strategy, against only 20 percent of those at companies with a formal process.

So what can managers do to improve the process? There are many ways to conduct strategic planning, but determining the ideal method goes beyond the scope of this article. Instead we offer, from our research, five emergent ideas that executives can employ immediately to make existing processes run better. The changes we discuss here (such as a focus on important strategic issues or a connection to core-management processes) are the elements most linked with the satisfaction of employees and their perceptions of the significance of the process. These steps cannot guarantee that the right strategic decisions will be made or that strategy will be better executed, but by enhancing the planning process—and thus increasing satisfaction with the development of strategy—they will improve the odds for success.

Start with the issues

Ask CEOs what they think strategic planning should involve and they will talk about anticipating big challenges and spotting important trends. At many companies, however, this noble purpose has taken a backseat to rigid, data-driven processes dominated by the production of budgets and financial forecasts. If the calendar-based process is to play a more valuable role in a company’s overall strategy efforts, it must complement budgeting with a focus on strategic issues. In our experience, the first liberating change managers can make to improve the quality of the planning process is to begin it by deliberately and thoughtfully identifying and discussing the strategic issues that will have the greatest impact on future business performance.

Granted, an approach based on issues will not necessarily yield better strategic results. The music business, for instance, has discussed the threat posed by digital-file sharing for years without finding an effective way of dealing with the problem. But as a first step, identifying the key issues will ensure that management does not waste time and energy on less important topics.

We found a variety of practical ways in which companies can impose a fresh strategic perspective. For instance, the CEO of one large health care company asks the leaders of each business unit to imagine how a set of specific economic, social, and business trends will affect their businesses, as well as ways to capture the opportunities—or counter the threats—that these trends pose. Only after such an analysis and discussion do the leaders settle into the more typical planning exercises of financial forecasting and identifying strategic initiatives.

One consumer goods organization takes a more directed approach. The CEO, supported by the corporate-strategy function, compiles a list of three to six priorities for the coming year. Distributed to the managers responsible for functions, geographies, and brands, the list then becomes the basis for an offsite strategy-alignment meeting, where managers debate the implications of the priorities for their particular organizations. The corporate-strategy function summarizes the results, adds appropriate corporate targets, and shares them with the organization in the form of a strategy memo, which serves as the basis for more detailed strategic planning at the division and business-unit levels.

A packaged-goods company offers an even more tailored example. Every December the corporate senior-management team produces a list of ten strategic questions tailored to each of the three business units. The leaders of these businesses have six months to explore and debate the questions internally and to come up with answers. In June each unit convenes with the senior-management team in a one-day meeting to discuss proposed actions and reach decisions.

Some companies prefer to use a bottom-up rather than top-down process. We recently worked with a sales company to design a strategic-planning process that begins with in-depth interviews (involving all of the senior managers and selected corporate and business executives) to generate a list of the most important strategic issues facing the company. The senior-management team prioritizes the list and assigns managers to explore each issue and report back in four to six weeks. Such an approach can be especially valuable in companies where internal consensus building is an imperative.

Bring together the right people

An issues-based approach won’t do much good unless the most relevant people are involved in the debate. We found that survey respondents who were satisfied with the strategic-planning process rated it highly on dimensions such as including the most knowledgeable and influential participants, stimulating and challenging the participants’ thinking, and having honest, open discussions about difficult issues. In contrast, 27 percent of the dissatisfied respondents reported that their company’s strategic planning had not a single one of these virtues. Such results suggest that too many companies focus on the data-gathering and packaging elements of strategic planning and neglect the crucial interactive components.

Strategic conversations will have little impact if they involve only strategic planners from both the business unit and the corporate levels. One of our core beliefs is that those who carry out strategy should also develop it. The key strategy conversation should take place among corporate decision makers, business unit leaders, and people with expertise essential to the discussion. In addition to leading the corporate review, the CEO, aided by members of the executive team, should as a rule lead the strategy review for business units as well. The head of a business unit, supported by four to six people, should direct the discussion from its side of the table (see sidebar, "Things to ask in any business unit review").

Things to ask in any business unit review

Are major trends and changes in your business unit’s environment affecting your strategic plan? Specifically, what potential developments in customer demand, technology, or the regulatory environment could have enough impact on the industry to change the entire plan?

How and why is this plan different from last year’s?

What were your forecasts for market growth, sales, and profitability last year, two years ago, and three years ago? How right or wrong were they? What did the business unit learn from those experiences?

What would it take to double your business unit’s growth rate and profits? Where will growth come from: expansion or gains in market share?

If your business unit plans to take market share from competitors, how will it do so, and how will they respond? Are you counting on a strategic advantage or superior execution?

What are your business unit’s distinctive competitive strengths, and how does the plan build on them?

How different is the strategy from those of competitors, and why? Is that a good or a bad thing?

Beyond the immediate planning cycle, what are the key issues, risks, and opportunities that we should discuss today?

What would a private-equity owner do with this business?

How will the business unit monitor the execution of this strategy?

One pharmaceutical company invites business unit leaders to take part in the strategy reviews of their peers in other units. This approach can help build a better understanding of the entire company and, especially, of the issues that span business units. The risk is that such interactions might constrain the honesty and vigor of the dialogue and put executives at the focus of the discussion on the defensive.

Corporate senior-management teams can dedicate only a few hours or at most a few days to a business unit under review. So team members should spend this time in challenging yet collaborative discussions with business unit leaders rather than trying to absorb many facts during the review itself. To provide some context for the discussion, best-practice companies disseminate important operational and financial information to the corporate review team well in advance of such sessions. This reading material should also tee up the most important issues facing the business and outline the proposed strategy, ensuring that the review team is prepared with well-thought-out questions. In our experience, the right 10 pages provide ample fuel to fire a vigorous discussion, but more than 25 pages will likely douse the level of energy or engagement in the room.

Adapt planning cycles to the needs of each business

Managers are justifiably concerned about the resources and time required to implement an issues-based strategic-planning approach. One easy—yet rarely adopted—solution is to free business units from the need to conduct this rigorous process every single year. In all but the most volatile, high-velocity industries, it is hard to imagine that a major strategic redirection will be necessary every planning cycle. In fact, forcing businesses to undertake this exercise annually is distracting and may even be detrimental. Managers need to focus on executing the last plan’s major initiatives, many of which can take 18 to 36 months to implement fully.

Some companies alternate the business units that undergo the complete strategic-planning process (as opposed to abbreviated annual updates of the existing plan). One media company, for example, requires individual business units to undertake strategic planning only every two or three years. This cadence enables the corporate senior-management team and its strategy group to devote more energy to the business units that are “at bat.” More important, it frees the corporate-strategy group to work directly with the senior team on critical issues that affect the entire company—issues such as developing an integrated digitization strategy and addressing unforeseen changes in the fast-moving digital-media landscape.

Other companies use trigger mechanisms to decide which business units will undergo a full strategic-planning exercise in a given year. One industrial company assigns each business unit a color-coded grade—green, yellow, or red—based on the unit’s success in executing the existing strategic plan. “Code red,” for example, would slate a business unit for a strategy review. Although many of the metrics that determine the grade are financial, some may be operational to provide a more complete assessment of the unit’s performance.

Freeing business units from participating in the strategic-planning process every year raises a caveat, however. When important changes in the external environment occur, senior managers must be able to engage with business units that are not under review and make major strategic decisions on an ad hoc basis. For instance, a major merger in any industry would prompt competitors in it to revisit their strategies. Indeed, one advantage of a tailored planning cycle is that it builds slack into the strategic-review system, enabling management to address unforeseen but pressing strategic issues as they arise.

Implement a strategic-performance-management system

In the end, many companies fail to execute the chosen strategy. More than a quarter of our survey respondents said that their companies had plans but no execution path. Forty-five percent reported that planning processes failed to track the execution of strategic initiatives. All this suggests that putting in place a system to measure and monitor their progress can greatly enhance the impact of the planning process.

Most companies believe that their existing control systems and performance-management processes (including budgets and operating reviews) are the sole way to monitor progress on strategy. As a result, managers attempt to translate the decisions made during the planning process into budget targets or other financial goals. Although this practice is sensible and necessary, it is not enough. We estimate that a significant portion of the strategic decisions we recommend to companies can’t be tracked solely through financial targets. A company undertaking a major strategic initiative to enhance its innovation and product-development capabilities, for example, should measure a variety of input metrics, such as the quality of available talent and the number of ideas and projects at each stage in development, in addition to pure output metrics such as revenues from new-product sales. One information technology company, for instance, carefully tracks the number and skill levels of people posted to important strategic projects.

Strategic-performance-management systems, which should assign accountability for initiatives and make their progress more transparent, can take many forms. One industrial corporation tracks major strategic initiatives that will have the greatest impact, across a portfolio of a dozen businesses, on its financial and strategic goals. Transparency is achieved through regular reviews and the use of financial as well as nonfinancial metrics. The corporate-strategy team assumes responsibility for reviews (chaired by the CEO and involving the relevant business-unit leaders) that use an array of milestones and metrics to assess the top ten initiatives. One to expand operations in China and India, for example, would entail regular reviews of interim metrics such as the quality and number of local employees recruited and the pace at which alliances are formed with channel partners or suppliers. Each business unit, in turn, is accountable for adopting the same performance-management approach for its own, lower-tier top-ten list of initiatives.

When designed well, strategic-performance-management systems can give an early warning of problems with strategic initiatives, whereas financial targets alone at best provide lagging indicators. An effective system enables management to step in and correct, redirect, or even abandon an initiative that is failing to perform as expected. The strategy of a pharmaceutical company that embarked on a major expansion of its sales force to drive revenue growth, for example, presupposed that rapid growth in the number of sales representatives would lead to a corresponding increase in revenues. The company also recognized, however, that expansion was in turn contingent on several factors, including the ability to recruit and train the right people. It therefore put in place a regular review of the key strategic metrics against its actual performance to alert managers to any emerging problems.

Integrate human-resources systems into the strategic plan

Simply monitoring the execution of strategic initiatives is not sufficient: their successful implementation also depends on how managers are evaluated and compensated. Yet only 36 percent of the executives we surveyed said that their companies’ strategic-planning processes were integrated with HR processes. One way to create a more valuable strategic-planning process would be to tie the evaluation and compensation of managers to the progress of new initiatives.

Although the development of strategy is ostensibly a long-term endeavor, companies traditionally emphasize short-term, purely financial targets—such as annual revenue growth or improved margins—as the sole metrics to gauge the performance of managers and employees. This approach is gradually changing. Deferred-compensation models for boards, CEOs, and some senior managers are now widely used. What’s more, several companies have added longer-term performance targets to complement the short-term ones. A major pharmaceutical company, for example, recently revamped its managerial-compensation structure to include a basket of short-term financial and operating targets as well as longer-term, innovation-based growth targets.

Although these changes help persuade managers to adopt both short- and long-term approaches to the development of strategy, they don’t address the need to link evaluation and compensation to specific strategic initiatives. One way of doing so is to craft a mix of performance targets that more appropriately reflect a company’s strategy. For example, one North American services business that launched strategic initiatives to improve its customer retention and increase sales also adjusted the evaluation and compensation targets for its managers. Rather than measuring senior managers only by revenue and margin targets, as it had done before, it tied 20 percent of their compensation to achieving its retention and cross-selling goals. By introducing metrics for these specific initiatives and linking their success closely to bonus packages, the company motivated managers to make the strategy succeed.

An advantage of this approach is that it motivates managers to flag any problems early in the implementation of a strategic initiative (which determines the size of bonuses) so that the company can solve them. Otherwise, managers all too often sweep the debris of a failing strategy under the operating rug until the spring-cleaning ritual of next year’s annual planning process.

Some business leaders have found ways to give strategic planning a more valuable role in the formulation as well as the execution of strategy. Companies that emulate their methods might find satisfaction instead of frustration at the end of the annual process.

Renée Dye is a consultant in McKinsey’s Atlanta office, and Olivier Sibony is a director in the Paris office.

This article was first published in the Autumn 2007 issue of McKinsey on Finance . Visit McKinsey’s corporate finance site to view the full issue.

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Capitalize on present opportunities and prepare for the future with strategic planning.

Whether you’re starting a new business or looking to revamp your company’s existing structures, a strategic plan is crucial for success. It complements existing documents, such as mission statements and individualized project plans, and considers future opportunities and potential setbacks.

With a strategic plan suited to your specific goals, you can chart a realistic, sustainable road map that acknowledges your current organizational challenges while unlocking future possibilities. Learn how strategic planning can benefit your organization and set you up for long-term success.

What is strategic planning?

Strategic planning is a continuous, systematic process for organizations to define their short- and long-term direction. It involves comprehensively assessing internal aspects, like employee development, budgets, and timelines, and external elements, such as market trends and competitors, to enable effective resource allocation so your organization can achieve business goals and scale effectively.

The strategic planning process is dynamic and requires adaptability to changing circumstances to establish a structured approach to decision-making and maintain team agility. At its core, strategic planning serves as a road map that steers an organization from its present state toward a well-defined future, ensuring sustainable growth.

The benefits of strategic planning

As a holistic road map, a strategic plan well suited to your organization can propel your productivity. Here are a few benefits that strategic planning brings:

  • Creating a shared purpose. Strategic planning involves team members in setting the organization’s mission, vision, and values. This collaborative process ensures that every team member understands and connects with these fundamental principles — fostering a sense of shared purpose and direction.
  • Proactive planning. The strategic planning process translates abstract ideas into actionable objectives. Setting specific, attainable goals and mapping out strategies to achieve them provides a clear blueprint for the future that’s guided by informed decision-making and deliberate goal-setting.
  • Effective resource allocation. Strategic planning allocates resources such as finances, personnel, and technology based on their potential impact on business goals. This process assesses the resources required to achieve each objective and distributes them to maximize efficiency and effectiveness.
  • Defining long-term and short-term goals. Strategic plans break down long-term, overarching goals into smaller, short-term objectives to create a step-by-step pathway to achieve the larger vision. This makes goals more manageable and actionable and enables regular monitoring and adjustment of these goals.
  • SWOT analysis. Strategic planning provides a clear understanding of your organization’s current status, position in the market, and well-being through a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis. By evaluating both internal and external factors, this process helps identify areas where your organization excels, where it can improve, and external factors that could impact its success, ultimately helping you strategize for future growth and stability.
  • Anticipating market trends. Strategic planning enables organizations to foresee and prepare for future changes by analyzing market data and trends. This proactive approach involves evaluating emerging trends, consumer behavior, and technological advancements to adapt strategies accordingly, ensuring you stay ahead of the curve.

How does a strategic plan differ from other project management and business tools?

When creating a long-term vision, a strategic plan becomes pivotal in steering your organization toward success. However, there are other project management tools and workflows with similar goals. Here’s how strategic plans differ from those processes.

Strategic plans vs. business plans

While a strategic plan outlines the organization’s long-term direction and actions to achieve overarching goals, a business plan focuses more on starting new ventures or restructuring existing ones. The strategic plan is broader in scope and encompasses long-term visions like market expansion, while the business plan might detail the steps to attract new customers and establish brand identity .

For example, a new brick-and-mortar sports apparel store might have a business plan for attracting new customers and establishing a brand identity, with a strategic plan that focuses on expanding into online sales to capture a broader audience over a three-year period.

Strategic plans vs. mission statements

A strategic plan outlines a comprehensive set of strategies to achieve organizational goals, while a mission or vision statement concisely communicates the organization’s core purpose. The mission statement sets the tone and direction, and the strategic plan lays out the specific initiatives, such as research and development investments and partnerships, to realize that vision.

Consider a mission statement for a security camera company — to create seamlessly integrated security systems that protect homes. Meanwhile, their strategic plan details initiatives such as product development, resource allocation, and personnel plans to achieve that mission statement.

Strategic plans vs. company objectives

Company objectives are specific, feasible, and measurable targets. In contrast, a strategic plan provides a broader blueprint for aligning resources and realizing those objectives. The strategic plan incorporates and supports various company objectives through detailed action plans and resource allocation.

For instance, an ecommerce platform aims to increase online sales by 15% in the first quarter. To achieve this, their marketing team creates a strategic plan prioritizing a digital marketing revamp, including optimizing the company website, driving organic traffic, and boosting search engine optimization (SEO).

Strategic plans vs. business cases

Unlike strategic plans, which broadly set the direction for multiple projects and initiatives aligned with a company’s long-term goals, business cases justify individual projects and focus on a specific initiative’s viability and benefits.

For example, a business case might focus on the financial feasibility and expected outcomes of introducing a new analytics feature in a software product. In contrast, the strategic plan of this software company might include goals such as becoming a leader in data-driven solutions, where the analytics function features prominently.

Strategic plans vs. project plans

Project plans are detailed documents that outline specific timelines, tasks, and budgets to complete a project. In contrast, strategic plans incorporate multiple project plans, ensuring they align with the broader goals and vision of the organization, and provide the context and framework for developing and implementing individual project plans.

For a web development team, a project plan could detail the steps for redesigning a client’s website, including milestones, resources, and deadlines. However, the strategic plan for this web development company might aim to become the go-to agency for innovative web solutions. Their strategic plan guides not just this single project but others in terms of technology adoption, client engagement strategies, and market positioning.

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The 5 essential steps to strategic planning

Now that you’re familiar with strategic plans’ benefits and use cases, here are five best practices to create one tailored for your organization.

1. Understand your position

Before drafting the actual plan, it’s essential to understand your position in the market. Conduct a SWOT analysis of your industry that focuses on current market trends, client needs, and the competitive landscape. This comprehensive understanding helps you grasp where your organization stands and what unique opportunities or challenges you might face so you can establish a solid foundation for future strategies.

2. Set clear goals and objectives

After understanding your market position, establish specific, attainable, and measurable objectives that align with your business’s mission and broader goals. Ensure these goals are relevant, time-bound, and fit within your organization’s resources and budget. Doing so effectively guides your efforts and provides a framework for measuring progress.

3. Define the organization-wide plan

After brainstorming broad long- and short-term goals, convert them into a cohesive strategy encompassing all departments. For example, if launching a new website design is your goal, involve developers, designers, and marketers in your planning process. Assess and use each team member’s strengths and encourage cross-departmental collaboration. This step ensures that your strategy is holistic and aligns every department toward common objectives.

4. Establish and meet KPIs

Implement key performance indicators (KPIs) relevant to your project. For a web development agency, these could include metrics such as website loading speed, user engagement rates, or client acquisition. You can also use data visualization tools , like Google Analytics, to gather insights and track objectives and key results.

This phase is where you translate strategy into action by allocating resources according to your pre-established goals and measure the progress against these KPIs.

5. Review and update

Strategic plans in business are flexible. As markets and consumer demands evolve, so must your approach. Regularly review your KPIs, collect customer feedback, study market trends and industry changes, and motivate your team to be flexible when necessary.

A continuous, iterative process ensures your organization remains responsive and aware of ever-changing conditions, allowing you to effectively anticipate new hurdles, improve existing frameworks, and leverage opportunities.

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Why Is Strategic Planning Important?

Above view of team creating a strategic plan

  • 06 Oct 2020

Do you know what your organization’s strategy is? How much time do you dedicate to developing that strategy each month?

If your answers are on the low side, you’re not alone. According to research from Bridges Business Consultancy , 48 percent of leaders spend less than one day per month discussing strategy.

It’s no wonder, then, that 48 percent of all organizations fail to meet at least half of their strategic targets. Before an organization can reap the rewards of its business strategy, planning must take place to ensure its strategy remains agile and executable .

Here’s a look at what strategic planning is and how it can benefit your organization.

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What Is Strategic Planning?

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

It’s important to highlight that strategic planning is an ongoing process—not a one-time meeting. In the online course Disruptive Strategy , Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen notes that in a study of HBS graduates who started businesses, 93 percent of those with successful strategies evolved and pivoted away from their original strategic plans.

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

Strategic planning requires time, effort, and continual reassessment. Given the proper attention, it can set your business on the right track. Here are three benefits of strategic planning.

Related: 4 Ways to Develop Your Strategic Thinking Skills

Benefits of Strategic Planning

1. create one, forward-focused vision.

Strategy touches every employee and serves as an actionable way to reach your company’s goals.

One significant benefit of strategic planning is that it creates a single, forward-focused vision that can align your company and its shareholders. By making everyone aware of your company’s goals, how and why those goals were chosen, and what they can do to help reach them, you can create an increased sense of responsibility throughout your organization.

This can also have trickle-down effects. For instance, if a manager isn’t clear on your organization’s strategy or the reasoning used to craft it, they could make decisions on a team level that counteract its efforts. With one vision to unite around, everyone at your organization can act with a broader strategy in mind.

2. Draw Attention to Biases and Flaws in Reasoning

The decisions you make come with inherent bias. Taking part in the strategic planning process forces you to examine and explain why you’re making each decision and back it up with data, projections, or case studies, thus combatting your cognitive biases.

A few examples of cognitive biases are:

  • The recency effect: The tendency to select the option presented most recently because it’s fresh in your mind
  • Occam’s razor bias: The tendency to assume the most obvious decision to be the best decision
  • Inertia bias: The tendency to select options that allow you to think, feel, and act in familiar ways

One cognitive bias that may be more difficult to catch in the act is confirmation bias . When seeking to validate a particular viewpoint, it's the tendency to only pay attention to information that supports that viewpoint.

If you’re crafting a strategic plan for your organization and know which strategy you prefer, enlist others with differing views and opinions to help look for information that either proves or disproves the idea.

Combating biases in strategic decision-making requires effort and dedication from your entire team, and it can make your organization’s strategy that much stronger.

Related: 3 Group Decision-Making Techniques for Success

3. Track Progress Based on Strategic Goals

Having a strategic plan in place can enable you to track progress toward goals. When each department and team understands your company’s larger strategy, their progress can directly impact its success, creating a top-down approach to tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) .

By planning your company’s strategy and defining its goals, KPIs can be determined at the organizational level. These goals can then be extended to business units, departments, teams, and individuals. This ensures that every level of your organization is aligned and can positively impact your business’s KPIs and performance.

It’s important to remember that even though your strategy might be far-reaching and structured, it must remain agile. As Christensen asserts in Disruptive Strategy , a business’s strategy needs to evolve with the challenges and opportunities it encounters. Be prepared to pivot your KPIs as goals shift and communicate the reasons for change to your organization.

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Improve Your Strategic Planning Skills

Strategic planning can benefit your organization’s vision, execution, and progress toward goals. If strategic planning is a skill you’d like to improve, online courses can provide the knowledge and techniques needed to lead your team and organization.

Strategy courses can range from primers on key concepts (such as Economics for Managers ), to deep-dives on strategy frameworks (such as Disruptive Strategy ), to coursework designed to help you strategize for a specific organizational goal (such as Sustainable Business Strategy ).

Learning how to craft an effective, compelling strategic plan can enable you to not only invest in your career but provide lasting value to your organization.

Do you want to formulate winning strategies for your organization? Explore our portfolio of online strategy courses and download the free flowchart to determine which is the best fit for you and your goals.

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Four Best Practices for Strategic Planning

Strategic Planning

/ focus, four best practices for strategic planning.

By  Nicolas Kachaner ,  Kermit King , and  Sam Stewart

Strategic planning is one of the least-loved organizational processes. Executives at most companies criticize it as overly bureaucratic, insufficiently insightful, and ill suited for today’s rapidly changing markets. Some even argue that strategic planning is a relic that should be relegated to the past and that organizations seeking to prosper in turbulent times should instead invest in market intelligence and agility.

Although the diagnosis is largely right, the prescription is wrong.

More than ever, companies need to devote time to strategy. Nearly one-tenth of public companies disappear each year—a fourfold increase in mortality since 1965. And the life span of the average company has halved since 1970. (See “ Die Another Day: What Leaders Can Do About the Shrinking Life Expectancy of Corporations ,” BCG article, December 2015.) Faced with those odds, it doesn’t make sense to put all your chips on agility. Agility is great, but it’s more powerful when paired with preparedness. And achieving strategic preparedness takes a structured, organized thought process to identify and consider potential threats, disruptions, and opportunities—which is, for want of a better term, strategic planning.

In short, the problem isn’t strategic planning. It’s that most companies lack an effective strategic-planning process.

Although there is no one-size-fits-all approach to strategic planning, we have found that the companies that get the most benefit from their strategic-planning activities have four things in common:

  • They explore strategy at distinct time horizons.
  • They constantly reinvent and stimulate the strategic dialogue.
  • They engage the broad organization.
  • They invest in execution and monitoring.

Explore Strategy at Distinct Time Horizons

It is important to think about strategy at different time horizons. Each has different goals and requires different approaches, a different frequency, and the involvement of different people. Much of the frustration expressed about strategic-planning processes arises when companies try to address the long, medium, and short terms through a single, inflexible process. Leading companies often think of strategy at three time horizons (see Exhibit 1):

Four Best Practices for Strategic Planning | Ex 1

  • The Long Term. The purpose of long-term strategic thinking should be to define, validate, or redefine the vision, mission, and direction of the company. It’s about projecting more than five years into the future. How might megatrends, including technology advances and demographic shifts, alter the business environment? What strategic risks and opportunities are revealed when considering future scenarios? Will the company’s traditional sources of advantage remain strong or be compromised? What new opportunities could arise and give the organization an opportunity to win? It’s the forum to challenge and redefine the boundaries of the market and the rules of the game. Philips’s decision to shift its focus from consumer electronics to the health care sector is an example of this kind of thinking. Looking forward, the company’s executives could see that an aging population and the fitness trend would provide strong tailwinds for a change in course toward the health care sector, while continuing commoditization would leave the traditional consumer electronics business at best becalmed. It was a vision for the future around which they could then align the organization for a multiyear journey. The long term is also a great perspective from which to consider how to project skills and brand into new domains. BIC a good example: it recognized that its capabilities positioned it to be not just a pen company but a broad-based disposable-device company, a realization that created the foundation for its move into lighters, shavers, and more.
  • The Medium Term. The purpose of medium-term strategic planning should be to enumerate the steps necessary to realize the vision—typically over a three- to five-year period. The focus is on developing clear, actionable business plans that describe the multiyear strategic initiatives required to transform vision into value. Which customer and geographic segments should we prioritize? What is the innovation strategy and roadmap? Where will we likely need strategic partnerships and acquisitions? What new business models are required?
  • The Short Term. The purpose of short-term strategic planning should be to challenge the current strategy, evaluate progress, and explore options to accelerate execution. Is execution above, at, or below plan—and why? Do the plan’s strategic assumptions remain valid? How should the company adapt to changes in the business environment? What are management’s best new ideas to strengthen or adjust the plan? What’s critical is to encourage creativity and real dialogue—and to avoid a budget-centric process that focuses mostly on the numbers. The best companies break the process into stages that progress from a review of the critical and emerging strategic issues toward a detailed plan for the year and beyond.

Clearly, long-term vision, medium-term strategy, and short-term plans need to be revisited with different frequencies—and those frequencies need to reflect the particulars of the sector. The key is to match the rhythm of the process to the “body clock” of the sector. For a sector like mining, a ten-year horizon for the long term could be just right. In a fast-moving tech sector, five years could be too long even for the long term.

Perspectives on Strategy and Value: Insights on creating sustainable value in an uncertain world.

Forums in which strategy can be discussed outside the rhythms of these three processes are also important; they can allow for real-time adjustments throughout the year. Increasingly, we see companies pursuing an approach we call “always-on strategy,” which typically takes the form of monthly strategy reviews by the executive committee. Some sessions may focus on a deep dive into a critical initiative, for example, whereas others may concentrate on exploring an emerging threat, a new competitor, or a disruptive business model.

Constantly Reinvent and Stimulate the Strategic Dialogue

With strategic planning—unlike sports or music—repetitive practice doesn’t make perfect.

The classic story goes as follows. A new chief strategy officer is appointed. He or she interviews the executive team and hears about the pain points in the process: too much work, not enough big ideas; too financially oriented, too inward looking. A new process is designed that calls for new analyses to describe the market, competitors, and external trends. In the first year, it is a big, painful effort. But it is also quite useful because the new analyses uncover new ideas and stimulate valuable dialogue. In the second year, the process is less painful, because most analyses can simply be adjustments of last year’s analysis—but, typically, it is also much less useful. The same inputs lead to similar conclusions. After a few years, the new process feels just as uncreative and bureaucratic as the old one.

Breaking out of this kind of cycle is challenging. Some companies have attempted to change the process every year, designing different exercises for managers. One year—to use a famous dot-com-era example from General Electric—it’s “destroy-your-business.com.” The next, it’s a search for underleveraged assets. The year after that, it’s a business-model-reinvention exercise. These can certainly be useful, but learning a new process each year adds a lot of overhead and repeating any exercise too soon is pointless.

A more sustainable solution is to follow the same process year to year but to refresh it with different questions each year. Such an approach breaks the compromise between process efficiency and fresh thinking. By focusing a standard process on new questions, the strategic dialogue will remain rich, because participants will have new analyses to consider and fundamentally different ideas to discuss. Of course, the success of this approach depends heavily on the quality of the questions. As noted management consultant and writer Peter Drucker once said, “The most common source of mistakes in management decisions is the emphasis on finding the right answer rather than the right question.”

Great strategists—and great business leaders—have to learn the “art of questioning.”

The right questions should be neither too broad (“How do we save the world?”) nor too narrow (“How do we price the next new product?”). Rather, they should help managers stretch their thinking beyond the current boundaries of their day-to-day activities. Good practices abound. One is to have the leadership team engage in a strategic workshop to articulate and prioritize—but not debate—the key questions that the company will have to answer in the next three to five years. Another good approach is to ask the leaders of the business units to identify the most important questions that the center should be asking them—being clear that the business unit leaders will be judged on the quality of the questions that they propose. It’s important to limit the number of questions to two or three per business unit or department.

strategic planning guide for managers

Once the right questions are selected, the leadership team can let go, knowing that the teams are working on the right issues. The teams will design novel relevant analyses, amass new knowledge, and develop new recommendations. Question-driven strategic dialogue is inherently an iterative process—even when it occurs on an annual basis. One highly effective approach is known as the “W-shaped model,” and it begins with the center communicating the critical questions for the year to divisional and functional managers, who are charged to return with the answers, along with an update on progress against plan and a series of ideas—some bold and disruptive—for consideration. (See the left side of Exhibit 2.) After a constructive dialogue (shown at the middle of the W in the exhibit), the leadership team selects from among the options and sends management back to develop detailed plans, which are then discussed and approved in a second meeting.

It may take more than one cycle to address a question fully. The process can lead to refreshed long-term visions, adapted or new medium-term strategies, and decisive short-term actions.

Another emerging approach is to leverage big data and advanced analytics for systematic market intelligence, including information that is hidden in unstructured data or local languages. This allows companies to explore weak and emerging signals of opportunity and risk—such as subtle changes in customer or competitive behavior—in core markets as well as in peripheral or adjacent markets.

Engage the Broad Organization

As a general rule, organizations that engage a broad group of internal and external stakeholders in their strategy development efforts yield better results than organizations that leave strategy in the hands of a small, central team. When going broad, the strategy team still has a critical role as orchestrator. It should drive the process, set timelines, coach teams on methodology, ensure the sanctity of proprietary information, and generally facilitate and coax the dialogue toward an organizational consensus.

Going broad prevents groupthink. By involving people from different backgrounds, generations, and geographies, an organization is more likely to surface alternative ideas and perspectives. Some companies even engage outsiders, among them customers and suppliers, in the process. Nonexecutive directors—who are charged with bringing an outside perspective to evaluating and approving the company’s strategy—can play a powerful role too. However, the most common complaint we hear from nonexecutive directors (and boards in general) is that they are not sufficiently engaged in the strategy process to play a truly valuable governance role. One good practice is to include directors in the questioning phase and in specific conversations along the “W” process described above.

Leveraging a diverse group of stakeholders improves an organization’s strategic “peripheral vision.” The best strategists are adept at spotting both opportunities and risks early—which provides a valuable head start over rivals. Particularly in today’s turbulent competitive environments, a well-chosen extended strategy team can be a powerful early-warning system. It makes it easier to spot the emerging competitors, new business models, and changes to customers’ economics that could undermine the long-term vision or challenge key strategic assumptions.

Engaging stakeholders early also increases buy-in and smooths implementation. When key managers at multiple levels are involved in the strategy process, they are more aware of the strategy and they feel ownership of it. Even if their personal ideas aren’t adopted, they will feel heard, understand the rationale for the chosen strategy, and be prepared to support its execution.

Invest in Execution and Monitoring

Having a great strategic-planning process is only half the challenge. The other half—translating the strategy into results—can be even harder, particularly when the new strategy involves moves outside the core. (See the right side of Exhibit 2.)

An all-too-familiar story: A company spends productive time exploring exciting strategic options and making clear choices. A few months later, managers look back and realize that, despite best intentions, the pressure of day-to-day operations and organizational inertia have kept them from making measurable progress on the new strategy.

Investments in several areas can help avoid that fate. (For a glimpse of scenarios that require special consideration, see “Three Special Cases.”)

Three Special Cases

The best practices outlined in this report may need adjusting in certain special situations.

Matrix Organizations. Many companies have at least a three-dimensional matrix: for example, brands or product lines, geographies, and functions. Each needs to build a multiyear strategy, but how can the company ensure that the dots connect in the end? The cascading memo can help, but it’s often helpful to “linearize the matrix”—that is, to start with one dimension and use its output as input for the next dimension. One common order is product plans (with input from key countries), geography, and then function. Some iteration will inevitably be necessary, but in our experience linearizing simplifies the process.

Conglomerates. Multibusiness companies need, of course, to go through a thoughtful strategy development process for each business. But they also need to orchestrate a complementary thought process about the value each business adds to the overall corporation. This thought process needs to cover issues like the balance of the portfolio—and the synergies across the group, whether soft synergies such as training and talent sharing or hard ones like cross-selling and shared services.

Family Businesses. In many ways, family businesses are businesses like any other, but inevitably their strategic-planning process needs to include the family dimension. What are the goals and long-term aspirations of the family? And how can the business strategy best be harmonized with them? Generally, it is important to include key family shareholders in the planning process.

Clear and Engaging Communication to Foster Alignment. In most companies, if you ask ten managers one level below the executive committee to describe the company’s strategy in a couple of sentences, you get a set of responses that are not fully aligned. Move down the organization and the signal-to-noise ratio progressively degrades. It’s hard to overestimate the importance of clear communication that promotes the strategy with a common, proprietary vocabulary. One organization that adopted a strategy to increase its share of wallet with individual clients found a way to sidestep the risk of misalignment on strategy. Leadership memorialized the strategy with a simple chart that showed share of wallet on the y-axis and wallet size on the x-axis. Successful realization of the strategy would be tracked by upward movement on the chart over time. They called the strategy “go north.” The phrase became an important element of the company’s internal language—almost a rallying cry.

Beyond simple slogans, the classic cascading-memo exercise can also be quite powerful. It starts with the CEO sending to direct reports a one-page memo that summarizes the strategy. The memo charges them to write their own version for their team that expresses the strategy and what it means for their slice of the organization. The process continues downward. At each stage, the strategy group reviews the memos for clarity and consistency with the overall strategy. This approach not only helps managers get their heads around the new direction (the act of creating a written synthesis forces concentration and drives alignment) but also pinpoints areas of the organization where the strategy is not well understood—before that misalignment has a chance to affect performance.

High-Profile Strategic Initiatives to Build Traction. To ensure that the new strategy isn’t drowned out by day-to-day concerns, leading companies convert it into a set of manageable strategic initiatives that give the strategy both visibility and traction. Each initiative needs to be properly chartered, staffed, and resourced and given a clear timeline. The strategy department typically plays the role of process manager, providing support and keeping the team on course. Particularly for strategies that involve adjacent moves or new business models, initiatives may not have a natural organizational home. In these cases, it is essential to have a strong executive sponsor and clear funding sources. Sometimes, organizational independence is necessary as well. When the company’s dominant core model is potentially dissonant or even competitive with the new opportunity, the best way to drive a successful result is to insulate the new effort from the core, to give it time and space to find its footing. The company Nespresso was born this way. Once a small entrepreneurial project nurtured within Nestlé, Nespresso became a worldwide success—but only after it was set up as an independent unit.

It is important that initiative teams and the organization overall understand that these initiatives are priorities for the executive committee. Progress reviews and “pressure tests” should have a regular place in the executive committee’s monthly always-on strategic dialogues.

A Strategy Dashboard to Highlight Success Metrics. Another powerful way to encourage the organization to embrace the new strategy is to identify quantitative metrics and goals that can measure progress. (For example, when Procter & Gamble decided to embrace open innovation in 2003, the CEO set a target of 50% of innovations sourced from outside the company.) Complementing the organization’s financial and operational metrics, the strategy metrics should concentrate on new measures tied to the new strategy. And incentives for key players should be tied to these metrics and goals. Today’s new and intuitive digital tools make it possible to have a real-time and “clickable” view of critical strategic variables that drive performance against plan. At the same time, powerful analytics increasingly allow you to automate many first-level analyses. Optimizing human and machine roles enables companies to act more quickly and effectively in the face of changing market conditions.

At a time when technological progress is blurring industry boundaries, when globalization is expanding geographic horizons, and when new competitors are arising from emerging and adjacent markets, it is more important than ever to be prepared strategically, to be able to look sideways, and to have a sound strategy firmly coupled with a system to translate it into action.

Far too many strategic-planning processes fall short. They focus on analyzing the current market and current competitors, rather than searching for or anticipating disruptive new entrants or business models. They make work but don’t offer insight.

It doesn’t have to be that way. By emulating the four strategic-planning best practices, you can boost the ratio of insight to effort and align the organization around a strategy that is faithfully executed, constantly questioned, and regularly refreshed.

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Managing Director & Senior Partner

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Senior Advisor, Sr. Partner Emeritus

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Strategic Planning

Strategic planning guide for leaders & business owners

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For successful organizations, few tasks are as important as strategic planning. As business professor Lee Bolman once said, “A vision without a strategy remains an illusion.”

A well-made strategic plan serves as a map toward an organization’s idea of success. The plan must start with a vision, the driving force behind the organization. Then, executives must identify the goals that will bring their vision to life.

strategic planning guide for managers

Once those goals are in place, strategic planning entails finding the tactics that will move the company closer to its goals. This means understanding the company’s markets, products and infrastructure, as well as how they can be used to meet organization goals.

Organizations must continuously identify threats and opportunities that may disrupt the plan. This helps them to prepare for adjustments that will need to be made as the world changes.

Strategic plans operate as a continuing process, according to Marc Emmer, a Vistage speaker and president of consulting and strategic planning firm Optimize Inc.

“It’s critical that companies think of strategy as a process, not an event,” Emmer says. “The process is about discipline, like maintaining your health. If the gym is on my calendar for five days this week but I have a last-minute crisis that makes me miss the gym on Thursday, that doesn’t dissuade me from my discipline of going back the next day. You plan, then adjust based on reality.”

The best companies are methodical in how they plan, Emmer says. In mid-market companies, senior managers spend as much as 5-10% of their time planning. By giving themselves time to step back from daily tasks to plan, these organizations allow themselves the space to adjust based on their collision with reality.

Where strategic planning goes wrong

Unfortunately, few organizations know how to create, implement, and execute a successful strategic plan.

Authors David Norton and Robert Kaplan wrote in their book, “ The Balanced Scorecard ,” that 90% of organizations fail to execute the plans they’ve created. The Economist Intelligence Unit has reported that 61% of executives say their firms struggle to bridge the gap from strategy to day-to-day implementation.

Too many executives get caught up in the tactics — the immediate objectives, today’s to-do list, and reacting to changes in the business environment. This distracts them from planning the organization’s future beyond strategic planning meetings, which are too often merely annual events.

Dr. Alison Grizzle, founder and president of business management consultancy Clearview Strategy Partners, says that most organizations create plans that are too simple to influence the business. These plans are made to check boxes throughout a single year rather than helping the organization grow over many years, she says.

And when organizations do have consistent strategic planning in place, they often use simple downloadable models and templates, Emmer says. He estimates one-third of Vistage members use such templated systems.

And while they are great useful for teams that lack structure, canned systems outlive their usefulness.

“Professional managers are not satisfied making strategy decisions without analysis and data,” Emmer says. “At this point in a company’s life cycle, downloadable templates and canned systems are no longer sufficient.”

No two plans are alike

One size “does not fit all” when it comes to strategic planning, Emmer says. A plan must evolve throughout the company’s life cycle. Rather than relying on a simple model, organizations hoping to grow must work to understand their limitations as part of the planning process.

Emmer suggests that executives think of their strategy as a set of look at inputs and outputs. What work is the company putting in and what results are they getting from that work? This is a line of inquiry that will take a company far deeper than any model, as it will lead smart organizations to follow the data and analytics.

Good data is truthful, showing organizations areas where they’re succeeding and highlighting areas where they struggle. Data and analytics make strategic plans work better and give companies the visibility they need into their operations, Grizzle says. Clean data allows executives to be sure they’re steering the organization’s proverbial ship with a well-drawn map, landing closer to the organizational vision.

Behavioral analytics, for example, allows an organization to clearly define expectations for employees, and then examine how employees met those expectations by way of their actions and behaviors. This shows the organization whether these expectations are being met, but it also gives employees a well-defined vision of what the organization expects.

“Executing on a plan is just a dream if the people aren’t ready to execute,” Grizzle says. “If you aren’t thinking about the people on your team, what they bring to the team, and how they are positioned to move the needle, then you’re going to miss a key component of the plan. And the odds of the plan being executed decrease significantly. And then your plan is just a pretty piece of paper on the wall.”

How CEOs can lead strategic planning

A well-made strategic plan comes from a well-led process, and that starts with the CEO. CEOs must have ownership of the organizational vision, Grizzle says, and hold tightly to that vision through growth.

CEOs are the decision-makers and the ship’s captain for any strategic plan, but they are likely not the person ensuring that a plan is carried through. For that, they delegate, giving other executives the freedom to lead on issues like measurement, accountability and communication.

“You need a person who is responsible for ensuring that the deliverables are on paper and that you’re reviewing them routinely,” Emmer says. “We always advocate that our clients meet every month after the strategy meeting and go through their common objectives. If you have four or five projects, CEOs will have someone who serves as champion or project manager for each one of those projects.”

Done correctly, this sentiment moves through the entire organizational structure. Managers who are given a clear understanding of the business (thanks to the planning process) can create a clear sense of understanding for each employee on their team.

CEOs must also set the tone in using the strategic planning process to confront cognitive biases. Biases are frequently exposed during planning meetings, Emmer says. Confirmation bias — favoring information that confirms rather than challenges one’s beliefs and values — is the most common bias he sees.

“You have to make decisions based on facts,” Emmer says, adding that people are often surprised to be challenged and find out they were wrong. “When people make a claim to me like we ought to do X, Y, and Z, I’ll ask them, ‘Based on what evidence?’ That helps to overcome bias.”

The main task of a CEO leading a strategic planning process is to remove barriers that get in the way of success, Grizzle says. This will be especially important as the plan is executed and areas of struggle are revealed.

“It’s about having honest conversations with people,” she says. “Here’s what we wanted from you, but here’s where you ended up. What were the barriers that got in your way? What resources don’t you have? How can I help you to be successful?”

Dedicating time to strategic planning

A strategic planning process begins in earnest when a company decides to make time to plan, Emmer says. Most companies do not dedicate time, treating strategic planning casually.

At most companies, Emmer sees that people barely prepare for strategic planning meetings, which typically only happen once per year. In the meeting, a few lists of objectives are created and rarely are those lists distributed to employees.

Instead of this, Emmer suggests that executives ensure that managers and fellow C-level executives take strategic planning seriously.

As part of a strategic planning process, executives can create a team of five-to-10 key stakeholders, known as a strategy team or management committee, to drive the strategic planning process. Management teams that take strategy seriously spend months preparing for a strategy meeting.

For example, says Emmer, executives will be better prepared by conducting market analysis, competitive analysis and employee satisfaction survey.

“They’re going to have data and information that they can act on,” Emmer says. “And then they make informed decisions based on that data. And then they crystallize that in a set of overarching objectives for the management team. And then when they leave that meeting, there is clarity on who is responsible for what.”

This committee — using the data they have from within and outside the company (via the market) — will determine where the company stands, how it can best meet its goals, and what tactical steps can best be taken to meet those goals. They’ll also be looking out for potential threats.

“Identify three or four threats and come up with a way to mitigate them,” Emmer says. “That way, you’re always looking at threats in real time.”

Identifying benchmarks

An overarching question through this strategic planning process, Grizzle says, is “What are the benchmarks?”

Benchmarks will be important for having proof that goals are met, but it will also be essential to know when strategic shifts must be made.

Grizzle says that a shift in strategy will always affect how people do their jobs and, thus, their benchmarks. However, most companies don’t adjust their expectations when they make strategic changes.

“As your business strategy shifts, your people strategy shifts,” Grizzle says. “How are you reexamining your people strategy every step of the way to make sure that your strategy is going to get the results?”

To get the cleanest benchmarks, a company must dedicate itself to finding clean streams of data and refine these streams over time.

Many companies don’t have well-integrated systems, Emmer says, and are often piecing together multiple streams of incongruent data. But Emmer says to remember strategic planning as a series of inputs and outputs — if the input of data is bad, it won’t be able to create a good strategic plan as output.

“Companies that are good at key performance indicators are able to measure the effectiveness of their plan better,” Emmer says. “Most companies use operational KPIs, lagging indicators in the rearview like revenue. We want to look at things that are predictive of future success. For example, good KPIs may be external numbers from the Producer Price Index that will tell me what my materials are going to cost two months from now. That’s better than examining how many parts you put out yesterday.”

The data and KPIs of the plan — taken in concert with knowing the skill set of the employee base — can be used to determine what is needed from employees. This will ensure that the right people are in place to do the work, Grizzle says, and benchmarks will show whether that work is being done well.

“What does the right person in the seat look like for this job, from a behavioral perspective, from a cognitive perspective, and from an experience perspective?” Grizzle says. “That will have companies looking at whether they need to shift hiring, coaching, or development.”

Emmer advises defining the deliverables — a set of overarching objectives each team is responsible for — across the company rather than for individual positions or teams.

“A mistake companies make is organizing objectives by job function,” Emmer says. “If you tell marketing that we need better case studies but not sales, the marketing guy will spend the whole year trying to chase a sales team down to get content for his case studies. But when you create an overarching objective for a corporation that’s co-owned by numerous people, then you have a better chance of achieving success.”

Executing the plan

Perhaps the biggest part of the process of strategic planning is execution and reassessing.

For Emmer, this means dedicating more time throughout the year to planning and adjusting, just as the captain of a ship would slowly steer based on weather and potential obstacles.

“If you’re a company with 100 employees, and those 100 employees work 2,000 hours, you have 200,000 labor hours each year,” Emmer says. “Doesn’t it make sense that a management team takes 200 hours to ensure that time is used well? We spend virtually no time planning, and most of our time reacting when all the bad things are happening. We have it backward in our business narrative.”

Executing a plan also means engaging employees in the process. For some CEOs, this may mean leading the engagement charge. But for others, it will mean finding the right person in the organization to lead company-wide implementation and delegating leadership of the engagement effort to them.

“If my president or COO is great at inspiring and engaging people, they can manage the people part of the plan,” Grizzle says. “It’s important for every role in the company to understand how they support the vision and strategy of the company. They need to be able to say, ‘Here’s my part of making this come alive.’”

‘A living, breathing document’

Once in place, a strategic plan is something of a project management exercise, Emmer says. The problem is that most companies are not good at project management.

Luckily, strategic planning is a perfect way to get better at managing the most important project: The overall success of the company.

Grizzle says that successful companies create a 3-year target for goals — it’s hard to know if a plan is successful without measuring over many years — then do a deep dive to create each year’s strategic plan.

Once created, successful companies hold quarterly meetings to see how the plan is progressing, checking benchmarks and looking for any areas where strategic shifts are needed.

The most successful companies come back to their plan each week during pulse meetings focused on the quarterly targets, Grizzle says. These companies are looking at what success looks like every week, gaining an intimate understanding of what moves the needle and what does not.

“The people that are more effectively executing on their strategic plans are the ones that have it as a living, breathing document,” Grizzle says. “They always know how they’re progressing because they always have the right metrics at the table.”

Related Resources

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A Guide for New Middle Managers

  • Gloria St. Martin-Lowry

strategic planning guide for managers

You need to understand the needs of those above and below you.

Middle management is all about understanding the broader vision of senior leadership and molding that into a playbook your team members can run with. While this involves a delicate balance, there are steps you can take to reach it and grow into a strong performer in this role.

  • Clarify expectations from higher-ups. Set up a weekly or biweekly one-on-one meeting with your manager. Use this time to ask your boss about the company’s current priorities and align on the objectives your team is expected to carry out.
  • With a firmer grasp on what’s expected from the top, the challenge now shifts to effectively communicating those goals to your team and breaking them down into two areas: team goals that contribute to the organizational goals and individual goals that contribute to the team goals.
  • As you create each team goal make sure it’s specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (aka SMART). When it comes to breaking down team goals further into individual goals, try to align specifics tasks with each person’s role, current responsibilities, and areas of expertise.
  • Finally, make sure your team’s work is visible to upper management. As people begin to carry out their work, hold biweekly or monthly “report-out” meetings during which you present their progress to stakeholders in upper management. The goal of these meetings is to show how your team is contributing to the organizational goals.

Congratulations! You’ve just been promoted to your first leadership position. You’re no longer at the same level as your former peers but you’re not a senior leader or an executive either. You’re in the middle, which means you have to figure out how to satisfy the needs of those above and below you.

strategic planning guide for managers

  • Gloria St. Martin-Lowry is the president of HPWP Group , a company that promotes leadership and organizational development through positivity, coaching, and problem-solving. HPWP is driven to create high-performing workplaces by partnering with courageous leaders who value the contributions of team members.

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Strategic human resource management: The ultimate guide

Brynne Conroy

Alana Rudder

Alana Rudder

“Verified by an expert” means that this article has been thoroughly reviewed and evaluated for accuracy.

Published 7:34 a.m. UTC Dec. 13, 2023

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Strategic human resource (HR) management treats human capital — or employees — as another financial asset of the company. Just like you’d consider real estate or raw materials as an asset to be optimized, strategic HR does the same for the company’s labor force. The more effective your strategic human resources plan is, the stronger the company will be both financially and culturally. 

Considering a strategic approach to HR management is increasingly important in our changing world. Creating a strategic human resource management plan can ensure you have a pipeline to qualified employees as time goes on, ensuring the sustainability of the business.

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What is strategic human resource management?

A good way to think of human resources is on an input/output paradigm. Traditional human resources weigh inputs more heavily. You’re focused on following compliance standards, regulations and processes. You’re managing benefits packages, running payroll , hiring and managing talent as well as day-to-day employee relations .

“Strategic HR focuses on supporting organizational goals,” said Anette Harris, owner and senior director of human resources at Harris Financial Coaching. “It plays a crucial role in analyzing employee life-cycle trends that can help an organization achieve its objectives.”

In other words, you’re much more focused on output. You’re looking at metrics like employee engagement and profit per employee. You still have to consider employment law, but you’re also aligning the company’s missions and objectives with what’s happening in the HR office and the company’s long-term goals. 

Benefits of strategic human resource management

There are a number of benefits to implementing strategic human resource management. They include: 

  • More quantifiable data. You can’t measure the impact of strategic HR unless you actually implement it. Once you start implementing it, you can gather the data that will help you measure the tangible benefits of the company’s strategies in terms of real dollars. As more time goes on and more data is gathered, you’ll gain even deeper insights.
  • Better the company’s finances. “Any financial measure that you can think of is greatly impacted to the positive when there’s a strong employee experience in place,” said Jim Link, chief human resource officer at SHRM. That means implementing strategic HR can help your company’s bottom line. 
  • Less turnover. If you have good strategic HR, your employees are likely to be happier. Happier employees are more likely to stick with you, saving you the costs of having to hire and train new employees. 
  • Prepare for future skill gaps. If you’re approaching HR strategically, you’ll be able to project future skill gaps that may pop up in the labor market. When you anticipate these shortages, you can draft policies that create a clear pipeline to get skilled applicants trained for the work you’ll need done.

Creating an effective HR strategy

Align hr and company goals.

The first step in creating an effective HR strategy is aligning HR’s goals with the larger company’s goals. If management and HR don’t interact a lot currently, it’s the strategic human resource manager’s job to bridge that gap. You’ll need your HR skills to mediate the two departments at first, but you’ll also need to break out your math skills. 

“The first thing you should do is learn the numbers of the business,” said Link. “But that doesn’t mean you just learn the numbers. You also learn the mission, values, goals and guiding principles of the organization.” 

Having this data will help you identify the most important metrics to measure as you create the best employee experience possible within the company’s budget. 

Define and assess company culture

It takes time to build company culture. Before you can start on the journey, you need to understand where company culture currently stands. The four key cultures you should assess are:

  • Collaboration

Link conveys these four cultures as individual legs on a four-legged stool. When one leg is longer or shorter than the others, everything is thrown off balance. The goal, then, is to grow each culture symbiotically with the other. As you build your stool, you’ll also want to consider cultures employees are likely to value in the future.

“When we look at the world and what employees are really seeking from their employer moving forward, they’re seeking a culture of care,” said Link.

Track important HR metrics

When you’re building out your company’s strategic human resource plan, you’ll want to start measuring metrics like: 

  • Cost per employee.
  • Revenue per employee. 
  • Employee productivity.
  • Employee engagement.
  • Retention rate.
  • Voluntary turnover rate. 

Some of these metrics can be measured by numerical data input, but others will require different approaches. For example, you might use employee surveys to gather data for a final SWOT analysis. This data can then help you present information to management or the board as you attempt to implement new policies.

Identify key areas of improvement

Once you have the data from current performance, hold it up against the company’s mission statement, stated values and – of course – its bottom line. First, evaluate company culture based on the four-legged stool model. If there are any areas where the culture could be performing better, that’s something you’ll want to address. 

Whether or not the culture is on course, you’ll need to also consider the financials before presenting any information across departments. Let’s say your employees are beyond happy and productive, but profit per employee is still low. You’d then use that data to find innovative ways to maintain company culture while also increasing revenue per employee. 

Set a plan to reach HR goals

After you’ve identified areas for improvement, you’ll need to get together a plan to work towards your new goals. That may mean implementing new initiatives within HR, but in most situations, it requires the involvement of other departments — most notably leadership. 

Get leadership buy-in and support

Improving employee experience and performance often requires policies from the top. That means strategic human resource managers need to engage leadership. You may need their stamp of approval to do something like changing the employee benefit package or streamlining processes in a particular department to enable employees to do their work more efficiently. 

If you’ve done your work on the numbers side of things, Link doesn’t see any reason for leadership to stand in opposition: “Companies that make a purposeful strategic investment in their employees have a much greater likelihood of generating short- and long-term success for the business. Full stop.”

Execute, monitor and adjust your plan

Once you’ve created buy-in with the necessary parties, execute your plan. Gather data as you go so you can monitor your progress, making any adjustments as necessary. 

Remember that as you grow one leg of your strategic HR stool, you’ll inherently need to work on the others. Being prepared to make adjustments along the way is a necessary part of the job.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

Strategic HR focuses more on outputs than inputs. It measures factors like employee performance, productivity, profit and retention against short and long-term company goals. All of these metrics are key indicators for either the success or failure of a business.

Traditional HR focuses primarily on compliance and regulations, handling day-to-day tasks like employee interactions and payroll . It considers federal, state and local employment law (inputs). Strategic HR focuses on the net financial impact employee policies have on the company (output) over the long-term and if they help the company meet its goals.

If your company isn’t agile, it’s going to be difficult to implement strategic HR — though the key factor is getting leadership buy-in. While it may initially be challenging to get managers or ownership on board with your vision, if you do ample research on current performance and projected profit margins after policy implementation, it gets a lot easier to convince leadership to implement changes.

Let’s say your organization knows it’s going to need employees capable of working with AI in the next five years. With that human resource need in mind, you may implement a training program or develop a relationship with a local college to identify talented graduates. That way, the company’s strategic plan is sustainable in the long run, as it won’t run into as many labor shortages.

Link says two of the best examples of successful strategic human resource management are IBM and Google. 

“IBM was ahead of the curve,” he said. “They focused on the area between human performance and capability vs. business outcomes. Because they’re so insightful about what their employees need, they can very quickly offer a personalized approach to each and every employee through their career coaching system, fostering a culture of learning which creates new business opportunities.”

Google is known for its strategic efforts during the hiring process in particular. On top of unique perks in its benefits package, Google makes group decisions when onboarding new members rather than leaving the decision to a single manager. This fosters a culture of collaboration even within the HR department itself.

Blueprint is an independent publisher and comparison service, not an investment advisor. The information provided is for educational purposes only and we encourage you to seek personalized advice from qualified professionals regarding specific financial decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Blueprint has an advertiser disclosure policy . The opinions, analyses, reviews or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the Blueprint editorial staff alone. Blueprint adheres to strict editorial integrity standards. The information is accurate as of the publish date, but always check the provider’s website for the most current information.

Brynne Conroy

Brynne Conroy has over 12 years of experience writing about money, with a particular focus on women's finances and small business lending and credit products. Her debut book was an Amazon #1 New Release across multiple categories, and she has been awarded a PEN America grant for the body of her work in the field. Find her bylines on LendingTree, Her Agenda, GoBankingRates, and Business Insider, and features on MSN Money, Jean Chatzky's HerMoney, and Yahoo Finance.

Alana is the deputy editor for USA Today Blueprint's small business team. She has served as a technology and marketing SME for countless businesses, from startups to leading tech firms — including Adobe and Workfusion. She has zealously shared her expertise with small businesses — including via Forbes Advisor and Fit Small Business — to help them compete for market share. She covers technologies pertaining to payroll and payment processing, online security, customer relationship management, accounting, human resources, marketing, project management, resource planning, customer data management and how small businesses can use process automation, AI and ML to more easily meet their goals. Alana has an MBA from Excelsior University.

How to start a small business: A step-by-step guide

How to start a small business: A step-by-step guide

Business Eric Rosenberg

Mastering Sales Planning: A Comprehensive Guide for Sales Managers

Mastering Sales Planning: A Comprehensive Guide for Sales Managers

Casey O'Connor

What is Sales Planning?

Understanding your market, setting realistic sales goals, creating an effective sales strategy, building a high-performing sales team, utilizing sales technology, developing a sales forecast, monitoring and analyzing performance, effective communication within the sales team, adapting to market changes.

Most sales managers know that, without sales planning , their team is unlikely to be successful in the long term. 

Strong data backs this up: 79% of top-performing teams rely on formal sales processes to guide them. There’s no question that proper planning leads to strong performance. 

Still, sales planning isn’t always an easy or straightforward process. It requires a methodical approach that ensures the plans you create give each member of your team clarity, direction, and confidence throughout the sales process. 

Small and medium-sized businesses, in particular, can sometimes be prone to neglecting careful and routine sales planning in favor of rapid growth and forward momentum. But teams of all sizes and experience levels, and sales professionals in all roles will benefit from having a dynamic sales plan that can guide them toward their sales goals. 

In this article, we’ll go over everything sales managers need to know about sales planning from top to bottom. 

Here’s what we’ll cover:

A sales plan delineates your goals, top-level strategies, target audience, and potential challenges. 

Most sales plans resemble a conventional business plan, but sales plans are dedicated specifically to outlining your sales strategy . A business plan defines your objectives, while a sales plan provides a detailed roadmap on precisely how you intend to achieve them.

Most sales plans include information about the following:

  • Target market/customers
  • Revenue targets
  • Sales strategies
  • Pricing plans and upcoming promotions
  • Deadlines and directly responsible individuals (DRIs)
  • Org chart/team structure
  • Available resources (including the sales budget )
  • Market trends and conditions

But the exact focus(es) of your sales planning process will vary depending on the unique needs of your team.

Sales Planning Goals

Ideally, your sales planning process should address both short-term and long-term sales goals, objectives, required resources, etc. 

The primary goals of sales planning are to:

  • Clearly outline sales goals and objectives so that everyone on the team has a common understanding.
  • Guide the members of your sales team through both the high-level sales strategy and sales methodology, as well as in-the-field sales tactics they will use to meet sales targets.
  • Describe, in detail, the roles and responsibilities of everyone on the sales team.
  • Track and monitor the effectiveness of your sales team.
  • Help predict whether individual sales reps, as well as the sales team as a whole, will meet their sales targets.

Good sales planning is an ongoing, never-ending process. It should involve routine data tracking and analysis to continuously improve sales performance . 

It’s okay to be a stickler about this, no matter how tedious the process may feel at first. The truth is, more than half of reps are missing their quotas. 

sales planning: sales quota

On the other hand, top-performing teams more consistently rely on the kind of structure that sales planning provides than their lower-performing counterparts. 

sales planning: formal sales structure

Sales planning may take time and collaboration, but the data speaks for itself: if you want your team to be high-performing, it’s worth it to invest the time into the planning process. 

It’s difficult to conduct effective sales planning without a thorough understanding of your market. 

This means a few different things. 

First, sales managers need to ensure that their team has a collective, detailed understanding of the target audience, as well as any buyer personas they may be likely to encounter throughout the sales process. 

sales planning: understanding your market: ideal customer profile and buyer persona

Sales managers need to ensure that they and their team have a continuously up-to-date understanding of their market in order to complete the sales planning process productively. 

One of the main purposes of sales planning is to clearly define sales goals for your team. 

Setting sales goals is one of the most consequential parts of the sales planning process. Sales goals that are too easy won’t push your team to reach their full potential, but targets and objectives that are too challenging can end up being counterproductive.

Sales reps also need to be crystal clear on what’s expected of them in order to reach those goals. Miscommunication, even minor, is one of the fastest ways to derail forward progress.

To mitigate these issues and help define other parameters around the goal-setting process, most successful goal-setters use some variation of the SMART goal framework to help them create objectives that motivate the team and generate results.

sales planning: set realistic goals: SMART goals

Remember to also check in with your C-suite about their overarching business goals and objectives, as sales goals should always align with and contribute to them. 

A big bulk of sales planning is creating effective sales strategies. 

Sales strategy provides direction and helps determine the actionable steps your team needs to take to meet its targets. The sales strategies you choose for your team to implement throughout the sales process will determine how productive your sales funnel becomes over time. 

sales planning: create effective sales strategy with sales playbooks

Sales managers can also leverage sales planning to help them develop a powerhouse sales team.

sales planning: build high-performing sales team

The way that you compensate and incentivize your team will go a long way in retaining them and motivating them to succeed.

Be sure to include details about compensation and commission structures in your sales planning process.

sales planning: sales training vs. sales coaching

Ongoing sales coaching is also a highly effective way to improve the individual and team-wide performance of your sales team. 

sales planning: sales managers spend 20%+ of their time coaching

Having access to capable sales technology can make sales planning significantly more efficient and effective. 

sales planning: sales enablement

Yesware , for example, helps sales teams perform personalized, data-driven outreach at scale. 

sales planning: use sales technology to create sales campaigns

With features like multi-channel campaigns, attachment tracking, and analytics and reporting, sales reps always have access to up-to-the-minute information about what their buyers are doing and how to best connect with them. 

sales planning: use sales technology to get reporting

Depending on your team’s size, level of experience, and operating needs, your tech stack may include different tools and capabilities. 

Teams of all sizes, even SMBs, need to have access to a functional customer relationship management (CRM) system, an email service provider, and a couple of other basic platforms. From there, teams may also consider systems like sales forecasting software, lead generation platforms, and more. 

To learn more about what to consider for your tech stack, including Yesware’s 3-phase blueprint for scaling at each stage of growth, check out our implementation guide here: 

The Optimal Technology Stack for B2B Sales Teams

Creating accurate sales forecasts is one of the most important responsibilities of a sales manager. 

Sales planning is intrinsically intertwined with sales forecasting. Both processes help sales teams focus on meeting revenue targets with intentional sales strategies and tactics that generate results. 

sales planning: sales forecasting

Sales forecasting may seem tedious, but studies show that 97% of organizations that implement a sales forecasting process meet their quotas. On the contrary, only a little more than half (55%) of those companies that don’t forecast are able to meet quota. 

sales planning: bottom-up approach and top-down approach

Sales planning is time wasted if there aren’t steps in place to collect data and measure your team’s performance. 

As you go through the sales planning process, be sure to note which key performance indicators (KPIs) you’ll be looking at to measure success. 

sales planning: monitor and analyze your sales KPIs

Remember, too, that tracking and analyzing data is only the first step. Great sales managers know how to turn data-driven insights into actionable feedback (via training and coaching, for example) that can help reps tangibly improve their performance. 

To that end, make sure you’re scheduling regular performance reviews and coaching sessions with each member of your team. 

Sales planning also gives sales teams a big advantage when it comes to communication. The better your sales planning, the more streamlined your inter-team communication and collaboration will be. 

This may seem secondary to “big ticket” things like revenue generation and sales forecasting, but the way a sales team communicates can make or break their success and scalability over time. 

Part of your sales planning process should be to outline all deadlines and directly responsible individuals (DRIs), as well as any details they need to know regarding data collection, reporting, and other accountability. This improves transparency and accountability. 

To note, the goal here isn’t to micromanage, but rather to streamline communication and expectations. 

Sales planning also helps sales managers more quickly identify when and where communication issues arise, if they ever do. 

Some sales teams, for example, fall into the trap of working in silos and neglecting collaboration. With effective sales planning, sales managers can build in time for cross-team meetings and open channels of communication. 

sales planning: effective communication with active listening

Sales planning can help sales managers guide their teams through just about any condition in a dynamic and often unpredictable market. 

This is one of the areas where continuous, ongoing sales planning is very important. Sales managers need to regularly survey what’s trending in the market, how the target audience is responding to their campaigns, and how the organization is measuring up against the competition. 

sales planning: adapt to market changes with pricing strategies

Many sales teams find that when they consistently focus on adding value to the buyer throughout the sales process , they can achieve success through just about most market trends and shifts. 

Overall, the more connected sales reps stay with the needs of their target market, the better they can handle any potential disruptions or changes in the market. 

Sales planning is one of the foundational parts of a sales manager’s job. The way a manager approaches this responsibility can dictate the difference between mediocre performance (or, in some cases, failure) and long-term sales success. 

Though it may be a time-consuming and laborious process, the benefits of doing it right are numerous and both tangible and profound. The more methodical and purposeful they can be around the sales planning process, the better their results will be. 

The right sales tools can make all the difference for managers who want to add automation and data-driven insights to their planning. 

With Yesware’s suite of easy-to-use features like multi-channel campaigns, email templates, an enriched database of over 100+ million prospects, and sophisticated analytics, sales managers can keep all their bases covered and plans in place. 

Sign up for a free (forever!) Yesware account today.

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Mastering Sales Planning: A Comprehensive Guide for Sales Managers

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{{item.title}}, my essentials, ask for help, contact edconnect, directory a to z, how to guides, policy library, school behaviour support and management plan.

Direction and guidance on developing, implementing and reviewing the School behaviour support and management plan. Where further support is required, an expanded version is available in the resources section below.

All staff in NSW public schools, parents and carers.

Changes since previous update

About the policy, policy requirements.

These procedures relate to the Student behaviour policy, particularly section 1.3, which states that schools will develop behaviour support and management plans that include anti-bullying strategies and prioritise learning continuity. Plans should also facilitate whole-school, prevention-focused and positive approaches to behaviour support.

Definitions

Roles and responsibilities.

Public schools, including Directors, Educational Leadership; and Delivery Support – Team Around a School:

  • provide proactive and responsive specialist advice and support for schools in the development, implementation and monitoring of the School behaviour support and management plan (SBSMP).

Principals:

  • lead the school community in developing, implementing and monitoring the SBSMP
  • facilitate the annual review of the SBSMP
  • ensure consultation with the school community, including school staff, students, parents or carers, in the development, implementation, and review of the SBSMP, as appropriate.

School executive, teachers, school learning support teams and school support staff:

  • contribute to developing, monitoring and reviewing the SBSMP, as appropriate
  • implement the processes and strategies within the SBSMP.

Parents or carers:

  • work in partnership with the school to implement the SBSMP, supporting their child to abide by the Behaviour code for students , resolving issues about their child’s behaviour, and communicating with school staff and the school community respectfully and collaboratively consistent with the School Community Charter
  • be involved in consultation with the school during the development, monitoring and review of the SBSMP, as appropriate.

What needs to be done?

The Student behaviour policy requires all schools to develop a School behaviour support and management plan (SBSMP) ready for implementation by Term 1 2025.

Schools must:

  • consider their context and data in developing their SBSMP
  • develop the SBSMP in consultation with their school community, as appropriate
  • publish the SBSMP on their school website
  • implement the SBSMP
  • review the SBSMP annually.

Schools may use the optional template or develop their own document that includes all required information.

1. Incorporate mandatory requirements for the plan

Develop or update the School behaviour and support management plan (SBSMP), with the required information:

  • a strategic, integrated whole-school approach that incorporates a multi-tiered care continuum to support all students, including a focus on prevention, early intervention, targeted and individual interventions
  • high expectations for student behaviour, in line with the Behaviour code for students
  • effective strategies to model, explicitly teach, recognise and reinforce positive, inclusive and safe behaviours
  • effective strategies to prevent and respond to disruptive student behaviours, including bullying and cyber-bullying, and behaviours of concern when they occur
  • establish expectations for parents and carers to engage with the school in developing and implementing student behaviour management strategies in line with the School Community Charter
  • consultation with the school community, as appropriate
  • provisions for annual review of the SBSMP.

Use the optional template or a school-developed document that includes all required information. These sample SBSMPs and visual are available for reference.

2. Develop the plan structure

The following headings can be used as a guide for structuring the school plan.

2.1.1 Overview statement

The department’s endorsed evidence-based approaches that support behaviour include:

  • Positive Behaviour for Learning
  • trauma-informed practices
  • the principles of inclusive practice.

The overview statement outlines the aims, beliefs, and/or principles on which the SBSMP is based. It should align with the department’s endorsed approaches, although the approach your school uses may not be exactly the same.

The overview statement is the first thing that the school community will read when engaging with the document and it sets the tone for what the school values and aspires to achieve through the implementation of the SBSMP. Include identification of any existing whole-school programs or approaches that support schools with the implementation.

2.1.2 Partnerships with parents and carers

Parents and carers play an important role in the school community. The School Community Charter informs parents and carers on how to engage with NSW public schools.

The SBSMP should:

  • provide an overview of how the school will partner with parents and carers in establishing expectations for parent engagement in developing and implementing student behaviour management strategies
  • outline how the school will communicate these expectations to parents and carers
  • use existing communication channels with the school community, for example the school parents and citizens association (P&C) and Aboriginal Education Consultative Group (AECG) to support broader engagement and feedback.

2.1.3 School-wide expectations and rules

The expectations and rules should be clear, positively stated and easy for the whole school community to understand. Schools, in consultation with their community, decide upon the exact number needed.

The SBSMP should include:

  • 3 to 5 overarching expectations of student behaviour and 3 to 5 more specific rules that sit under these expectations
  • A link to the Behaviour code for students .

When developing school-wide expectations and rules, schools should consider the:

  • alignment with the school’s overview statement and/or community expectations
  • accessibility of verbal and written communication methods
  • diversity of their communities and relevant contextual factors.

2.1.4 Whole-school approach across the care continuum

The SBSMP should provide specific whole-school and targeted strategies, interventions and programs that support student behaviour at each stage of the care continuum (prevention, early intervention, targeted intervention and individual intervention).

Schools can use the care continuum guide resource to assist in identifying appropriate strategies, relevant to their school context.

In your SBSMP, include contextually relevant practices, programs and strategies that:

  • positive, safe and inclusive behaviour among all students
  • school-wide behavioural expectations
  • positive student-teacher relationships
  • effectively identify and support students who are at risk through early intervention and targeted supports
  • support individual students demonstrating complex and challenging behaviour through mitigation and de-escalation strategies
  • prevent and respond to bullying behaviours, including cyber-bullying behaviours. For more information about cyberbullying please visit the eSafety Commissioner website.

2.1.5 Planned responses to positive appropriate behaviour, inappropriate behaviour, and behaviours of concern, including bullying and cyber-bullying

  • strategies and processes that the school uses to promote, respond to, recognise and reinforce positive appropriate behaviours and school-wide expectations
  • strategies and processes that the school uses to respond to and manage inappropriate behaviours and behaviours of concern, including bullying and cyber-bullying behaviours, and the supports available to students’ experiencing difficulties
  • an outline of how the school will report and record behaviours, including behaviours of concern.

2.1.6 Detention, reflection and restorative practices

The SBSMP should include school system details of:

  • when detention, reflection and restorative practices will be used and where they will occur
  • the maximum length of time appropriate to the age and/or developmental level of the student
  • food and toilet breaks
  • the school staff approved to facilitate them (by role, not specific name)
  • how the school will record details, for example in ERN or approved third-party system.

These details provide an overview only and the SBSMP does not need to include every instance of these occurring. Refer to the Detention and time-out procedures for further details.

3. Implement and evaluate the plan

After the SBSMP has been developed, the school should:

  • engage with the school community by publishing the SBSMP on the school website and making it available to all students, parents and carers, and school staff
  • embed the identified practices and strategies in day-to-day school operations.

To ensure evaluation process are embedded, the school should:

  • review the SBSMP annually to ensure it continues to be fit for purpose
  • use current school data to inform practice and direction
  • include community and student feedback.

Supporting tools, resources and related information

Supporting tools and resources.

  • SBSMP template
  • SBSMP guide expanded with steps
  • SBSMP visual
  • Example school SBSMPs
  • Care continuum guide
  • Resolving a suspension guide
  • School Community Charter
  • Team Around a School
  • Behaviour professional learning
  • Behaviour Support Toolkit
  • CESE: Classroom Management: Creating and maintaining positive learning environments

Related information

  • Student use of mobile phones in schools policy
  • Digital devices and online services for students policy

Policy Contact

Leader, Behaviour Services [email protected] 02 7814 3809

Monitoring the policy

The Director, Behaviour and Student Participation monitors the implementation of this guide, regularly reviews its contents to ensure relevance and accuracy, and updates it as needed.

  • Student management and wellbeing
  • Access and equity
  • Health, safety and wellbeing

Business Unit:

  • Inclusion and Wellbeing

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