What is the Strategic Planning Process
There is no one model of strategy because every business defines their goals differently. It can be difficult creating a business strategy because there are a number of ways you can achieve successful results. The Strategic Planning Process is designed to answer questions about your business and industry so you can define the steps to achieving your goals.
Business Planning Boot Camp provides insight on the Strategic Planning Process to clearly define business goals and develop their strategy to achieve them. The process can map out the next 3 to 5 years of your business and evaluate as progress is made.
What Are The Steps To The Strategic Planning Process?
A business strategy is thorough, measurable, and flexible. In order to create a successful strategy businesses need to ask the right questions, define what’s important, determine who is in charge, and review their progress. It’s hard to accomplish anything without a plan of action and the strategic planning process is used to make that plan.
It can be an overwhelming process developing a strategic plan, but breaking it down will make it easier to tackle. These steps in the process are important to developing your overall strategy:
- Situational Analysis: It is important to determine where your business is in its internal and external environment. This step can be difficult when looking at the business from an internal perspective. A business must determine its real competencies over its perceived competencies. On top of that, they need a clear understanding of their marketplace and competition. All of this information plays a role in developing the approach your business takes in its marketplace.
- Mission and Objective: Where does your company want to be? This step focuses on the future of your business and establishes the long term goals. Every step taken in your business goes toward these objectives so they serve as the destination. Use this step to determine priority issues that require the immediate attention of the entire management team.
- Measure and Evaluate: Long term strategies take years to accomplish and your goals should be broken down into steps that can help evaluate the progress made during those years. Break goals down into steps that can measure success and determine if your business is on track to meeting goals or if it needs to reevaluate the process.
- Set Leaders: These are the people who take you where you want to go. Somebody who understands where the business is and where it wants to be will be able to manage their team to achieve the short and long term goals that have been established. They will be able to allocate time, human capital, and money toward each project and report the progress.
- Review and Review Again: A strategy needs to be flexible. It is crucial to review the strategy for any pain points and adjust accordingly. Fundamentally, business strategy is going to introduce change internally and reviewing that change will determine if the business is going in the right direction. The marketplace is always changing as well, so the business strategy has to take that into account when determining steps.
Join our Business Planning Boot Camp Program
A strategic business plan goes beyond the mission statement. With Business Planning Boot Camp, your business can develop and execute a plan that goes toward its vision and goals. Contact us to learn more about the Strategic Planning Process or give us a call at 519.740.2725.