Future Planning for Your Business

You started your business with the “oh so important” business plan. Then you were told that your organization needed a full blown marketing plan. Now, it’s time to look beyond this year and develop a strategic plan—for the future. What gives? Why do you need a strategic plan?

Basically, strategic planning focuses on where an organization is going over the next year or more, how it’s going to get there, and how it’ll know if it got there or not. The focus of a strategic plan is typically on the development of the entire organization while a business plan focuses on particular products, services, or programs. Meanwhile, the marketing plan focuses telling the world and selling the world on your product, service, or program, and even more important, who in the world wants it.

There are a variety of perspectives, models and approaches used in strategic planning. The way that a strategic plan is developed depends on the organization’s leadership and culture, and complexity of the organization’s environment, size of the organization, expertise of planners, etc.

For example, there are a variety of strategic planning models, including goals-based, issues-based, organic, scenario, etc. Goals-based planning is probably the most common and starts with focus on the organization’s mission, goals to work toward the mission, strategies to achieve the goals, and action planning. Issues-based strategic planning often starts by examining issues facing the organization, strategies to address those issues, and action plans. Organic strategic planning might start by articulating the organization’s vision and values, and then action plans to achieve the vision while adhering to those values.

Some plans are scoped to one year, many to three years, and some to five to ten years into the future. Some plans include only top-level information and no action plans. Some plans are five to eight pages long, while others can be considerably longer.

Development of the strategic plan greatly helps to clarify the organization’s plans and ensure that key leaders are all “on the same page”. Far more important than the strategic plan document, is the strategic planning process itself.

The strategic planning process is preceded by a number of critical preparation activities including forming a strategic planning committee, reviewing and finalizing the planning timetable, finalizing information gathering and analysis strategies, determining who else to involve in the planning process and the nature of their involvement. 

The strategic planning process consists of:

1.       Gathering and Analyzing Information

2.       Identification of Critical Strategic Issues

3.       Development of a Mission Statement

4.       Development of a Strategic Vision Statement

5.       Development of Strategic Goal Statements

6.       Development of Strategies for Each Goal

7.       Development of Annual Objectives

In summary, if we were to view strategic planning as a journey, the first two steps of the process – information gathering and analysis and identifying strategic issues tell us where we are. The next step – developing a mission- reminds us why we’re on the journey in the first place. And developing a vision – helps us determine the destination. We get to the vision through the accomplishment of goals. We accomplish our goals by means of the strategies we devise for each goal. Finally, we translate goals and strategies into concrete action through development of objectives.

Adapted from the Field Guide to Nonprofit Strategic Planning and Facilitation, written by Carter McNamara 1997-2007.