Business Strategy/Overview of Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy, including its capital and people. Various business analysis techniques can be used in strategic planning, including SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats ) and PEST analysis (Political, Economic, Social, and Technological analysis) or STEER analysis involving Socio-cultural, Technological, Economic, Ecological, and Regulatory factors and EPISTELS (Environment, Political, Informatic, Social, Technological, Economic, Legal and Spiritual)

Strategic planning is the formal consideration of an organization's future course. All strategic planning deals with at least one of three key questions:

  • "What do we do?"
  • "For whom do we do it?"
  • "How do we excel?"

In business strategic planning, the third question is better phrased "How can we beat or avoid competition?". (Bradford and Duncan, page 1).

In many organizations, this is viewed as a process for determining where an organization is going over the next year or more -typically 3 to 5 years, although some extend their vision to 20 years.

In order to determine where it is going, the organization needs to know exactly where it stands, then determine where it wants to go and how it will get there. The resulting document is called the "strategic plan".

It is also true that strategic planning may be a tool for effectively plotting the direction of a company; however, strategic planning itself cannot foretell exactly how the market will evolve and what issues will surface in the coming days in order to plan your organizational strategy. Therefore, strategic innovation and tinkering with the 'strategic plan' have to be a cornerstone strategy for an organization to survive the turbulent business climate.

  • 1 Vision, mission and values
  • 2 Methodologies
  • 3 Situational analysis
  • 4 Goals, objectives and targets
  • 5 Mission statements and vision statements
  • 6 References

Vision, mission and values [ edit | edit source ]

Vision: Defines the desired or intended future state of a specific organization or enterprise in terms of its fundamental objective and/or strategic direction.

Mission: Defines the fundamental purpose of an organization or an enterprise, basically describing why it exists.

Values: Beliefs that are shared among the stakeholders of an organization. Values drive an organization's culture and priorities.

Methodologies [ edit | edit source ]

There are many approaches to strategic planning but typically a three-step process may be used:

  • Situation - evaluate the current situation and how it came about.
  • Target - define goals and/or objectives (sometimes called ideal state)
  • Path - map a possible route to the goals/objectives

One alternative approach is called Draw-See-Think

  • Draw - what is the ideal image or the desired end state?
  • See - what is today's situation? What is the gap from ideal and why?
  • Think - what specific actions must be taken to close the gap between today's situation and the ideal state?
  • Plan - what resources are required to execute the activities?

An alternative to the Draw-See-Think approach is called See-Think-Draw

  • See - what is today's situation?
  • Think - define goals/objectives
  • Draw - map a route to achieving the goals/objectives

In other terms strategic planning can be as follows:

  • Vision - Define the vision and set a mission statement with hierarchy of goals
  • SWOT analysis|SWOT - Analysis conducted according to the desired goals
  • Formulate - Formulate actions and processes to be taken to attain these goals
  • Implement - Implementation of the agreed upon processes
  • Control - Monitor and get feedback from implemented processes to fully control the operation

Situational analysis [ edit | edit source ]

When developing strategies, analysis of the organization and its environment as it is at the moment and how it may develop in the future, is important. The analysis has to be executed at an internal level as well as an external level to identify all opportunities and threats of the external environment as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the organizations.

There are several factors to assess in the external situation analysis:

  • Markets (customers)
  • Competition
  • Supplier markets
  • Labor markets
  • The economy
  • The regulatory environment

It is rare to find all seven of these factors having critical importance. It is also uncommon to find that the first two - markets and competition - are not of critical importance. (Bradford "External Situation - What to Consider")

Analysis of the external environment normally focuses on the customer. Management should be visionary in formulating customer strategy, and should do so by thinking about market environment shifts, how these could impact customer sets, and whether those customer sets are the ones the company wishes to serve.

Analysis of the competitive environment is also performed, many times based on the framework suggested by Michael Porter.

Goals, objectives and targets [ edit | edit source ]

Strategic planning is a very important business activity. It is also important in the public sector areas such as education. It is practiced widely informally and formally. Strategic planning and decision processes should end with objectives and a roadmap of ways to achieve those objectives.

The following terms have been used in strategic planning: desired end states, plans, policies, goals, objectives, strategies, tactics and actions. Definitions vary, overlap and fail to achieve clarity. The most common of these concepts are specific, time bound statements of intended future results and general and continuing statements of intended future results, which most models refer to as either goals or objectives (sometimes interchangeably).

One model of organizing objectives uses hierarchies. The items listed above may be organized in a hierarchy of means and ends and numbered as follows: Top Rank Objective (TRO), Second Rank Objective, Third Rank Objective, etc. From any rank, the objective in a lower rank answers to the question "How?" and the objective in a higher rank answers to the question "Why?" The exception is the Top Rank Objective (TRO): there is no answer to the "Why?" question. That is how the TRO is defined.

People typically have several goals at the same time. "Goal congruency" refers to how well the goals combine with each other. Does goal A appear compatible with goal B? Do they fit together to form a unified strategy? "Goal hierarchy" consists of the nesting of one or more goals within other goal(s).

One approach recommends having short-term goals, medium-term goals, and long-term goals. In this model, one can expect to attain short-term goals fairly easily: they stand just slightly above one's reach. At the other extreme, long-term goals appear very difficult, almost impossible to attain. Strategic management jargon sometimes refers to "Big Hairy Audacious Goals" (BHAGs) in this context. Using one goal as a stepping-stone to the next involves goal sequencing . A person or group starts by attaining the easy short-term goals, then steps up to the medium-term, then to the long-term goals. Goal sequencing can create a "goal stairway". In an organizational setting, the organization may co-ordinate goals so that they do not conflict with each other. The goals of one part of the organization should mesh compatibly with those of other parts of the organization.

Mission statements and vision statements [ edit | edit source ]

Organizations sometimes summarize goals and objectives into a mission statement and/or a vision statement :

While the existence of a shared mission is extremely useful, many strategy specialists question the requirement for a written mission statement. However, there are many models of strategic planning that start with mission statements, so it is useful to examine them here.

  • A Mission statement tells you the fundamental purpose of the organization. It concentrates on the present. It defines the customer and the critical processes. It informs you of the desired level of performance.
  • A Vision statement outlines what the organization wants to be. It concentrates on the future. It is a source of inspiration. It provides clear decision-making criteria.

Many people mistake vision statement for mission statement. The Vision describes a future identity while the Mission serves as an ongoing and time-independent guide. The Mission describes why it is important to achieve the Vision. A Mission statement defines the purpose or broader goal for being in existence or in the business and can remain the same for decades if crafted well. A Vision statement is more specific in terms of both the future state and the time frame. Vision describes what will be achieved if the organization is successful.

A mission statement can resemble a vision statement in a few companies, but that can be a grave mistake. It can confuse people. The vision statement can galvanize the people to achieve defined objectives, even if they are stretch objectives, provided it can be elucidated in SMART (project management)|SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound) terms. A mission statement provides a path to realize the vision in line with its values. These statements have a direct bearing on the bottom line and success of the organization.

Which comes first? The mission statement or the vision statement? That depends. If you have a new start up business, new program or plan to re engineer your current services, then the vision will guide the mission statement and the rest of the strategic plan. If you have an established business where the mission is established, then many times, the mission guides the vision statement and the rest of the strategic plan. Either way, you need to know your fundamental purpose - the mission, your current situation in terms of internal resources and capabilities (strengths and/or weaknesses) and external conditions (opportunities and/or threats), and where you want to go - the vision for the future. It's important that you keep the end or desired result in sight from the start. [ citation needed ] .

Features of an effective vision statement include:

  • Clarity and lack of ambiguity
  • Vivid and clear picture
  • Description of a bright future
  • Memorable and engaging wording
  • Realistic aspirations
  • Alignment with organizational values and culture

To become really effective, an organizational vision statement must (the theory states) become assimilated into the organization's culture. Leaders have the responsibility of communicating the vision regularly, creating narratives that illustrate the vision, acting as role-models by embodying the vision, creating short-term objectives compatible with the vision, and encouraging others to craft their own personal vision compatible with the organization's overall vision. In addition, mission statements need to conduct an internal assessment and an external assessment. The internal assessment should focus on how members inside the organization interpret their mission statement. The external assessment -- which includes all of the businesses stakeholders -- is valuable since it offers a different perspective. These discrepancies between these two assessments can give insight on the organization's mission statement effectiveness.

References [ edit | edit source ]

  • Burkhart, Patrick L. and Reuss, Suzanne. "Successful Strategic Planning: A Guide for Nonprofit Agencies and Organizations." Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1993.
  • Bradford and Duncan, Simplified Strategic Planning ,(Chandler House, 2000)
  • Kono, T. (1994) "Changing a Company's Strategy and Culture", Long Range Planning , 27, 5 (October 1994), pp: 85-97
  • P. Kotler, "Megamarketing", Harvard Business Review , (March--April 1986)
  • J. Naisbitt, Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming our Lives , (Macdonald, 1982)
  • T. Levitt, "Marketing myopia", Harvard Business Review , (July--August 1960)
  • M. Lorenzen, "Strategic Planning for Academic Library Instructional Programming." Illinois Libraries 86, no. 2 (Summer 2006): 22-29.
  • L. Fahey and V. K. Narayman, Macroenvironmental Analysis for Strategic Management&rdquo ,(West Publishing, 1986)
  • R. F. Lusch and V. N. Lusch, Principles of Marketing , (Kent Publishing, 1987)
  • Brian Tracy, "The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success" (Berrett,Koehler Publishers, 2000)
  • Michele Rooney, "Career Strategies that Reap Results"
  • Michael Allison and Jude Kaye, "Strategic Planning for Nonprofit Organizations" Second Edition (John Wiley and Sons, 2005)

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What is strategic planning? A 5-step guide

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

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

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

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

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What is strategic planning?

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

What is a strategic plan?

[inline illustration] Strategic plan elements (infographic)

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

Typically, your strategic plan should include: 

Your company’s mission statement

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

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

What are the benefits of strategic planning?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are the 5 steps in strategic planning?

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

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

Step 1: Assess your current business strategy and business environment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does your organization currently do well?

What separates you from your competitors?

What are your most valuable internal resources?

What tangible assets do you have?

What is your biggest strength? 

Weaknesses:

What does your organization do poorly?

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

What do your competitors do better than you?

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

What processes or products need improvement? 

Opportunities:

What opportunities does your organization have?

How can you leverage your unique company strengths?

Are there any trends that you can take advantage of?

How can you capitalize on marketing or press opportunities?

Is there an emerging need for your product or service? 

What emerging competitors should you keep an eye on?

Are there any weaknesses that expose your organization to risk?

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

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

Step 2: Identify your company’s goals and objectives

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Step 3: Develop your strategic plan and determine performance metrics

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

As you build your strategic plan, you should define:

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

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

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

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

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

Step 4: Implement and share your plan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Step 5: Revise and restructure as needed

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

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

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

Build a smarter strategic plan with a work management platform

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

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

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

Strategic planning FAQs

Still have questions about strategic planning? We have answers.

Why do I need a strategic plan?

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

When should I create a strategic plan?

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

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

What is a strategic planning template?

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

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

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

You should create a business plan when you’re: 

Just starting your business

Significantly restructuring your business

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

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

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

Simply put: 

A mission statement summarizes your company’s purpose.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Strategic Planning Should Be a Strategic Exercise

  • Graham Kenny

Don’t create a plan. Create a system.

Many managers complain that strategy-making often reduces to an operational action plan that resembles the last one.  To prevent that from happening they need to remember that strategy is about creating a system whereby a company’s stakeholders interact to create a sustainable advantage for the company.  Strategic planning is how the company designs that system, which is very different from an operational action plan in that it is never a static to-do list but constantly evolves as strategy makers acquire more insights into how their system of stakeholders can create value.

Over the years I’ve facilitated many strategic planning workshops for business, government, and not-for-profit organizations. We reflect on recent changes and future trends and consider how to engage with them for corporate success.

wiki strategic planning

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

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Strategic Plan/Background and Context

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Point of Departure

Wikipedia was founded in 2001 as "an effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet." [1] Less than a decade later, Wikipedia has become the fifth most visited internet site globally and is the most used reference source in the world, attracting over 350 million visitors a month. [2] In some countries (notably North America, Europe and Japan) between 30% and 50% of all Internet users use Wikimedia; 20%+ is not unusual in many others. [3]

The Wikimedia movement has spawned over 730 free knowledge projects in over 270 languages and dialects. Their production, by massive collaboration within a volunteer community of nearly 100,000 active contributors per month, has ushered in an era of online collaboration unprecedented in history. They have also created vital and dynamic resources, including English Wikipedia which now has more than three million articles.

Over time skepticism over the Wikimedia model has transformed into acceptance and considerable earned trust. Reviewers in medical and scientific fields such as toxicology, cancer research and drug information comparing Wikipedia to other encyclopedias and professional sources report that Wikipedia's depth and coverage are of a very high standard, often comparable in coverage to physician databases and considerably better than well known reputable national media outlets. Media outlets report that Wikipedia often acts as the main "clearinghouse" for information on cutting-edge major world news such as the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake , election candidate biographies [4] and the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre . [5] Wikipedia articles are widely cited as references in journals [6] and have been used as evidence in trademark and higher court rulings in multiple countries. [7] The 2010 American Customer Satisfaction Index , listing major social websites for the first time, cites Wikipedia as being "at the top [of the category]" and "more satisfying than most of the ACSI-measured news and information websites" at 77%, ahead of Facebook, MySpace and Youtube. [8] Policies relating to privacy, infrequent interface changes, and non-commercialization are especially appreciated. [9]

As we celebrate our tenth anniversary in the coming year, this is an ideal moment to reflect on our shared accomplishments and commit to a shared path forward. Wikimedia is and will remain a decentralized movement comprised of readers, contributors (editors, developers, donors, and other volunteers), the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia chapters, advisers and like-minded organizations, each playing different formal and informal leadership and support roles. This plan captures our common aspirations and priorities and articulates the work we will undertake to achieve these over the next five years.

Strategy the Wikimedia Way

In July 2009, we launched our first-ever strategy development project designed to result in a five-year strategic plan for the Wikimedia movement. From the outset, we believed that an open and participatory process would result in a smarter, more effective strategy. Just as Wikipedia is the encyclopedia anyone can edit, we wanted the strategy project to invite participation from anyone who wanted to help. We designed the strategy project, encouraging broad participation from collaborators around the world. Our vision was of productive strategy development through a spirit of collaboration.

The strategy project received over 900 proposals from people inside and outside the Wikimedia movement, identifying problems they wanted to help solve or new efforts they hoped Wikimedians would undertake. Overall, more than 5,000 accounts were created as people logged on to observe, and more than 1,000 people from around the world contributed. Their discussions and analysis are recorded in the Wikimedia strategy wiki designed for this process, which now includes more than 700 pages and (insert "count of" words/megabytes) of research, analysis, stories, interviews, debates and discussions. Nearly 2,000 people responded to the call for volunteers to participate on task forces to delve into greater depth on key strategic issues. More than 65 detailed interviews were conducted with subject-matter-experts, editors, Wikimedia's Board members, Advisory Board members, and Wikimedia Foundation staff; over 1,200 responses were received to a survey of past editors . In addition, real-time group conferences were held nearly every week of the project in various time zones both formally and informally by means of Internet Relay Chat (IRC) . Hundreds of Wikimedians participated in this venue as well. This document, the culmination of the strategic planning process, was authored by the same collaborative approach.

Our Aspirations and the Challenges Ahead

Wikimedia's strategic plan anchors on our movement's vision: a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Our movement has achieved a tremendous amount to date, however we are still young and our vision leaves much ground to cover.

The strategy process was launched with a brainstorming of the important opportunities and risks facing Wikimedia and its mission. Many Wikimedians participated - submitting proposals, contributing data and research, and engaging in extensive discussion. This initial work helped crystalize the set of key issues that require our collective attention and investment.

Extending our Reach toward Every Human Being

Wikimedia aspires to be accessible and available to every human being. Together our online resources currently reach approximately 6% of the global population and ~30% of Internet users worldwide. [10] To date, Wikimedia has achieved great success among Internet users in many parts of the world, particularly in the Global North. [11] The reach of Wikimedia's projects - and in particular Wikipedia, which accounts for 96% of all page views from the over 350 million unique monthly visitors - has grown exponentially since its inception nine years ago.

wiki strategic planning

But individuals' ability to access and use Wikipedia around the world is not uniform; there are large numbers of Internet users around the globe, particularly in countries with large and rapidly growing online populations such as China and India, where access is lower than the global average. [12] Given the rapid expansion of Internet connectivity around the world, we believe it will be increasingly possible to reach these populations so that Wikimedia can truly be the global resource it aspires to be. In the coming years, a key challenge for Wikimedia will be to replicate its earlier successes by engaging a growing readership in all parts of the globe.

As we look forward to providing greater access to Wikimedia projects, mobile and offline solutions will be increasingly required. The mobile phone has and will continue to grow at a faster rate than computer-based Internet. Forecasts indicate that there will be 6.5 billion mobile subscribers by 2015. Further, Internet-enabled handsets will grow by an average of 29% to almost 900 million by 2015. [13] For many in the Global South, the mobile phone will likely be the first (and, potentially, only) point of access to the Internet. Despite the strong growth of mobile and continued growth of Internet usage to over two billion people, over four billion are unlikely to gain access to an Internet connection within five years and will therefore require offline products with requisite distribution capabilities to enable them to benefit from the knowledge available in our projects.

Cultivating a Healthy, Global Community of Volunteers

Wikimedia's editing community is the lifeblood of the Wikimedia projects, and its continued health and growth is critical to the projects' future. Over the past nine years, the Wikimedia community of editors expanded dramatically, but in recent years, it appears that the Wikimedia editing community has plateaued at about 100,000 active and 12,000 very active contributors. [14]

wiki strategic planning

Wikimedia's editorial processes are unique, so it is not clear whether those numbers will prove sufficient to sustain mature Wikimedia projects. While it is not known how many active contributors are needed to maintain mature projects such as English or German Wikipedia, which now have over 3M and 1M articles respectively, nor how many are needed to build a project like Hindi Wikipedia, which today has fewer than 55K articles, it is highly probable that the editor base as it stands will not be sufficient to build new projects, particularly those in non-European languages, or to replicate the success of existing large projects. A contributor plateau raises important questions about the health of the community and our positioning for future growth across our projects. During this planning process, others raised questions about the health of our community in terms of our diversity, our openness to newcomers, and a culture that seems to eventually burn-out some of our best contributors.

wiki strategic planning

Compared to the global population, the Wikimedia community is disproportionately male and young (50% are under age 22), indicating that large segments of the world population are underrepresented in our ranks. In addition, survey data indicates that real barriers to entry existed for newcomers wishing to participate. The ex-editor survey and extensive discussion by the community health task force validated the need for focus on community health going forward.

There has been sustained and intensive dialogue within the community about its health throughout the strategy development process. The task force on community health was a center for rich analysis and discussion of the various issues the community is facing. There was a general consensus that work is needed to make Wikimedia a welcoming place for newcomers (especially those unfamiliar with its ways but interested in adding to it), to mentor and support new editors and nurturing a strong personal connection with our vision, to find better ways to wrestle with difficult editorial arguments that too often have devolved into mean-spirited fights, and to find new and meaningful ways to recognize and reward excellent contributions in the projects.

In Pursuit of the Sum of all Knowledge with Quality

Wikimedia has always taken quality seriously, aspiring to create and distribute an encyclopedia of the highest quality. [15] As increasing numbers of people rely on Wikimedia projects for critical information, the importance of content reliability, accuracy and completeness has never been greater.

Research has shown the projects' quality is generally high. An early study into vandalism by IBM researchers in 2003 (two years following Wikipedia's establishment) found that even then, "vandalism is usually repaired extremely quickly—so quickly that most users will never see its effects" [16] and concluded that Wikipedia had "surprisingly effective self-healing capabilities". [17] An oft-cited early study in Nature two years later found that by 2005 Wikipedia's science entries matched Britannica's in terms of accuracy (average 2.92 mistakes per article for Britannica and 3.86 for Wikipedia) with the two having a similar rate of "serious errors". [18] By 2010 reviewers in medical and scientific fields such as toxicology, cancer research and drug information reviewing Wikipedia against professional sources found that Wikipedia's depth and coverage were of a very high standard, often comparable in coverage to physician databases and considerably better than well known reputable national media outlets. Myriad studies document the reliability of other specific content, from Military History to current events. [19] As of 2010 Wikipedia articles are cited as references in journals (614 cites in 2009) [20] and have been used as evidence in trademark and higher court rulings in multiple countries. While today it is not clear to readers the extent to which the information they are viewed has been scrutinized and vetted, there are nascent activities within Wikimedia's community to more systematically rate the quality of content; the challenge will be to create systems that scale to enable quality assessment of the 30M+ (and growing) number of articles our communities have authored.

As Wikimedia aspires to be globally relevant and accessible, our long term challenge will be to provide a high quality experience in the native language of every single human being. This is not true today. As a crude example, the sheer number of articles available to the 550M people whose primary or secondary language is Hindi is less than a half percent of the number of articles available for German speakers, whose population is a third the size. [21] The challenge for the coming years will be to continue to build a strong contributor base that can build on the breadth, depth and quality of content across the projects, with a particular emphasis on building contributor bases for projects that are not yet at a minimum standard of comprehensiveness. In addition, there are new areas of content and new sources of content (such as museum archives) that are starting to be tapped for knowledge to strengthen the projects.

Securing a Platform for Growth and Permanence

Wikimedia has grown rapidly to become the fifth most-visited website in the world, and yet it does not have the technological, operational, and financial infrastructure commensurate with this status. The growth in both the usage and influence of Wikimedia projects make reliability of infrastructure increasingly critical. The Wikimedia movement must invest in innovation to keep pace with technological change. Given the relatively small number of paid developers working on MediaWiki software, the software used for these projects has not kept pace with the general development of web applications and the web platform. For example, while it is easy to read a Wikipedia article, participatory interactions of virtually all kinds are difficult. There are limited tools to support on-site networking, dialogue, and task management. Even the reader experience is fairly austere, with limited tools for topic exploration, visualization, and search. This user experience has improved with the implementation of a grant funded usability (UX) team project, but this is a relatively recent and only a first step. The software interface - designed for an earlier era - is widely agreed to be one of the major limiting factors on participation and quality of experience.

When Wikimedia's project websites were first developed, people connected to the Internet primarily through personal computers, but we are now also seeing a proliferation of small mobile devices, including mobile phones, smartphones, e-readers, and netbooks. People everywhere are increasingly using these devices to connect to the Internet, and those who we seek to reach in the Global South are often connecting solely through them. Currently, Wikimedia is heavily optimized for the personal computer; unless Wikimedia can improve its accessibility and usability on mobile platforms, specifically by developing ways to enable participation via mobile devices, it risks being significantly less useful to information seekers and contributors in the future.

Investment in infrastructure is an ongoing process that began when the Wikimedia Foundation hired its first staff in 2005. The organization providing the infrastructure that undergirds Wikimedia's projects is still relatively small. As of June 2010, the Wikimedia Foundation had 35 full-time staff and a budget of $10M. By design, the assets and efforts of the Foundation will remain a small percentage of the overall activities of the Wikimedia movement in the projects; however, the Foundation needs to play a more proactive role in systematically assessing needs and making mission-critical investments that will sustain, protect, and grow the projects and Wikimedia's impact going forward. Achieving these goals will require increased support, including financial contributions, from a growing number of people who identify as part of this community and movement.

Wikimedia has only recently engaged actively in raising funds to support the projects and enable investments to growth and sustain the projects. Over the past three years, the Foundation, in partnership with chapters, have managed successful community appeals. In 2009/10, over 250K community members contributed to the appeal. Continued community giving is the best way to sustain the projects, maintain an efficient fund raising platform and ensure the independence and long term sustainability of Wikimedia.

Next Page: What we believe

  • ↑ Jimmy Wales quote from foundation-l http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-March/020469.html
  • ↑ According to comScore, there were 375 million visitors in April 2010.
  • ↑ See Wikimedia penetration . Indication statistics - Canada 45-50%; France 36-39%; Japan, Europe generally (including Germany and UK) and USA approx. 25-40%; Mexico 19-35%; Australia, Russian Federation, Argentina 15-27%; India, Taiwan, South Africa 10-20%.
  • ↑ On Wikipedia, Debating 2008 Hopefuls' Every Facet , Washington Post, 17 September 2007; Page A01 – "...at the same time, it's hard to find a more up-to-date, detailed, thorough article on Obama than Wikipedia's. As of Friday, Obama's article – more than 22 pages long, with 15 sections covering his personal and professional life – had a reference list of 167 sources."
  • ↑ This article was accessed 750,000 times in two days, with newspapers published local to the shootings adding that "Wikipedia has emerged as the clearinghouse for detailed information on the event." Source: Wikipedia emerges as key source for Virginia Tech shootings – cyberjournalist.net citing the New York Times [1] , stating: "Even The Roanoke Times , which is published near Blacksburg, Va., where the university is located, noted on Thursday that Wikipedia 'has emerged as the clearinghouse for detailed information on the event'."
  • ↑ See ScienceDirect for more information [2]
  • ↑ For example the 2007 Formula One trademark case.
  • ↑ http://www.theacsi.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=220&Itemid=236 - "Given the popularity of the four measured social media sites, each boasting hundreds of millions of users worldwide, the first round of ACSI scores offered some surprises. At the top is Wikipedia—the massive, multilingual, user-produced encyclopedia run by the Wikimedia Foundation. With an ACSI score of 77, Wikipedia is more satisfying than most of the ACSI-measured news and information websites. Like Google, Wikipedia’s user interface has remained very consistent over the years, and its nonprofit standing means that it has not been impacted by commercialization and marketing."
  • ↑ http://www.theacsi.org/images/stories/images/news/july2010_pressRelease.pdf - "[O]ur research shows that privacy concerns, frequent changes to the website, and commercialization and advertising adversely affect the consumer experience."
  • ↑ Includes personal computer use only; January 2010 comScore: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Stu/comScore_data_on_Wikimedia
  • ↑ For the purposes of our discussion, the Global North includes the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Japan and Australia-New Zealand. The Global South represents Asia ex-Japan, Central and South America including Mexico, Africa and Eastern Europe and Russia , where levels of literacy, education, free speech and leisure are high.
  • ↑ More data on reach by country can be found here . A summary table that compares countries/regions with the greatest untapped potential of Internet users can be found here . For the purposes of this analysis, a region was defined as a group of countries that shared a common language and are in close geographic proximity.
  • ↑ See more detail on mobile reach here
  • ↑ Active contributors are editors who make 5 or more edits in a month; very active contributors those who make more than 100 per month.
  • ↑ history flow: results IBM Collaborative User Experience Research Group, 2003
  • ↑ Fernanda B. Viégas, Martin Wattenberg, Kushal Dave: Studying Cooperation and Conflict between Authors with history flow Visualizations . Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems , 575–582, Vienna 2004, ISBN 1-58113-702-8
  • ↑ Jim Giles, 2005. “Internet encyclopedias go head to head,” Nature, volume 438, number 7070 (15 December), pp. 900-901, and at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html
  • ↑ See Reliability of Wikipedia for a more detailed description
  • ↑ See ScienceDirect for more information [4]
  • ↑ See Wikimedia penetration by langage .

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How to Do Strategic Planning

Last Updated: May 4, 2023 Approved

This article was co-authored by Elizabeth Douglas . Elizabeth Douglas is the CEO of wikiHow. Elizabeth has over 15 years of experience working and managing teams in the tech industry. She has held roles in multiple areas, including computer engineering, user experience, and product management. She received her BS in Computer Science and her Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Stanford University. There are 15 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. wikiHow marks an article as reader-approved once it receives enough positive feedback. In this case, 96% of readers who voted found the article helpful, earning it our reader-approved status. This article has been viewed 131,816 times.

Strategic planning can help you create an organized blueprint that can guide the direction and decision-making of your company. We're here to help you develop the tactics to help you take your business to the next level!

Developing Your Strategic Plan

Step 1 Call a meeting of top team leaders and managers.

  • Including top management into developing strategic plans will also get them to feel a sense of ownership over the strategy, which will help with implementation.
  • Consider the time and human capital that's required for your strategic plan and talk to managers to see if it's possible that employees can adapt or change their schedules to meet their new goals. [2] X Research source
  • Create an agenda that lays out a presentation of your strategic visions and that leaves time for managers and team leaders to provide feedback.

Step 2 Analyze your strengths and opportunities.

  • Strengths may include a highly successful or efficient team, such as a good marketing an advertising department or strong sales department. [4] X Research source
  • To find more opportunities that play to your strengths, make sure that your team is watching external factors like consumer buying habits or social trends.
  • For instance, an opportunity may include a growing infrastructure in another country if you are a utility provider or construction company. [5] X Research source

Step 3 Assess your weaknesses and threats.

  • Weaknesses could include things like poor leadership, a lack of skills or expertise, or a poor reputation with customers.
  • Internal factors can be solved with additional training or re-allocation of responsibility.
  • External threats that can be combated by concentrating on your company's strengths to overcome what is happening in the industry. [6] X Research source
  • Be honest about your weaknesses so that you can devise a plan that targets specific portions of your organization.
  • Sometimes team leaders or employees can have valuable input on threats and weaknesses.

Step 4 Set goals for your business.

  • Some goals may include increasing revenue, getting a larger customer base, or increasing employee productivity.
  • Keep your goals realistic and attainable so that your team strives to accomplish them instead of giving up.
  • Make sure to set a timeline to accomplish your goals.

Step 5 Create a strategy and short-term tactics.

  • Strategies can include things like increasing profits by reducing manufacturing costs or increasing employee satisfaction by improving employee training.
  • Tactics include things like changing employee hours or updating the packaging on a product.

Step 6 Develop a vision for the business.

  • Being able to explain your vision will give an idea to stakeholders, investors, and employees clarity in understanding the reason for your strategic planning and your goals. [8] X Research source
  • A vision may be something like achieving much greater eco-friendly standards by 2025 or becoming one of the largest companies within an industry.

Implementing Your Strategy

Step 1 Task managers with developing an operational plan.

  • An operational plan may include things like re-training, or changing an existing operation to be more efficient or utilize newly acquired equipment or hardware.
  • Another operational plan may include notifying or sending out memos to employees on a change in policy.

Step 2 Hold team members to deadlines and results.

  • Have an open and honest conversation with employees who meet deadlines. If they consistently miss them, consider finding someone else that can meet the requirements for the job.
  • If you must talk to an employee, you can say something like, "Bill, I know that there's been a lot of operational disruption this month, but you've consistently missed the last three deadlines in a row. Can you explain what you think is stopping you from meeting the deadlines?"
  • If you need to fire someone because they miss deadlines, you can say something like "Joe, your progress has been less than acceptable for the last month or two and your missed deadlines are affecting the rest of the team's progress. I'm going to have to ask you to pack your stuff and leave."
  • Check with HR to make sure that firing the employee is consistent with legal guidelines and company policy.

Step 3 Evaluate your strategic plan's effectiveness.

  • Check in with managers and team leaders to see if your plan is being implemented. If the changes that your strategic plan have not taken place, then you can't hope to achieve your goals.
  • Use benchmarks to check in on the progress of your plan as it develops.
  • For instance, if your plan included increasing revenue in the first quarter of 2017, but you failed to meet your goals, go back and evaluate where your plan is failing.

Step 4 Adapt to improve your plan.

  • For instance, if you change your customer service system to an automated system which saves money on employee cost, but the majority of clients threaten to leave because of the modification, it may be time to alter your original plan and offer limited operator services as well.

Improving Your Strategy

Step 1 Enhance team communication

  • Methods of communication include phone, email, and chat systems.
  • As a leader of an organization, it's important that you develop good facilitation techniques so that you can resolve issues as soon as they develop.
  • Persistent chat rooms show messages in real time and are saved over time. Consider using one to keep all of your team members on the same page.

Step 2 Hold productive meetings.

  • Meetings will also help you gauge the effectiveness of any strategic plan by getting input from employees.
  • Create a printout of the agenda before the meeting so that everyone can stay on the same page.

Step 3 Use the right people.

  • Place people in the roles that they have experience in. [14] X Research source
  • In order to successfully implement some strategic plans, you'll need to hire new talent.
  • Make sure that you choose people who work well together, as well as basing people's placement upon their own skills or personalities.

Step 4 Listen to the demands of the consumer.

  • Read market research to see trends in the industry that you're in. [15] X Research source
  • Communicate with customers via social media or polls to determine what they like about your strategic plan.
  • For instance, if consumer spending skyrockets on internet streaming services, your company should consider going into that space even if the company has sold traditional media in the past.

Expert Q&A

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  • ↑ http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/can-strategic-planning-pay-off
  • ↑ http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTAFRREGTOPTEIA/Resources/mosaica_10_steps.pdf
  • ↑ https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_05.htm
  • ↑ http://pestleanalysis.com/how-to-do-a-swot-analysis/
  • ↑ http://www.inc.com/best-industries-2012/darren-dahl/best-business-opportunities-2012.html
  • ↑ http://www.leadershipthoughts.com/how-to-use-a-swot-analysis/
  • ↑ http://onstrategyhq.com/resources/how-to-write-a-strategic-plan/
  • ↑ http://www.thealternativeboard.com/what-is-a-strategic-plan-and-why-does-your-business-need-one/
  • ↑ http://www.inc.com/lee-colan/how-to-ignite-your-team-s-accountability-engine.html
  • ↑ http://managementhelp.org/strategicplanning/implementing-plan.htm
  • ↑ http://www.strategy-business.com/article/10213?gko=9e329
  • ↑ https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/improving-group-dynamics.htm
  • ↑ http://www.forbes.com/sites/brianscudamore/2016/06/15/10-simple-ways-to-have-more-productive-meetings/#122d4bcb706f
  • ↑ http://knowledge.insead.edu/strategy/how-successful-start-up-teams-allocate-roles-4522
  • ↑ https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/230981

About this article

Elizabeth Douglas

To do strategic planning, the first thing you should do is call a meeting of top team leaders and managers and work together to determine your business' strengths, weaknesses, and goals. Once you have a set of goals you want to accomplish, create a strategy for achieving them and break it down into short-term tactics you can use to carry it out. For example, if your goal is to increase revenue, and your strategy is reducing manufacturing costs, a short-term tactic could be updating the packaging on a product so it's cheaper. To learn how to implement your strategic plan, scroll down! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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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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wiki strategic planning

Strategic Planning Process: 7 Crucial Steps to Success

a transparent grid illustration connecting a circle and square representing the strategic planning process

What to read next:

Playing chess without a strong opening is a guaranteed way to disadvantage yourself. Just like in chess, organizations without an adequate strategic planning process are unlikely to thrive and adapt long-term. 

The strategic planning process is essential for aligning your organization on key priorities, goals, and initiatives, making it crucial for organizational success.   

This article will empower you to craft and perfect your strategic planning process by exploring the following:  

  • What is strategic planning
  • Why strategic planning is important for your business  
  • The seven steps of the strategic planning process   

Strategic planning frameworks

  • Best practices supporting the strategic planning process  

By the end of this article, you’ll have the knowledge needed to perfect the key elements of strategic planning. Ready? Let’s begin.  

What is strategic planning?

Strategic planning charts your business's course toward success. Using your organization’s vision, mission, and values — with internal and external information — each step of the strategic planning process helps you craft long-term objectives and attain your goals with strategic management.  

The key elements of strategic planning includes a SWOT analysis, goal setting , stakeholder involvement, plus developing actionable strategies, approaches, and tactics aligned with primary objectives.  

In short, the strategic planning process bridges the gap between your organization’s current and desired state, providing a clear and actionable framework that answers:   Where are you now?   Where do you want to be?   How will you get there?

7 key elements of strategic planning 

The following strategic planning components work together to create cohesive strategic plans for your business goals. Let’s take a close look at each of these:  

  • Vision : What your organization wants to achieve in the future, the long-term goal  
  • Mission : The driving force behind why your company exists, who it serves, and how it creates value  
  • Values : Fundamental beliefs guiding your company’s decision-making process  
  • Goals : Measurable objectives in alignment with your business mission, vision, and values  
  • Strategy : A long-term strategy map for achieving your objectives based on both internal and external factors  
  • Approach : How you execute strategy and achieve objectives using actions and initiatives   
  • Tactics : Granular short-term actions, programs, and activities  

Why a concrete strategic planning is important

Just as a chess player needs a gameplan to reach checkmate, a company needs a solid strategic plan to achieve its goals.   

Without a strategic plan, your business will waste precious time, energy, and resources on endeavors that won’t get your company closer to where it needs to be.   

Your ideal plan should cover all key strategic planning areas, while allowing you to stay present by measuring success and course-correcting or redefining the strategic direction when necessary. Ultimately, enabling your company to stay future-proof through the creation of an always-on strategy.   

An always-on strategy involves continuous environmental scanning even after the strategic plan has been devised, ensuring readiness to adapt in response to quick, drastic changes in the environment.

Let’s dive deeper into the steps of the strategic planning process.  

What are the 7 stages of the strategic planning process?

You understand the overall value of implementing a strategic planning process — now let’s put it in practice. Here's our 7-step approach to strategic planning that ensures everyone is on the same page:  

  • Clarify your vision, mission, and values  
  • Conduct an environmental scan  
  • Define strategic priorities  
  • Develop goals and metrics  
  • Derive a strategic plan  
  • Write and communicate your strategic plan  
  • Implement, monitor, and revise   

1. Clarify your vision, mission, and values 

The first step of the strategic planning process is understanding your organization’s core elements: vision, mission, and values. Clarifying these will align your strategic plan with your company’s definition of success. Once established, these are the foundation for the rest of the strategic planning process.   

Questions to ask:

  • What do we aspire to achieve in the long term?
  • What is our purpose or ultimate goal?
  • What do we do to fulfill our vision?
  • What key activities or services do we provide?
  • What are our organization's ethics?
  • What qualities or behaviors do we expect from employees?

Read more: What is Mission vs. Vision  

A green flag with hollow filling placed to the left of an outline of an eye, with the iris also outlined in green, all on a green background, to signal mission vs. vision

2. Conduct an environmental scan

Once everyone on the same page about vision, mission, and values, it's time to scan your internal and external environment. This involves a long-term SWOT analysis, evaluating your organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.  

Internal factors 

Internal strengths and weaknesses help you understand where your organization excels and what it could improve. Strengths and weaknesses awareness helps make more informed decisions with your capabilities and resource allocation in mind.  

External factors

Externally, opportunities and threats in the market help you understand the power of your industry’s customers, suppliers, and competitors. Additionally, consider how broader forces like technology, culture, politics, and regulation may impact your organization.   

  • What are our organization's key strengths or competitive advantages?
  • What areas or functions within our organization need improvement?
  • What emerging trends or opportunities can we leverage?
  • How do changes in technology, regulations, or consumer behavior impact us?

3. Define strategic priorities

Prioritization puts the “strategic” in strategic planning process. Your organization’s mission, vision, values, and environmental scan serve as a lens to identify top priorities. Limiting priorities ensures your organization intentionally allocates resources.  

These categories can help you rank your strategic priorities:  

  • Critical : Urgent tasks whose failure to complete will have severe consequences — financial losses, reputation damage, or legal consequences  
  • Important : Significant tasks which support organizational achievements and require timely completion  
  • Desirable : Valuable tasks not essential in the short-term, but can contribute to long-term success and growth  
  • How do these priorities align with our mission, vision, and values?
  • Which tasks need to be completed quickly to ensure effective progress towards our desired outcomes?
  • What resources and capabilities do we need to pursue these priorities effectively?

4. Develop goals and metrics

Next, you establish goals and metrics to reflect your strategic priorities. Purpose-driven, long-term, actionable strategic planning goals should flow down through the organization, with lower-level goals contributing to higher-level ones.  

One approach that can help you set and measure your aligned goals is objectives and key results (OKRs). OKRs consist of objectives, qualitative statements of what you want to achieve, and key results, 3-5 supporting metrics that track progress toward your objective.  

OKRs ensure alignment at every level of the organization, with tracking and accountability built into the framework to keep everyone engaged. With ambitious, intentional goals, OKRs can help you drive the strategic plan forward.  

  • What metrics can we use to track progress toward each objective?
  • How can we ensure that lower-level goals and metrics support and contribute to higher-level ones?
  • How will we track and measure progress towards key results?
  • How will we ensure accountability?

Get an in-depth look at OKRs with our Ultimate OKR Playbook

an illustration of a circle in a shifting square to represent an okr playbook

5. Derive a strategic plan

The next step of the strategic planning process gets down to the nitty-gritty “how” — outlining a clear, practical plan for bridging the gap between now and the future.   

To do this, you’ll need to brainstorm short- and long-term approaches to achieving the goals you’ve set, answering a couple of key questions along the way. You must evaluate ideas based on factors like:  

  • Feasibility : How realistic and achievable is it?  
  • Impact : How conducive is it to goal attainment?  
  • Cost : Can we fund this approach, and is it worth the investment?  
  • Alignment : Does it support our mission, vision, and values?  

From your approaches, you can devise a detailed action plan, which covers things like:  

  • Timelines : When will we take each step, and what are the deadlines?  
  • Milestones : What key achievements will ensure consistent progress?  
  • Resource requirements : What’s needed to achieve each step?  
  • Responsibilities : Who's accountable in each step?  
  • Risks and challenges : What can affect our ability to execute our plan? How will we address these?  

With a detailed action plan like this, you can move from abstract goals to concrete steps, bringing you closer to achieving your strategic objectives.  

6. Write and communicate your strategic plan

Writing and communicating your strategic plan involves everyone, ensuring each team is on the same page. Here’s a clear, concise structure you can use to cover the most important strategic planning components:  

  • Executive summary : Highlights and priorities in your strategic overview   
  • Introduction : Background on your strategic plan  
  • Connection : How your strategic plan aligns with your organization’s mission, vision, and values  
  • Environmental scan : An overview of your SWOT analysis findings  
  • Strategic priorities and goals : Informed short and long-term organizational goals  
  • Strategic approach : An overview of your tactical plan   
  • Resource needs : How you'll deploy technology, funding, and employees  
  • Risk and challenges : How you’ll mitigate the unknowns if and when they arise  
  • Implementation plan : A step-by-step resource deployment plan for achieving your strategy  
  • Monitoring and evaluation : How you’ll keep your plan heading in the right direction  
  • Conclusion : A summary of the strategic plan and everything it entails  
  • What information or context do stakeholders need to understand the strategic plan?
  • How can we emphasize the connection between the strategic plan and the overall purpose and direction of the organization?
  • What initiatives or strategies will we implement to drive progress?
  • How will we mitigate or address risks?
  • What are the specific steps and actions we need to take to implement the strategic plan?
  • Any additional information or next steps we need to communicate?

7. Implement, monitor, and revise performance 

Finally, it’s time to implement your strategic plan, making sure it's up to date, creating a persistent, always-on strategy that doesn't lag behind. As you get the ball rolling, keep a close eye on your timelines, milestones, and performance targets, and whether these align with your internal and external environment.   

Internally, indicators like completions, issues, and delays provide visibility into your process. If any bottlenecks, inefficiencies, or misalignment arises, take corrective action promptly — adjust the plan, reallocate resources, or provide additional training to employees.  

Externally, you should monitor changes such as customer preferences, competitive pressures, economic shifts , and regulatory changes. These impact the success of your strategic action plan and may require tweaks along the way.   

Remember, implementing a strategic plan isn’t a one-time task — continual evaluation is essential for an always-on strategy. It involves extending beyond planning stages and contextualizing the strategy in real-time, allowing for swift adaptations to changing circumstances to ensure your plan remains relevant.

  • Are there any bottlenecks, inefficiencies, or misalignments we need to address?
  • Are we monitoring and analyzing external factors?
  • Are we prepared to make necessary tweaks or adaptations along the way?
  • Are we agile enough to promptly correct deviations from our strategic plan while maintaining an "always-on" strategy for continual adjustments?

You can use several frameworks to guide you through the strategic planning process. Some of the most influential ones include:

  • Balanced scorecard (BSC) : Takes an overarching approach to strategic planning, covering financial, customer, internal processes, and learning and growth, aligning short-term operational tasks with long-term strategic goals.
  • SWOT analysis : Highlights your business's internal strengths and weaknesses alongside external opportunities and threats to enable informed decisions about your strategic direction.
  • OKRs : Structures goals as a set of measurable objectives and key results. They cascade down from top-level organizational objectives to lower-level team goals, ensuring alignment across the entire organization. Get an in-depth look at OKRs here . 
  • Scenario planning : Involves envisioning and planning for various possible future scenarios, allowing you to prepare for a range of potential outcomes. It's particularly useful in volatile environments rife with uncertainties.
  • Porter's five forces : Evaluates the competitive forces within your industry — rivalry among existing competitors, bargaining power of buyers and suppliers, threat of new entrants, and threat of substitutes — to shape strategies that position the organization for success.

Common problems with strategic planning and how to overcome them

While strategic planning provides a roadmap for business success, it's not immune to challenges. Recognizing and addressing these is crucial for effective strategy implementation. Let's explore common issues encountered in strategic planning and strategies to overcome them.

Static nature

Traditional strategic planning models often follow a linear, annual, and inflexible process that doesn't accommodate quick changes in the business landscape. Strategies formulated this way may quickly become outdated in today's fast-paced environment.

To overcome the rigidity of traditional strategic planning, your organization should integrate continuous environmental scanning processes. This includes monitoring market changes, competitor actions, and technological advancements, ensuring real-time insights inform strategic decision-making. Additionally, adopting agile methodologies allows for iterative planning, breaking down strategies into smaller, manageable components reviewed and adjusted regularly, ensuring adaptability in today's fast-paced landscape.

Disconnect between strategic plan and execution

There's often a significant gap between the strategic objectives and their actual implementation, leading to misalignment, confusion, and inefficiency within the organization.

To bridge the gap, ensure accountability, alignment, and feedback-driven processes across the business. Linking team roles and responsibilities to lower-level objectives can fosters alignment and accountability, whereas aligning these with overarching strategic objectives ensure coherence in execution. To ensure goals are optimized on an ongoing basis, implement a feedback mechanism that continuously evaluates progress against goals, enabling regular adjustments based on market feedback and internal insights.

Lack of real-time insights

Traditional planning models rely on historical data and periodic reviews, which might not capture real-time changes or emerging trends accurately. This can result in misaligned strategies unsuitable for the current business landscape.

Leverage advanced analytics tools and AI-driven technologies. Invest in technologies that offer real-time tracking and reporting of key performance indicators, with dashboards and monitoring systems that provide up-to-date insights. These allow you to gather, process, and interpret real-time data for proactive decision-making that aligns with the current business landscape. 

Failure to close the feedback loop

The absence of a feedback loop between strategy formulation, execution, and evaluation can impact learning and improvement. Companies might therefore struggle to refine their strategies based on real-time performance insights.

Establish a structured feedback loop encompassing strategy formulation, execution, and evaluation stages. Encourage employees to actively contribute insights on strategy execution, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and adaptation.

Best practices during the strategic planning process

Navigating strategic planning goes beyond overcoming challenges. A successful strategic plan requires you to embrace a set of guiding best practices, helping you navigate the development and implementation of your strategic planning process.   

1. Keep the planning process flexible

With ever-changing business environments, a one-and-done approach to strategic planning is insufficient. Your strategic plan needs to be adaptable to ensure its relevancy and its ability to weather the effects of changing circumstances.  

2. Pull together a diverse group of stakeholders

By including voices from across the organization, you can account for varying thoughts, perspectives, and experiences at each step of the strategic planning process, ensuring cross-functional alignment .  

3. Document the process

Continuous documentation of the strategic management process is crucial in capturing and communicating the key elements of strategic planning. This keeps everyone on the same page and your strategic plan up-to-date and relevant.  

4. Make data-driven decisions

Root your decisions in evidence and facts rather than assumptions or opinions. This cultivates accurate insights, improves prioritization, and reduces biased (flawed) decisions.  

5. Align your company culture with the strategic plan 

Your strategic plan can only be successful if everyone is on board with it — company culture supports what you’re trying to achieve. Behaviors, rules, and attitudes optimize the execution of your strategic plan.  

6. Leverage AI 

Using AI in strategic planning supports the development of an always-on strategy — amplifying strategic agility, conducting comprehensive environmental scans, and expediting planning phases. It can streamline operations, facilitate data-driven decision-making, and provide transparent insights into progress to drive accountability, engagement, and alignment with the strategic plan.

The strategic planning process in a nutshell

Careful strategy mapping is crucial for any organization looking to achieve its long-term goals while staying true to its mission, vision, and values. The seven steps in the strategic planning process outlined in this article provide a solid framework your organization can follow — from clarifying your organization’s purpose and developing a strategic plan, to implementing, monitoring, and revising performance. These steps will help your company meet goal measurements and create an always-on strategy that's rooted in the present. 

It’s important to remember that strategic planning is not a one-time event. To stay effective and relevant, you must continuously monitor and adapt your strategy in response to changing circumstances. This ongoing process of improvement keeps your organization competitive and demonstrates your commitment to achieving your goals.  

  Quantive is your bridge between strategy and execution. Founded on the objectives and key results (OKR) methodology, our Strategy Execution solution is where businesses plan successful strategy, focus and align teams to it, and stay on the leading edge of progress.  

As your company looks to achieve the best possible results, you need a modern approach to run your business and change your business. The Modern Operating Model brings strategy, teams, and data together to help make decisions faster, optimize operations, and drive better business outcomes.  

Whether you’re a large enterprise facing competitive disruption or a small business leading the innovative charge, Quantive helps get you where you want to go.  

Ready to achieve the best possible? Start your free trial today. 

Additional resources

Strategy execution in 4 steps: keys to successful strategy, how top companies are closing the strategy execution gap, 7 best practices for strategy execution, why your business needs strategy execution software, subscribe for our newsletter.

Strategic planning — what it is and how to do it well

Strategic planning guide

It can be difficult to reach your business goals and ambitions, regardless of what preparation you’ve done. But if you have a strategic plan in place, you’ll be more likely to achieve a favorable outcome.

This post will explain the importance of strategic planning, when and how to make a strategic plan, and how to manage it and stay on course. It will allow the audience to move forward with their planning efforts.

Read on to learn:

  • What strategic planning is

Benefits of strategic planning

  • When you should do strategic planning

Steps in strategic planning

  • What strategic management is

Strategic mapping

What is strategic planning.

Strategic planning is the process of defining your business’s direction and outlining a path toward a preferred future. The goal of a strategic plan is to capture an organization’s mission and core principles — to envision the fulfillment of these ideals. Strategic planning is both conceptual and practical, as it presents both high-level goals and specific approaches to achieve them.

A strategic plan needs to answer the following questions:

  • Where are we now?
  • Where are we going?
  • How do we get there?

Strategic planning helps businesses set and maintain a clear vision and ensure they’re moving in the right direction. Once the plan has been put in place, it helps maintain alignment between various stakeholders and teams within your business. This plan can make resource allocation simpler — by determining if certain resources are being used in ways that don’t align with the broader strategic plan.

Running a business without a strategic plan is like planning a vacation with no destination in mind. How will you get there? What do you need to bring with you? The same applies to planning for your business. Strategic planning:

  • Gives a sense of purpose and direction. A strategic plan provides a clear goal and end result so all other business functions can work to get you closer to that outcome. This clarity helps keep employees aligned on their efforts, make better decisions, and work towards a shared goal.
  • Makes you aware of opportunities for success. Tying your plans to strategy helps your organization identify opportunities that you discover along your journey. If you find an opportunity that aligns with your strategy — and desired outcomes — you can more easily adapt to take advantage of the situation.
  • Alerts you to risks to avoid. Part of the strategic planning process is scanning the external environment and competitive landscape, which allows you to identify potential roadblocks you may encounter.
  • Helps you understand what resources you will need. When you have a strategic plan in place, you can more effectively allocate your resources. By aligning resources with strategic goals, businesses can focus on the initiatives, projects, and investments that maximize their ROI.
  • Helps prioritize critical tasks. When deciding which tasks are most important and which can be put on hold, a strategic plan streamlines that decision making. Tasks that don’t contribute to your mission can wait, while mission-critical tasks get prioritized.
  • Fosters teamwork and communication. Without a strategic plan, team members can feel isolated and siloed. However, when that strategic plan is clearly communicated to everyone, your team will feel more connected as they work towards a common goal.
  • Increases motivation. And when your team understands the desired outcomes and bigger goals behind their daily tasks, they’ll be more motivated to do high-quality work in a timely manner.
  • Helps measure and evaluate results. Because you’ve likely identified key performance indicators (KPIs) in your planning process, you’ll have an easier time tracking your progress. When you measure your progress, you can more easily identify areas for improvement and make changes on the fly.

When should you do strategic planning?

When and how often your business does strategic planning depends on the size and stage of your company, the speed of your business, and the scope of the projects you’re working on. Strategic planning should not be a one-time event. It should be an iterative process with continuous monitoring, evaluation, and adjustment.

If you’re a new business, you’ll want to create a business plan first, before you move into strategic planning. Once your business is established you can then set a strategic plan to outline your goals and manage your business’s strategic direction. For planning more short-term projects, use a project plan .

Once you’ve created a strategic plan, you should review it regularly — quarterly and yearly, for example — to make sure it is still aligned with your business’s goals and industry landscape. Generally, you should create a new strategic plan every 3–5 years. However, newer or faster-moving companies may need to create a new strategic plan every 1–2 years. Another scenario when you should rework your strategic plan is when you’re preparing to make a major pivot in your business.

How to write a strategic plan for a project

Learn how to write a strategic plan, why you need to create one, and the topics it should cover.

Steps in strategic planning

While every strategic plan might look a little different depending on the organization, industry, and other context, there is still a general outline of the process that you can follow to get you started.

Before you get started, there are a few preliminary steps you can take to make sure your planning process goes smoothly. You need to decide who is involved in the process and what documentation they’ll need. You’ll also want to revisit your company’s vision and mission statements which define where your business is aiming to go.

These are the steps you can take to create a strategic plan for your business:

1. Identify and assess your current position

To understand where you’re headed, you first need to look at where you are now. I n this stage you should:

  • Collect customer and employee feedback to understand what is working well for you and what could use improvement.
  • Perform a needs assessment or SWOT analysis to understand more about the current state of your business.
  • Assess your available resources so you can understand what you have enough of and what you may need to reach your goals.

2. Set goals

Next, you can set goals that you’d like your business to achieve over the short and long term. It’s important to choose goals that align with your company mission and vision. You can use marketing and sales forecasts to give you an idea of what types of goals are realistic. In this phase you’ll also want to prioritize the goals you set — so you know which to choose if conflicts arise.

When setting goals, remember to set SMART goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time bound.

3. Develop your plan

In this phase it’s time to put your plan together and map out a project roadmap. This is where your plan becomes clearer both to your planning committee and to your team members who will execute based on the plan.

You want to make sure that your plan is achievable with your current resources — so that you aren’t setting yourself up for failure. You’ll also want to set measurable milestones so you can track your progress along the way. You also need to set KPIs so you have objective numbers to determine if you’re heading in the right direction.

When developing your plan, you should make sure that any short-term action items align with long-term goals. And finally, you’ll need to get approval from leadership and stakeholders.

4. Implement your plan

Now that you’ve created your strategic plan it’s time to act. In fact, the first step of implementation is creating a strategic action plan. Your action plan will outline the specific tactics you’ll use to execute your strategic plan.

In this phase, you’ll also assign tasks to your team members so everyone knows what they are responsible for and what they will be contributing to your mission. It’s important to distribute and communicate your plan across your organization. This helps encourage transparency and will drive buy-in from everyone on your team.

As you are executing on your plan, you should rely on metrics and KPIs to track your performance.

5. Revise your plan as necessary

Next, you’ll want to revise your plan as you encounter roadblocks or market changes. Even the best strategic plans will change as you gather more data or feedback. Using tools — like a project management solution — can help you monitor the progress your team is making. You should schedule periodic evaluations to see which parts of the plan are going well and which need to be revised or reevaluated.

You can conduct reviews on a quarterly basis, so you have information at the end of the year to revise your plan if needed. Even if things are going well, you should make minor adjustments every year to keep your teams aligned and your strategy up to date. Any major revisions you make will require a new planning process — because a major adjustment could derail the rest of your strategic plan.

What is strategic management?

Strategic management is the process of formulating, implementing, and evaluating strategies to achieve the larger goals and objectives of an organization. It can sometimes be used interchangeably with the term strategic planning — but within strategic planning, strategic management means managing the plan being put into action.

Part of strategic management is being adaptive and adjusting to headwinds or organizational changes. You’ll also need to maintain a strong team culture, so your plan stays on track and team members stay engaged.

There are several models that strategic management can follow. Each takes a different approach to the management process, and how it solves problems that may arise.

One of these frameworks is the balanced scorecard method. This method looks at the strategic measures of a business beyond just financial metrics to get a more “balanced” look at performance. The phrase “balanced scorecard” refers to the management report that leaders may use to drive decision making within the business, since this approach looks at more than just numbers, it provides a more wholistic view of a business.

A strategic map is a visual representation of a business’s strategic objectives and their cause-and-effect relationships between each objective. This diagram helps visualize the strategic plan and understand which tasks are dependent on others. This map should be drawn during the development of the strategic plan to get a better understanding of how things should get done and in what order.

Strategic mapping can turn complex strategic plans into easily understandable visual representations. These can be helpful tools for communicating your strategy more clearly to team members and stakeholders within your organization. Strategic maps also help organizations identify success factors, prioritize initiatives, allocate resources, and monitor progress.

A strategic map can be designed in several ways, but needs to address the four main facets of business:

Strategic mapping

  • Financial. This section of the map should identify how the strategy helps meet the financial goals of the business.
  • Customer. This section should address the benefits that the customer will see from the specific strategy.
  • Internal business processes (IBPs). This section shares the benefits of the strategy to the processes of the business and their efficiency.
  • Learning and growth. This section will address how the business’s capabilities and knowledge will improve by using a given strategy.

Getting started with strategic planning

Strategic planning is a helpful tool for aligning everyone in your organization with your objectives and long-term goals. It can also help you gain a better understanding of your place in the market and how you can improve your business outcomes.

When you’re ready to get started, assemble your leadership team, draft your mission and vision statements, and begin by assessing the current state of your business. But you can’t get the most out of your strategic plan without a platform to drive the process forward.

That’s where Adobe Workfront can help. Workfront is an enterprise work management tool that connects work to strategy and drives better collaboration to deliver measurable business outcomes. It integrates people, data, processes, and technology across an organization so you can manage the entire lifecycle of projects from start to finish. By centralizing digital projects, cross-functional teams can connect, collaborate, and execute from anywhere to help them do their best work.

Take a product tour or watch an overview video to see how Workfront can help you execute on your strategic plan to improve your business outcomes.

https://business.adobe.com/blog/perspectives/workfront-and-the-employee-experience

https://business.adobe.com/blog/perspectives/get-the-most-out-of-workfront-discovery-by-avoiding-common-challenges

https://business.adobe.com/blog/basics/annual-planning

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IT Strategic Plan (Information Technology Strategic Plan)

  • 1 Definition of an IT Strategic Plan
  • 2 Key Components of an IT Strategic Plan
  • 3.1 What an IT Strategic Plan is Not [1]
  • 4 How to Create a Winning IT Strategic Plan [2]
  • 5 IT Strategic Plan Model [3]
  • 6 Phases in the Development of IT Strategic Plan [4]
  • 7 Challenges in Successfully Implementing an IT Strategy Plan [5]
  • 8 12 Common Mistakes to Avoid
  • 10 References
  • 11 Further Reading

Definition of an IT Strategic Plan

An IT Strategic Plan is a document that details the specific steps, with dates and deliverables, taken to implement the IT Strategy of an organization.

These steps:

  • Are necessary and sufficient to implement a strategy
  • They are prioritized
  • They are divided into distinct phases
  • They can be iterative and usually are

An IT Strategic Plan is created using an IT Strategy Template .

A Strategic Plan for IT must include the roles and responsibilities tasked with the implementation of each step in the plan. An IT Strategic Plan must also include relevant governance information.

An IT Strategic Plan follows a charter.

An Information Technology Strategic Plan (ITSP) aims at discovering the resources and IT in an organization, to direct the technological and information architecture to its strategic objectives.

IT Strategy Map

Key Components of an IT Strategic Plan

An IT Strategic Plan outlines how the IT department will support the organization's overall business objectives. It is a roadmap for how IT will evolve to meet business needs in both the short and long term. Here are the key components of an IT Strategic Plan:

  • Executive Summary : A high-level overview of the IT strategic plan, including its purpose and key points.
  • Mission: Describes the primary purpose of the IT department within the organization.
  • Vision: Outlines where the IT department aims to be in the future.
  • Values: Defines the guiding principles for how the IT department operates and makes decisions.
  • Business Goals and Objectives Alignment : Demonstrates how IT initiatives align with the broader business goals and objectives. This is crucial for ensuring that IT and business strategies are in sync.
  • SWOT Analysis: A breakdown of the IT department's Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
  • Infrastructure Overview: Details about the current IT infrastructure, tools, and platforms in use.
  • Gap Analysis: Identifies the differences between the current IT capabilities and what's needed to achieve the desired future state.
  • Strategic Initiatives and Projects : A list of major IT projects and initiatives that will be undertaken to support the strategic plan. This should include priorities, timelines, and necessary resources.
  • Resource Allocation : Details about how resources (financial, human, and technological) will be allocated to support the strategic initiatives.
  • Stakeholder Analysis : Identifies the main stakeholders and describes their interests, influence, and potential impact on the strategic plan's implementation.
  • Risk Management : Highlights potential risks associated with the plan's implementation and proposes strategies to mitigate or manage these risks.
  • Governance and Leadership : Describes how decisions related to IT initiatives will be made, who is responsible, and how accountability will be ensured.
  • Change Management : Outlines how changes will be introduced and managed within the organization, ensuring smooth transitions and minimal disruptions.
  • Performance Metrics and KPIs : Defines the metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that will be used to measure the progress and effectiveness of the IT strategic initiatives.
  • Communication Strategy : Specifies how information about IT initiatives, progress, and changes will be communicated to stakeholders, including employees, management, and other relevant parties.
  • Technology Roadmap : A visual representation that outlines the evolution of the organization's IT landscape over time, including key milestones, technology adoption, and phase-outs.
  • Budget and Financial Forecast : An estimate of the costs associated with implementing the strategic plan, including potential returns on investment (ROI).
  • Review and Revision Mechanisms : Describes how and when the strategic plan will be reviewed and updated to ensure its continued relevance and effectiveness.

An effective IT Strategic Plan should be dynamic and adaptable. The fast-paced evolution of technology and the changing needs of businesses mean that regular reviews and updates are essential to ensure that the plan remains aligned with organizational goals.

Why is a Strategic Plan for IT Essential for an Organization?

An IT Strategic Plan serves as a guiding document for an organization's technological direction. It ensures that IT investments and initiatives align with the organization's broader goals and strategic direction. Creating an IT Strategic Plan is a crucial step for organizations aiming to harness the full potential of their technological investments and ensure alignment with their overarching goals.

Here are compelling reasons why an organization should create an IT Strategic Plan:

  • Alignment with Business Strategy: One of the primary reasons to have an IT Strategic Plan is to ensure that the organization's technology initiatives and investments align seamlessly with its broader business objectives. This ensures that IT is not operating in a silo but is deeply integrated with the company's goals and vision.
  • Optimized Resource Allocation: With a clear strategic plan, organizations can prioritize IT projects based on their potential impact and ROI. This helps in the optimal allocation of resources, ensuring that the most value-driven projects are funded and executed first.
  • Proactive Approach: A strategic plan allows organizations to anticipate technological trends, challenges, and opportunities. This proactive stance ensures they're well-prepared for the future, rather than merely reacting to technological changes as they happen.
  • Risk Management: In the digital age, cybersecurity threats, data breaches, and system outages can have severe consequences. A strategic plan identifies potential IT risks and sets out strategies to mitigate them, safeguarding the organization.
  • Clear Communication: An IT Strategic Plan serves as a communication tool, ensuring all stakeholders, from top management to the operational teams, are on the same page regarding the technological direction and initiatives.
  • Performance Metrics: A well-defined plan will establish metrics and KPIs to measure the success and effectiveness of IT initiatives. This allows for ongoing assessment, ensuring that the organization gets the desired outcomes from its IT investments.
  • Budget Predictability: IT projects can be capital-intensive. A strategic plan offers a clearer picture of required investments over time, aiding in financial planning and ensuring cost efficiency.
  • Competitive Advantage: In many industries, leveraging the latest technologies can provide a significant edge over competitors. A strategic plan guides the organization in adopting and implementing technologies to drive innovation and differentiate it from competitors.
  • Change Management: Technology implementations can significantly change workflows and processes. A strategic plan outlines the approach to manage these changes, ensuring smoother transitions and minimal disruptions.
  • Stakeholder Engagement: A well-articulated plan can get buy-in from key stakeholders, ensuring their support and collaboration for IT initiatives. This can be crucial for the successful implementation of technology-driven projects.
  • Long-term Vision: While day-to-day IT operations focus on immediate issues, a strategic plan provides a long-term vision. It sets a clear direction for where the organization wants to be technologically.

An IT Strategic Plan is a document and a roadmap. It ensures that technology is a robust pillar supporting the organization's growth, innovation, and operational excellence. Without such a plan, organizations might be adrift in the rapidly evolving digital landscape, making reactive decisions that might not align with their long-term goals.

What an IT Strategic Plan is Not [1]

  • An IT Strategic Plan is NOT Tactical or Prescriptive: A strategic plan is a framework for allowing departmental managers to make decisions and implement solutions that support the overall strategic plan. That decision-making ability is key in gaining support for the strategy. A tactical plan containing specific information about what must be done in order to meet strategic goals is a mandate, not a plan. This approach is guaranteed to turn the organization’s lower-level managers against the plan.
  • A Strategic Plan is NOT Static Document That Should Never Change: The strategic plan should be built to allow for updates and adapt to changes in the market. The point of a strategic plan is to consider what the future may hold and align resources today to support that vision. By regularly considering what the future may hold, you can make small manageable course corrections rather than having to “right the ship” when unexpected change occurs.

How to Create a Winning IT Strategic Plan [2]

To effectively support today’s IT-informed business strategies, CIOs must embrace new approaches to IT Strategic Planning that are more business-driven, flexible, and frequently revisited than in years past

  • Start with Business Strategy: IT strategic plan must be firmly rooted in the business strategic plan — period. If the business strategy is to invest in digital transformation, for instance, IT must extrapolate what that means for existing architecture, operating processes, skills, sourcing, governance, and culture. The best IT plan is no longer simply a rundown of the financial investment required or a list of technologies to implement. Rather, it is an assessment of the changes demanded to achieve business goals. The line between business strategy and technology strategy has disappeared, says ServiceNow’s CTO Chris Bedi. “They are one and the same.” Fenwick goes so far as to suggest there should be no IT strategy separate from the business strategy, preferring to call the IT-specific component an operating plan.
  • Plan the Planning Process: At the outset, IT leaders should establish a plan to develop the plan. Gartner advises creating a “clear and achievable” process for developing the strategic plan, using any existing or previously used plan as a starting point.
  • Strategize Swiftly: While an IT Strategic Plan is important, spending too much time to develop it can also be dangerous. Gartner advocates swift and focused strategic plan development in order to prevent loss of focus, scope creep, or diminished currency and relevance.
  • Focus on the Mid-term Horizon: Long-term roadmaps still have their place, but they have largely fallen out of favor, given today’s era of rapid technology and business shifts. While IT leaders must ensure that their choices are flexible enough to adapt to longer-term technology change, the IT strategic plan should largely focus on the mid-term horizon, typically 12 to 18 months ahead. It can also address, in less granularity, plans in the two- to the three-year range and five-plus years. Whatever time period IT leaders decide to cover, they should be sure to clarify the difference between the more tactical operating portion of the plan, mid-term strategy, and long-term goals.
  • Nail the Key Components: An effective IT plan will include information on the people, staffing, partnerships, organizational changes, and governance required to achieve business outcomes. It can also include an investment portfolio roadmap, timeframes, goals, and a discussion of risks and other issues.
  • Build in metrics for success: The best IT strategic plans include measures of success that will serve as mile markers for progress over time. In today’s technology-driven marketplace, however, those metrics should focus less on the inputs or outputs IT may have used as guideposts in the past and more on actual business outcomes. Having clear, outcome-based key performance indicators (KPI)s is essential. It is important to ensure tight integration with the business strategy. Those KPIs should be measured and reported at least monthly, although some should be tracked more frequently. Without defined measurable goals and measurement against them, a strategy can quickly become a pretty set of charts that get looked at once and filed away.
  • Tie Guiding Principles into the Corporate Vision: Many IT leaders will include a set of guiding principles or other explanations that guide IT’s decision-making. Those guiding principles should tie into the overall corporate vision.
  • Match Planning Frequency to the Cadence of the Business: Most IT organizations will create a full IT strategic plan at least once a year, but the fast-changing business environment demands that most update their approaches more frequently. The best rule of thumb is to adjust the frequency of IT planning to the cadence of the business. For most companies, quarterly updates (at a minimum) will make the most sense. IT leaders in consumer-focused businesses, for instance, will want to make changes more frequently.

IT Strategic Planning

IT Strategic Plan Model [3]

There are several ITSP development models, including the one proposed by Microsoft (Microsoft. 2011), named Microsoft Methodology Consulting Service (MCS) which is based on the technical recommendations of COBIT and developed jointly with partners who specialize in this practice. This model is divided into five stages and each stage has activities related to its responsibility. The first stage deals with the generation of the IT strategic plan, the second includes a survey of IT needs, the third one maps the desired situation, the fourth prepares the strategic IT plan, and the fifth one is for ITSP implementation and monitoring.

The model proposed by some authors considers three steps in ITSP development. The first one is preparation, generated throughout the framework to create an ITSP, the second step diagnoses the current situation, where the body has an exact notion of the stage, and the needs are raised. The final step is to plan the situation whose attainment is planned, at which point the ITSP is produced (Hazan, Claudia. 2010; Fagundes, Vladimir 2011; Cruz, Cláudio Silva da. 2009; Rezende, D. A. 2003).

In Brazil, the Department of Planning, Budget and Management (MPBM) issued a Normative Instruction (NI04) stating that the acquisition of IT (Products and Services) is preceded by Information Technology Strategic Plan (ITSP). The Information Technology Strategic Plan - ITSP provides a complete view of the current environment and Information Technology, according to current and future needs, and allows direct information architecture and technology aligned with the strategic objectives of the institution. The Information Technology Strategic Plan consists primarily of knowledge of its resources (services, Business Processes, Information Systems , Infrastructure, and Technology) from an analysis based on the purpose of the organization, definition, and planning of a strategy to IT evolution. An administration concerned about the ITSP is a company that uses modern principles of rationality, consistency, and quality, creating a policy for success. Looking to improve the construction process and its monitoring of the ITSP, an idea rose to develop a model to provide direction, control and monitor the development of ITSPs and after their production, to allow an effective management and monitoring.

The objective of this model is to define a set of steps that can help IT managers in the Federal Administration in the construction, monitoring, and management of its Information Technology Strategic Plan - ITSP. In the following sections details the development and management of ITSP. The model of design and construction of an ITSP was split into two parts: 1. Preparation, comprising the steps of Preparation, Diagnosis, and Planning (Actions and Risks); 2. Management and Control.

IT Strategic Plan Model

Phases in the Development of IT Strategic Plan [4]

  • Stakeholder Buy-In: The process followed to develop an IT strategic plan can be just as important as the plan itself. Successful IT strategic plan development should follow a comprehensive process focused on obtaining full stakeholder involvement. Since many stakeholders are involved in funding and implementing parts of a plan, getting their buy-in is essential. The best way to obtain buy-in is to include them in the plan development process as much as possible, and by doing so, it can help ensure that specific goals and objectives in the plan receive the necessary funding and resources to implement. The project must also receive full support from upper management so that stakeholders understand the importance of the project and will commit their time and resources to it. Many organizations utilize consultants to undertake the process of creating a plan. This helps ensure objectivity and dedicates resources that can efficiently create a plan, usually within a three- to four-month timeframe depending on the scope of the project and the size of the organization. If an organization believes it has the expertise and resources to undertake the plan creation in-house, it’s important that stakeholders outside of IT are directly involved in the plan’s creation, as this will help with objectivity and buy-in across the organization.
  • Create Project Charter; Define Roles and Resposibilities" Plan creation also need to follow best practices in project management. This means creating a project charter, developing and following a detailed project plan, and forming a project team with a project manager to guide and oversee the process. It is important to define roles and responsibilities upfront. The project team will still play a significant role in the project, and it’s essential that the project team is composed of representatives from all major departments.
  • Discovery: The next stage in creating a plan is the discovery phase. This is where information is gathered and feedback from stakeholders is garnered. A variety of documents will be needed, including hardware and software inventories, telecommunications services, organization charts, network topology diagrams, policies and procedures, disaster recovery/continuity of operations plans, and other pertinent documents. The Project Lead should also facilitate collecting feedback from all stakeholders. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways, including employee surveys, focus groups, and stakeholder interviews. The goal of the feedback is to assess how IT is performing and gather perspectives on what challenges and opportunities IT faces. Feedback should also be obtained from outside agencies, external customers, and gather industry best practices data.
  • Analysis: The next phase of the project is the analysis phase. After all the data has been collected, the Project Lead will analyze the data, look at best practices, and perform gap analysis to determine what deficiencies exist in IT and develop initial findings and recommendations. It’s important to obtain feedback from the project team to ensure the initial findings are on target. Some of the specific recommendations will likely require additional research and might include emerging technologies that may not be widely deployed.
  • Documentation: The next phase is the document phase. The Project Lead will form the goals and objectives, develop guiding principles, and write the plan. Guiding principles help with decision-making and are intended to assist IT and management when issues or technologies come up that are not part of the goals and objectives. For instance, “IT will take a cloud-first approach when purchasing new software.” The project team will need to provide plenty of feedback in the document phase and help with prioritizing the strategic initiatives or plan objectives. The group will also want to ensure that funding, resource, and timeframes are realistic and achievable. The Project Lead will then write the detailed plan and obtain feedback from the project group and other designated stakeholders.
  • Review and Revise: The final phase is the review and revise phase. This is where the Project Lead takes the feedback and then revises and finalizes the plan. Often, the Project Lead or Project Manager will present the plan to senior management, IT staff, and other key stakeholders and publish it for internal, and sometime external, distribution, depending on the organization.
  • Implementation: After the plan is completed, it’s just as important to implement the objectives and initiatives within the specified timeframe and within the planned budget specified. Since a lot can happen during the span of a three- to five-year plan, it’s important to track progress and update the plan. A Chinese proverb states it best, “A good plan is always under construction.” No plan will be perfectly implemented, as external factors like the economy, funding, and emerging technologies could alter the course of the plan. Disruptive technologies can especially alter the implementation. For instance, no one could have predicted the impact that the original Apple iPhone had on mobile computing, which forced nearly every organization to change plans and embrace this new, groundbreaking technology. After three to five years, the organization should plan on developing a new IT strategic plan and begin the process all over again.

Challenges in Successfully Implementing an IT Strategy Plan [5]

There are many challenges that organisations face when implementing a successful strategic IT plan. These largely stem from the mystery that is “Information Technology” and the lack of experience building such plans in the past. This blog will outline these challenges and present ways in which organisations may overcome them.

  • A Business Person, not an IT Person: Organisations are typically not made up of IT people. Senior management such as the CEO are first and foremost business people; they understand business strategy and objectives, but the world of IT is often a mystery. Topics ranging from databases to networking, from business intelligence to infrastructure can be overwhelming, especially when they don’t immediately appear to have a direct influence on the organisation’s objectives. Using senior managers to create the high level critical success factors for strategic IT planning is very effective, however often they need assistance with defining the more detailed elements of a complete IT strategy Plan. Senior managers often struggle with the risk management elements of a strategic plan as they may lack a comprehensive understanding of all the technical elements of IT environments.
  • Internal Bias: There may be issues when implementing a strategic IT plan internally, as bias can come into play. For instance, when someone has been given the task of implementing a strategic IT plan for the organisation. Because each person has only ever worked in a handful of different environments, the strategic objectives and technology drivers can often be biased around their personal experience. A not for profit company in Victoria developed a strategic objective to use the CRM product Salesforce to manage their constituents, however, while this is a great product, the recommendation was biased due to the experience the CFO had in a previous role. Subsequently, the implementation was hugely costly and did not deliver on the underlying core objectives - they ultimately needed an ERP instead of a CRM and had challenges with the SaaS (Software as a service) model. As every organisation has a unique set of requirements, it is crucial to understand the needs of each individual organisation and base the strategic IT plan on these specific needs.
  • Required Expertise to Cover the Broad Range of IT: The world of IT is vast and without the right knowledge, very confusing. Elements of IT extend from hardware] and infrastructure to software platforms as well as phones, networking, business intelligence, databases, spreadsheets and even programming. All of this requires many professionals with an expertise in each specific field, so trying to create a cohesive strategy to tackle the varied field of IT internally can be difficult.
  • Helping Stakeholders to Understand the Value of IT: Another challenge that organisations must overcome when implementing a strategic IT plan is figuring out how to help stakeholders (who typically don’t have much IT knowledge) to understand the value that formal and comprehensive strategic IT planning will deliver to the organisation. Many issues arise from a lack of understanding of the return on investment in IT planning. Often it seems that a strategic IT plan is not necessary for the goals of your organisation, but that is far from the case. The effective use of Information Technology can bring any organisation positive tangible and intangible benefits that need to be articulated in a way that makes sense to stakeholders. Whether this is through TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) analysis or ROI (Return on Investment) calculators stakeholders must understand the true value of developing a documented strategic IT plan, and formalised strategic IT planning processes.

12 Common Mistakes to Avoid

Creating an IT Strategic Plan is a complex task that requires foresight, alignment with business goals, and adaptability to changing technological landscapes. Given its intricacy, several common mistakes can be made during the process:

  • Lack of Alignment with Business Objectives: If the IT plan isn't synchronized with the organization's overarching goals, the result can be wasted resources on projects that don't add strategic value.
  • Overly Technical Focus: An IT Strategic Plan that's too technical might fail to convey the broader business impact of IT initiatives. Balancing technical detail with strategic insight is crucial to ensure it's understandable and relevant to all stakeholders.
  • Failure to Anticipate Change: Technology, by nature, evolves rapidly. Not considering future technological trends, or not building flexibility into the plan, can render it obsolete quickly.
  • Ignoring Current IT Capabilities: Overlooking the current state of IT – its strengths, weaknesses, and existing infrastructure – can lead to unrealistic expectations and strategies that are challenging to implement.
  • Not Engaging Stakeholders: If key stakeholders, from top executives to departmental heads, aren't involved in the planning process, the resulting plan may lack buy-in and face resistance during execution.
  • Insufficient Risk Management: Neglecting to identify, assess, and strategize for potential risks, like cybersecurity threats or vendor lock-ins, can expose the organization to unforeseen challenges.
  • Vague Goals and Metrics: Without clear objectives and measurable KPIs, it becomes challenging to assess the effectiveness of the plan and to make necessary adjustments.
  • Static Mindset: Treating the IT Strategic Plan as a one-off document, rather than a living, evolving roadmap, can stifle adaptability and responsiveness to changing conditions.
  • Lack of Budgeting Details: Not aligning the plan with financial forecasts or not accounting for potential costs can lead to budget overruns and financial strain.
  • Overambitious Objectives: While ambition is commendable, setting unrealistic or too many goals can spread resources thin and set the stage for disappointment.
  • Failing to Review and Update: The IT landscape and business needs change, and so should the strategic plan. Not periodically reviewing and adjusting the plan based on performance metrics and changing conditions can result in missed opportunities and inefficiencies.
  • Underestimating the Importance of Change Management: Not preparing the organization for the changes that come with new technologies or strategies can lead to resistance, confusion, and failed implementations.

Creating an effective IT Strategic Plan requires a careful balance of ambition, realism, foresight, and adaptability. It's essential to be aware of these potential pitfalls to navigate the complexities of strategic IT planning successfully.

  • IT Governance
  • Enterprise Architecture (EA)
  • IT Portfolio Management (ITPM)
  • Digital Transformation (DX)
  • IT Budgeting
  • Cloud Strategy
  • Cybersecurity Strategy
  • Business Continuity Planning (BCP)
  • SWOT Analysis
  • Stakeholder Analysis
  • Change Management
  • ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library)
  • Agile Strategy
  • Technology Lifecycle
  • ↑ What a Strategic Plan is Not BMC
  • ↑ Anatomy of an IT Strategic Plan CIO Magazine
  • ↑ IT Strategic Plan Model Wagner Silva, Marco Vaz, Jano Moreira De Souza
  • ↑ Phases in the Development of IT Strategic Plan DocumentMedia
  • ↑ Challenges in Successfully Implementing an IT Strategy Plan RGT Technologies

Further Reading

  • IT Strategy Example
  • IT Strategy Presentation
  • Evaluating Information Technology Strategic Planning Process: Lesson Learnt from Bruneian Small Businesses -Afzaal H. Seyal
  • Create account
  • Contributions

Strategy can relate to strategy for the Wikimedia movement, strategy for entities such as the Wikimedia Foundation and Chapters, and roadmaps for individual Projects (e.g., Wikidata or Wiktionary or Wiki Loves Monuments ).

2030 strategy process [ edit ]

  • First Phase : In 2017 the Wikimedia Foundation facilitated a movement-wide discussion on the future direction of Wikimedia. The outcome of that discussion is the Strategic Direction, which can be endorsed here .
  • Second Phase : Through the work of the nine thematic Working Groups , Movement Strategy produced a set of recommendations and Principles to guide the future change in the Movement (published in May 2020).
  • Transition : The prioritization events and the Global Conversations , during the Transition phase, helped determine the priorities for implementing the recommendations in the near future.
  • Implementation : The implementation of movement strategy is, from now on, underway. You are encouraged to take part in the ongoing discussions or to launch new conversations and bring them into the movement.

Current strategy documents [ edit ]

Strategy of wikimedia organizations [ edit ].

wiki strategic planning

History [ edit ]

First plans for the wikimedia foundation [ edit ].

The Wikimedia Foundation was formed in 2003, when it became clear that Wikipedia was becoming an important online project, too big to reside on Bomis' servers. Previous to this, most "strategic planning" discussions revolved around the evolving Wikis; many decisions (additional languages, additional projects, core policies) that helped shape future organizational development were boldly made by community members and leaders through the wiki process. Most "Foundation-level" work was done by volunteers, from financial planning to technical scaling. The Foundation was a convenient organizational structure for the projects, not envisioned as an end unto itself. At the same time, Wikimedia Deutschland became the first chapter, planning its own national strategy - from publicity and politics to publishing.

When the first elected community member Trustees took their seats on the Wikimedia Foundation Board, there were a variety of discussions about where the Foundation and the movement should be heading.

  • Early discussions: mailing list threads from Anthere and Angela from late 2004 were often about related topics
  • Strategic goals: a few open meetings about goals, and some discussions on the wiki ( 1 ), ensued
  • The Mission and Vision statements were revisited in 2006/2007 to help lay uniform foundations for future work. (The idea was for this to happen regularly, though the next revisit was in 2009)
  • In late 2006 there was an internal discussion of strategy with facilitated meetings of Board members and others, resulting in a few one-year planning documents. These do not seem to be public, though many resulting conversations are.

Most discussions about project and Foundation-wide planning have been held on mailing lists (first wikipedia-l, then foundation-l); or on Meta.

Movement strategies [ edit ]

2004  : the Board holds its first elections. There was strategic planning before and after

2006  : reflection and review; Angela and Anthere had been on the board since the beginning.

wiki strategic planning

Wikimedia Foundation strategies [ edit ]

The Wikimedia Foundation has developed, on-wiki, the following strategies:

Mission and Vision [ edit ]

The mission ( editable version ) and vision ( editable version ) attempt to formalize the shared goals of the projects. However, they are wordy in places and leave out goals in others.

In 2006 they were rewritten once, and there was a Board/Chapters/Other meeting at which they were discussed along with a general discussion of where the projects should be heading. The idea then was that they would be regularly revised and revisited -- but this has not happened since.

Choosing new projects [ edit ]

New project proposals aren't always given the attention they deserve, considering that how we view ourselves as a collection of sister projects is determined in part by what Projects we support. Newcomers are drawn to the projects by the promise of one or the other environment to work; and expect to find a functioning local society and receptive soil for planting new ideas.

Major projects that have been considered but not accepted so far include : Wikikids, Wikifamily, and Wikicite; other major friendly projects include AboutUs.org and Rodovid/WeRelate.

Strategy proposals, projects, discussions [ edit ]

  • Planning for the future
  • Suggestions and proposals
  • Individual engagement grants (and related project ideas)
  • Initiatives of various shapes and sizes
  • Strategy project

Discussion as part of Wikimedia Foundation and project governance [ edit ]

Board candidate statements throughout the years:

  • Board elections/2004/Candidates
  • Board elections/2005/Candidates
  • Board elections/2006/Candidates
  • Board elections/2007/Candidates
  • Board elections/2008/Candidates
  • Board elections/2009/Candidates
  • Board elections/2011/Candidates
  • Board elections/2013/Candidates

Some of largest wikis have, or have had, their own strategy discussions, leading to more specific project strategies and roadmaps. For instance, in the English Wikipedia this includes WP:1.0 and w:en:WP:WikiProject Council (for quality and participation). Many discussions about global policy (privacy, BLPs, civility, language incubation) started with discussions on a single large wiki about its own vision and future.

wiki strategic planning

  • Strategic planning
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IMAGES

  1. The Ultimate Strategic Planning Framework Tool: Introduction

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  2. 7 Steps to Strategic Planning Process

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  3. Strategic Planning Process in 5 Simple Steps

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  4. Figure 2-1 Steps in Strategic Planning

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  5. 6 Main Steps of Strategic Planning Process (Made Easy)

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  6. Strategic Planning Cycle as a graphic illustration free image download

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VIDEO

  1. Strategic Planning

  2. Strategic Planning

  3. Strategic Plan Unveiling

COMMENTS

  1. Strategic planning

    Strategic planning is an organization 's process of defining its strategy or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to attain strategic goals. Furthermore, it may also extend to control mechanisms for guiding the implementation of the strategy.

  2. Business Strategy/Overview of Strategic Planning

    Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy, including its capital and people.

  3. Strategic Planning

    From Strategic Planning. Strategy.The Wikimedia way.From July 2009 through July 2010, participants on this wiki discussed, deliberated, and developed a five-year Strategic Plan for the Wikimedia movement. It was a different kind of strategy. And it paid off.

  4. Strategic Planning

    Strategic Planning is an organizational management activity that is used to set priorities, focus energy and resources, strengthen operations, ensure that employees and other stakeholders are working toward common goals, establish agreement around intended outcomes/results, and assess and adjust the organization's direction in response to a chan...

  5. What is strategic planning? A 5-step guide

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

  6. Process

    Strategic planning essentially answers the questions, "Where are we now?", "Where should we go?", and "How do we get there?" In order for the resulting answers to be actionable and meaningful, all of the different stakeholders must be aligned around these answers. There are well-known best practices for doing strategic planning for organizations.

  7. Strategic Planning Should Be a Strategic Exercise

    Strategic planning is how the company designs that system, which is very different from an operational action plan in that it is never a static to-do list but constantly evolves as strategy makers ...

  8. Strategic Planning Cycle

    The strategic planning cycle embodied in a set of formal planning procedures, ensures that managers examine major strategic issues, or 'strategic elephants', faced by their organization. This is necessary to overcome the natural preoccupation with short term operational problems.

  9. Strategic Planning

    Strategic planning is the art of creating specific business strategies, implementing them, and evaluating the results of executing the plan, in regard to a company's overall long-term goals or desires.

  10. Strategic Plan/Background and Context

    Strategy the Wikimedia Way. In July 2009, we launched our first-ever strategy development project designed to result in a five-year strategic plan for the Wikimedia movement. From the outset, we believed that an open and participatory process would result in a smarter, more effective strategy.

  11. What is Strategic Planning? Definition and Steps

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

  12. 7 Steps of a Wikipedia Strategy

    A Wikipedia strategic plan is more than just updating the company and CEO's Wikipedia articles. Creating the strategy is a cooperation of branding, communications, and data analytics teams.

  13. 3 Ways to Do Strategic Planning

    Method 1 Developing Your Strategic Plan 1 Call a meeting of top team leaders and managers. Before you can start devising a strategic plan, you need to make sure that the people developing the overall strategy can get feedback from those that must implement it on the ground.

  14. The Strategic Planning Process in 4 Steps

    Estimated Duration. Determine organizational readiness. Owner/CEO, Strategy Director. Readiness assessment. Establish your planning team and schedule. Owner/CEO, Strategy Leader. Kick-Off Meeting: 1 hr. Collect and review information to help make the upcoming strategic decisions. Planning Team and Executive Team.

  15. Strategic Planning Process: 7 Crucial Steps to Success

    Here's our 7-step approach to strategic planning that ensures everyone is on the same page: Clarify your vision, mission, and values. Conduct an environmental scan. Define strategic priorities. Develop goals and metrics. Derive a strategic plan. Write and communicate your strategic plan. Implement, monitor, and revise.

  16. Strategic planning

    Strategic planning is the process of defining your business's direction and outlining a path toward a preferred future. The goal of a strategic plan is to capture an organization's mission and core principles — to envision the fulfillment of these ideals. Strategic planning is both conceptual and practical, as it presents both high-level ...

  17. Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2010-2015

    The strategic planning process focuses on finding actionable strategies for the Wikimedia Foundation/Movement, answering what and how questions concerning outreach and reaching non-editing users, effectiveness of our projects, and how we should prioritize current and future initiatives, among other things. (NB: Wikimedia strategy is not the same as Wikipedia strategy.)

  18. IT Strategic Plan (Information Technology Strategic Plan)

    1 Definition of an IT Strategic Plan 2 Key Components of an IT Strategic Plan 3 Why is a Strategic Plan for IT Essential for an Organization? 3.1 What an IT Strategic Plan is Not[1] 4 How to Create a Winning IT Strategic Plan[2] 5 IT Strategic Plan Model[3] 6 Phases in the Development of IT Strategic Plan[4]

  19. Strategy

    Main article: Movement Strategy First Phase: In 2017 the Wikimedia Foundation facilitated a movement-wide discussion on the future direction of Wikimedia. The outcome of that discussion is the Strategic Direction, which can be endorsed here.