![\"285px-Wikimedia_Strategic_planning_09.svg\"](\"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/285px-Wikimedia_Strategic_planning_09.svg_.png\")
What if you don\u2019t have 3 days to complete a full strategic plan? How can you still get a good quality strategic plan when you only have a day or a day and half for planning? The planning process I\u2019m presenting here will get you a great plan in half the time. This process is great for associations and smaller organizations. It\u2019s also a wonderful process for departments within an organization.<\/p>\n
My preference is to start the evening before and follow with a full day planning session the next day.<\/p>\n
This engaging process incorporates three key elements into the strategic planning process. It starts with a situational analysis that we refer to as \u201cThe Present.\u201d It follows with a visioning process to create \u201cThe Future,\u201d which then leads to the process of creating \u201cThe Strategies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Each of these three elements includes a number of steps and actions for the management team to undertake. The entire process concludes with a clear strategic and operational plan, ready for execution.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Present\u201d consists of five steps with the goal of describing the present situation for the business. \u00a0The five (5) steps are:<\/p>\n
The management team starts this discussion with a review and assessment of the driving force categories, their outcomes and the critical uncertainties. They confirm their strategic challenge. Then they\u2019re ready to create a vision for their future.<\/p>\n
Creating a compelling vision of and developing the strategies to achieve it is one of the management team\u2019s most difficult challenges. In this complex and ever-changing world, anticipating the future can be very difficult. The problems of organizations are increasingly complex. There are so many ironies, polarities, dichotomies, dualities, ambivalence, paradoxes, confusions, contradictions, contraries, and messes for organizations to understand and deal with. This complexity explains why many management teams are more comfortable focusing on clear, short-term goals than on uncertain, long-term visions.<\/p>\n
But failing to anticipate the organization\u2019s and its customer\u2019s future needs could put them at risk of losing business to competitors who do anticipate these needs and are able to fulfill them. The management team must understand the present needs and future considerations so that they can position their organization, through the implementation of appropriate strategies, to fulfill those needs.<\/p>\n
The management team will create various scenarios of their \u201cideal vision\u201d. This will be more than just a dream. It will be an ambitious view of the future that everyone on the team can believe in, one that offers a future that is better in important ways than what now exists. When the vision is clearly articulated, everyday decisions and actions throughout the organization will respond to current problems and challenges in ways that move the organization toward the future rather than maintain the status quo.<\/p>\n
The vision will clarify a clear link between the present and the future. It will describe how to energize people and gain their commitment to the organization. It includes the purpose and contribution of each employee\u2019s work and its impact on quality and the customer.<\/p>\n
The management team will review their vision and create a high-level list of the differences between the present (the driving force categories, their outcomes and the critical uncertainties), their strategic challenge and the future (their vision). In our experience we find it easier to engage in a bottom-up approach to the development of strategies. This is faster than starting with a high-level view of the strategies and then creating the actions required to realize them.<\/p>\n
The process starts with them individually brainstorming all of the actions required to close the gap between the present and the future. They\u2019ll think about the actions they\u2019ll have to take, areas to investigate, research to complete, analysis to undertake, communications to create and so on. These post-it notes will then be grouped into similar, related actions.<\/p>\n
The team will then create a strategy for each group of actions. The best approach to start each strategy with an action verb such as create, implement, design, structure, identify, develop, research, train and so on. Broad based measurements can be added to each strategy by asking \u201cwhy\u201d to each strategy. The answer usually provides a qualitative measurement that can be added. For example, they might say: in order to or so that or which will result in or which will ensure, etc.<\/p>\n
To ensure a successful execution, an operational plan will then be developed. Some of the actions, identifying \u201chow to do a strategy\u201d will have already been developed through the initial brainstorming. The management team will identify an \u201cowner\u201d for each strategy. The owner will be responsible for identifying additional actions required to ensure a successful execution. They might do this with their own employees or group. These mini-project plans will become the strategic operation plans.<\/p>\n
When I lead these sessions I include some additional brainstorming techniques to ensure the strategies are well crafted. The process is fun and engaging. The outcome is always a strategic plan that helps define the future direction for the organization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What if you don\u2019t have 3 days to complete a full strategic plan? How can you still get a good quality strategic plan when you only have a day or a day and half for planning? The planning process I\u2019m presenting here will get you a great plan in half the time. This process is… An Accelerated Strategic Planning Process<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":3036,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[27],"class_list":["post-3035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-strategy","tag-strategic-planning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3035"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3037,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3035\/revisions\/3037"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}