Strategic Planning

There are various approaches to strategic planning, depending on the type of business and the granularity required. However, most strategic planning cycles can be summarized in these five steps:

• Identify. A strategic planning cycle starts with determining an organization's present strategic position. This is where stakeholders use their ongoing strategic plan, including the mission statement and extended strategic goals, to evaluate the business and the environment of business. These evaluations include a needs assessment or a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis to understand the state of the industry and the path ahead.
• Prioritize. Next, strategic planners create objectives and initiatives that align with the company's mission and goals and encourage the business to achieve its goals. There may be many worthwhile goals, so planning prioritizes the most important, relevant, and urgent ones. 
• Develop. This is the main nudge in strategic planning in which stakeholders collude to state the steps or tactics required to attain a stated strategic objective. This may involve creating numerous tactical business plans which are short- a term based that fit into the overarching strategy. Stakeholders involved in plan development using various tools such as a strategy map to help visualize and tweak the plan. Developing the method may include opportunity adjustments that reflect business priorities. Developers may decline some initiatives if they don't support the long-term strategy.
• Implement. Once the strategic plan is built successfully, it's time to get it moving. This requires clear communication across the company to set responsibilities, make investments, adjust policies and processes, and establish measurement and reporting. Implementation typically includes strategic management with regular reviews to ensure that plans stay on track.
•  Update. A strategic plan is regularly reviewed and revised to adjust priorities and reevaluate goals as business conditions change and new opportunities emerge. For example, quick metrics reviews can happen quarterly, and adjustments to the strategic plan can occur annually. In addition, stakeholders may use balanced scorecards and other tools to assess performance against goals.

Businesses also need some right directions and efficient goals to work toward. That type of guidance is provided through strategic planning. A strategic plan is essentially a pathway to reach organizational goals. Without such guidance, there's no way to tell whether a business is on track to achieve its goals.

The following are the four aspects of strategy development that are worthy of your attention:

• The mission. Strategic planning starts with a task that offers an organization a sense of purpose and an objective. The company's mission statement demonstrates who it was, what it did, and where it wanted to go. Missions are typically broad but can be acted upon.
• The goals. Strategic planning involves selecting plans. Most planning uses SMART goals-- specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound -- or other objectively quantifiable aims. Measurable goals prove vital because they enable business leaders to determine how well the business is performing against goals and the overall mission. 
• Adjustments with short-term goals. Strategic planning directly relates to short-term, tactical business planning and can help business leaders with everyday decision-making that better aligns with business strategy. Leaders may choose to make strategic investments in communication and collaboration technologies for the fictitious educational business, such as services and virtual classroom software, but reject the opportunities to create physical classroom facilities.
• Revision and evaluation. Strategic planning helps business leaders in evaluating progress against the strategies and making changes accordingly or making alignments in response to changing conditions.