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a company's strategic plan quizlet

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Why Is Strategic Planning Important?

Above view of team creating a strategic plan

  • 06 Oct 2020

Do you know what your organization’s strategy is? How much time do you dedicate to developing that strategy each month?

If your answers are on the low side, you’re not alone. According to research from Bridges Business Consultancy , 48 percent of leaders spend less than one day per month discussing strategy.

It’s no wonder, then, that 48 percent of all organizations fail to meet at least half of their strategic targets. Before an organization can reap the rewards of its business strategy, planning must take place to ensure its strategy remains agile and executable .

Here’s a look at what strategic planning is and how it can benefit your organization.

Access your free e-book today.

What Is Strategic Planning?

Strategic planning is the ongoing organizational process of using available knowledge to document a business's intended direction. This process is used to prioritize efforts, effectively allocate resources, align shareholders and employees on the organization’s goals, and ensure those goals are backed by data and sound reasoning.

It’s important to highlight that strategic planning is an ongoing process—not a one-time meeting. In the online course Disruptive Strategy , Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen notes that in a study of HBS graduates who started businesses, 93 percent of those with successful strategies evolved and pivoted away from their original strategic plans.

“Most people think of strategy as an event, but that’s not the way the world works,” Christensen says. “When we run into unanticipated opportunities and threats, we have to respond. Sometimes we respond successfully; sometimes we don’t. But most strategies develop through this process. More often than not, the strategy that leads to success emerges through a process that’s at work 24/7 in almost every industry.”

Strategic planning requires time, effort, and continual reassessment. Given the proper attention, it can set your business on the right track. Here are three benefits of strategic planning.

Related: 4 Ways to Develop Your Strategic Thinking Skills

Benefits of Strategic Planning

1. create one, forward-focused vision.

Strategy touches every employee and serves as an actionable way to reach your company’s goals.

One significant benefit of strategic planning is that it creates a single, forward-focused vision that can align your company and its shareholders. By making everyone aware of your company’s goals, how and why those goals were chosen, and what they can do to help reach them, you can create an increased sense of responsibility throughout your organization.

This can also have trickle-down effects. For instance, if a manager isn’t clear on your organization’s strategy or the reasoning used to craft it, they could make decisions on a team level that counteract its efforts. With one vision to unite around, everyone at your organization can act with a broader strategy in mind.

2. Draw Attention to Biases and Flaws in Reasoning

The decisions you make come with inherent bias. Taking part in the strategic planning process forces you to examine and explain why you’re making each decision and back it up with data, projections, or case studies, thus combatting your cognitive biases.

A few examples of cognitive biases are:

  • The recency effect: The tendency to select the option presented most recently because it’s fresh in your mind
  • Occam’s razor bias: The tendency to assume the most obvious decision to be the best decision
  • Inertia bias: The tendency to select options that allow you to think, feel, and act in familiar ways

One cognitive bias that may be more difficult to catch in the act is confirmation bias . When seeking to validate a particular viewpoint, it's the tendency to only pay attention to information that supports that viewpoint.

If you’re crafting a strategic plan for your organization and know which strategy you prefer, enlist others with differing views and opinions to help look for information that either proves or disproves the idea.

Combating biases in strategic decision-making requires effort and dedication from your entire team, and it can make your organization’s strategy that much stronger.

Related: 3 Group Decision-Making Techniques for Success

3. Track Progress Based on Strategic Goals

Having a strategic plan in place can enable you to track progress toward goals. When each department and team understands your company’s larger strategy, their progress can directly impact its success, creating a top-down approach to tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) .

By planning your company’s strategy and defining its goals, KPIs can be determined at the organizational level. These goals can then be extended to business units, departments, teams, and individuals. This ensures that every level of your organization is aligned and can positively impact your business’s KPIs and performance.

It’s important to remember that even though your strategy might be far-reaching and structured, it must remain agile. As Christensen asserts in Disruptive Strategy , a business’s strategy needs to evolve with the challenges and opportunities it encounters. Be prepared to pivot your KPIs as goals shift and communicate the reasons for change to your organization.

Which HBS Online Strategy Course is Right for You? | Download Your Free Flowchart

Improve Your Strategic Planning Skills

Strategic planning can benefit your organization’s vision, execution, and progress toward goals. If strategic planning is a skill you’d like to improve, online courses can provide the knowledge and techniques needed to lead your team and organization.

Strategy courses can range from primers on key concepts (such as Economics for Managers ), to deep-dives on strategy frameworks (such as Disruptive Strategy ), to coursework designed to help you strategize for a specific organizational goal (such as Sustainable Business Strategy ).

Learning how to craft an effective, compelling strategic plan can enable you to not only invest in your career but provide lasting value to your organization.

Do you want to formulate winning strategies for your organization? Explore our portfolio of online strategy courses and download the free flowchart to determine which is the best fit for you and your goals.

a company's strategic plan quizlet

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Who’s responsible for what structuring your strategic plan..

Creating a structured strategic plan is essential to the success of a planning process. But, creating responsibility at each level of the plan is absolutely pivotal to the success of a plan.

One of the most frequent questions we coach our clients through is, “how do I structure my plan and who should be responsible for what?” While the answer is usually unique to each organization, we’ve broken down the planning elements and organization structure to give you a handy visual to help guide you to structure your plan and create accountability for plan creation and execution throughout your organization.

a company's strategic plan quizlet

Now that you have the overall view, let’s take a deeper dive into the elements.

CEO and Executive Team

The CEO and executive team play a big role in setting the foundation of a strategic plan by creating guiding organizational principles, articulating the strategic areas of focus, and creating the long-term goals that guide the organization to create aligned goals and actions to achieve its vision of success. The executive team is responsible for:

Mission, Vision, & Guiding Principles – These are the core foundational elements to your plan that tell your organization who you are, where you’re going, and how you’re going to operate. These principles encompass your organization’s ethos and help serve as the foundation to your long-term strategy to achieve your vision of success. These are updated every 5 years and reviewed by the executive team annually.

Strategic Priorities – These are the long-term areas of strategic focus that are designed to achieve your vision of long-term success. These create the different pillars of your plan and articulate the focus for each area. These are updated every 5 years and reviewed by the executive team annually.

Organization-Wide Goals and Performance Indicators – These are the long-term goals and performance indicators that begin to put action to paper to help achieve strategic priorities. These goals and actions have a lifespan of 3-5 years, but are reviewed and adapted annually.

a company's strategic plan quizlet

Managers/Department Leaders

Managers and department leaders don’t have as much responsibility during the plan creation process, but drive your organization to create the annual department goals that support the organization’s goals and performance indicators. Managers and department leaders are responsible for:

Annual Goals – Department leaders and managers create and execute the annual department goals that align and support the organization-wide goals and performance indicators. These goals are established annually.

a company's strategic plan quizlet

Get the Free Guide for Writing Better SMART Goals

Individual contributors.

Individual contributors are your soldiers on the ground tasked with helping drive your strategy from the ground up. They play an essential role in your day-to-day operations, but also in the creation and execution of your strategy. Individual contributors are responsible for:

Supporting Action Items with Milestones – Individual contributors create the supporting action plans with milestones that drive the day-to-day focus on strategy. Each of these action plan milestones tally up to achieve your annual goals. These action plans are completed annually.

a company's strategic plan quizlet

Final Thoughts

As you work through building your strategic plan at every level of your organization, it’s important to remember that every player at the table is a key puzzle piece to your plan. Individual contributors play just as big a role as someone on the executive team – and the cascaded responsibility and execution of a plan is what makes strategy execution possible.

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a company's strategic plan quizlet

  • Business strategy |
  • What is strategic planning? A 5-step gu ...

What is strategic planning? A 5-step guide

Julia Martins contributor headshot

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.

How to build an organizational strategy

Get our free ebook and learn how to bridge the gap between mission, strategic goals, and work at your organization.

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: the key to profitability in business.

Strategic Planning: The Key To Profitability In Business

Whatever your goal, whether in life or in business, your odds of achieving it increase dramatically if you have a plan. That’s the case whether you want to learn another language, lose weight or increase your company’s profitability.

That's why it’s more than a little surprising that the lion’s share of businesses do very little actual strategic planning. According to OnStrategy , for example:

  • More than 85% of C-suite executives work on strategy less than 1 hour a month
  • More than 90% of businesses fail to execute their strategic plans successfully
  • About 60% of businesses don’t align their budgets with a strategic plan
  • More than 95% of workers don’t know what their company’s strategy is

WHY DO SO MANY STRATEGIC PLANS FAIL?

Those are some dire metrics, but what they don’t say is “why?” Why, if planning is so critical to business success, do so many businesses seem to take such a cavalier attitude towards planning? 

There are several reasons. First, many companies know that planning is critically important, but they’re not quite sure how to do it. Second, good planning requires accountability, and some business leaders prefer a freewheeling style, one that doesn’t tie them to clearly defined actions and goals. Finally, and perhaps most important, strategic planning can be hard — it can be easier, in other words, to avoid protracted problems, toss the dice and hope for the best.

The reticence to engage in strategic planning is understandable when one considers that so many plans fail to achieve their principal goals, and for a variety of reasons. According to Forbes , those reasons fall into 4 major categories:

  • The business isn’t ready to change: planning necessarily results in change, and that can be challenging. Doing things in new ways means new accountability, some of which employees at all levels are unwilling to embrace. Said differently, you shouldn’t begin planning until your business, from top to bottom, is prepared for change.
  • The plan becomes overly complex: strategic planning entails change, but that doesn’t mean you need to change everything about the way you do business. It’s important to prioritize goals and focus on the most important. The simpler your plan, the easier it will be to execute, and the more likely it will be to succeed.
  • People aren’t willing to address problems: every business has problems — perhaps marketing and sales don’t get along, or a manager lacks effective leadership skills. Airing those problems can lead to infighting, and that can stop planning efforts in their tracks. To succeed, you need to address problems head on, but in the spirit of healthy debate, not contentiousness or argument.
  • Planning is confused with budgeting: strategic planning and budgeting are related processes — but they’re not the same thing. In high-performing organizations, planning is a vehicle to identify ways in which a business can invest innovation and opportunity. In other words, budgeting is a subset of planning, not the other way around.

WHAT IS STRATEGIC PLANNING?

To avoid these planning boondoggles, businesses need to understand both what strategic planning is, and what are the best tactics to ensure that theirs succeeds.

So, what is strategic planning? Obviously, every business is different, with different goals and challenges.  For most however, strategic planning is a careful set of steps the goal of which is to clarify their current position, articulate their goals, and settle on the best ways to achieve those objectives. At its best, strategic planning becomes a springboard for innovation, unleashing creativity and new ideas that wouldn’t have surfaced in the absence of planning.

As The Balance notes, for example:

“A strategic plan is a document that establishes the direction of an organization. It can be a single page or fill up a binder, depending on the size and complexity of the business and work.  Most managers can benefit from having a strategic plan. The process of developing a plan helps the manager (and the team) step back and examine where they are, where they want to go, and how to get there. In the absence of a plan, work still gets done on a day-to-day basis but often lacks a sense of purpose and priority.”

WHAT’S THE BEST WAY TO CREATE YOUR STRATEGIC PLAN?

As noted above, no two businesses are the same, which means of course that the strategic planning process will be different for each. That said, most businesses succeed at strategic planning by taking the following 4 steps :

1. BEGIN WITH A SWOT ANALYSIS

Identifying your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats is crucial to planning success. It should never be a perfunctory exercise, but rather one grounded in careful research and thoughtful analysis. For example, you should consider business strengths and weaknesses across a wide continuum, from staffing to product viability, customers and market position. 

Business opportunities could include new markets, products and services, revenue streams and potential partnerships. Finally, consider both internal and external threats — everything from a potential economic downturn to new competition, reduction in cash flow and the loss of key employees.

2. NAIL DOWN YOUR MISSION AND VISION STATEMENTS

Your company’s mission and vision statements should never be isolated from the central work of your business. Rather, they should touch everything you do and be understood by every employee. 

The mission statement defines (briefly and compellingly) your company’s reason for being. Think of IKEA’s “ To create a better everyday life for the many people .” Your vision statement articulates where you want to take your company, what in other words it will look like when you realize your mission. A good example is Nike’s “Bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world. (*If you have a body, you are an athlete.)” 

3. CREATE YOUR GOALS

Once you’ve defined where your business is now (through SWOT), clarified what your business does (better than your competitors) and where you want it to be in the future, you’re ready to create goals. These goals should be SMART — in other words, they should be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound.

Begin by defining broad company goals, things like specific changes in company culture, large-scale financial, profitability and productivity goals and new product or service offerings. After you’ve defined these top level goals, it’s important to create lower-level goals that support your big goals in individual departments.

4. CREATE A BUDGET THAT SUPPORTS YOUR PLAN

This is where the rubber meets the road in strategic planning. You need to assign (realistic) dollar figures to each of the changes articulated in your plan. If you need to expand your IT team, how much will that cost? If your marketing team can improve effectiveness with CRM or marketing automation software, you need to find a way to pay for it.

It’s not uncommon to discover at this stage that your plan, although smart and thoughtful, will cost more money than your business has. If that’s the case, you’ll need to either find new revenue streams to fund it or amend the plan so it aligns with your budget.

In a business world where increasing competition is the norm and innovation has become a critical component of success, strategic planning is crucial to the health, profitability and longevity of your business. But it can also be both complicated and confusing, one of the reasons an increasing number of businesses are turning to experienced firms who can give the guidance and advice they need to succeed.

To learn more about the ways our accounting, HR payroll, benefits administration and talent acquisition services can support your company’s strategic planning, drive innovation and help you achieve your principal business goals, contact us today.

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Michael Murphy

Michael Murphy

Michael is the founder of Platinum Group. His passion is in helping businesses to simplify their employee management and accounting processes.

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IMAGES

  1. Intro to Strategic Management CHPT1 Flashcards

    a company's strategic plan quizlet

  2. Chapter 4 Planning and Strategic Management Diagram

    a company's strategic plan quizlet

  3. Strategic Management: Chapter 2 Flashcards

    a company's strategic plan quizlet

  4. How To Write a Strategic Plan With Your Team

    a company's strategic plan quizlet

  5. What Is Strategic Planning And How To Do It Right In 5 Key Steps

    a company's strategic plan quizlet

  6. Strategic Management Final Exam Flashcards

    a company's strategic plan quizlet

VIDEO

  1. Strategic Planning

  2. WHY STRATEGIC PLANS FAIL.BOTH INDIVIDUAL AND CORPORATE

  3. Strategic Plan Unveiling

  4. Strategic Planning 1

  5. Strategic Plan Goals

  6. Strategic Planning

COMMENTS

  1. Chapter 2 Flashcards

    Chapter 2. A company's strategic plan consists of. Click the card to flip 👆. management's vision mapping out where a company is headed, the company's financial and strategic objectives, and management's strategy to achieve the objectives and move the company along the chosen strategic path. Click the card to flip 👆.

  2. MGT 491 Quiz 2 Flashcards

    1. A company's strategic plan consists of - management's vision mapping out where a company is headed, the company's financial and strategic objectives, and management's strategy to achieve the objectives and move the company along the chosen strategic path.

  3. Strategic Plan Flashcards

    1 / 33 Flashcards Learn Test Match Q-Chat Created by jrhoad2 Students also viewed Wk 5 - Apply: Summative Assessment: Management Accounting: Planning, Evaluating, and Controlling 15 terms Smaier_1401 Preview Strategic Planning 15 terms KSteverson Preview blended competencies, clinical reasoning and processes of person centered care 22 terms

  4. Business Strategy Test 1 Practice Flashcards

    Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like A company's strategy concerns: A. The market focus and plans for offering a more appealing product than rivals B. how it plans to make money in its chosen business C. management's action plan for outperforming competitors and achieving superior profitability D. the long-term direction that management believes the company should ...

  5. A company's strategic plan a. consists of a strategic visio

    A company's strategic plan a. consists of a strategic visio | Quizlet c. Total revenue a. Price Social Science Business Question A company's strategic plan

  6. bus strat ch 2 Flashcards

    Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like what is a stretch objective?, to implement a strategic plan, what must a manager be able to do?, what are the best tactics to convince lower level managers and employees to support the companys strategic vision and more.

  7. 1) Strategic Planning Flashcards

    1) stage of the industry life cycle 2) product differentiation and switching costs 3) ratio of FC to VC 4) capacity expansion How does a firm grow in a stable or declining industry? stealing customers from its competitors

  8. Solved A company's strategic plan consists of 1) actions and

    Step 1 Introduction: View the full answer Step 2 Unlock Answer Unlock Previous question Next question Transcribed image text: A company's strategic plan consists of 1) actions and market maneuvers the company plans to use to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage.

  9. What is Strategic Planning? Definition and Steps

    Mary K. Pratt What is strategic planning? 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.

  10. Why Is Strategic Planning Important?

    Strategic planning is the ongoing organizational process of using available knowledge to document a business's intended direction. This process is used to prioritize efforts, effectively allocate resources, align shareholders and employees on the organization's goals, and ensure those goals are backed by data and sound reasoning.

  11. The Strategic Planning Process in 4 Steps

    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?

  12. Who's responsible for what? Structuring your strategic plan

    The CEO and executive team play a big role in setting the foundation of a strategic plan by creating guiding organizational principles, articulating the strategic areas of focus, and creating the long-term goals that guide the organization to create aligned goals and actions to achieve its vision of success. The executive team is responsible for:

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

    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.

  14. Principles of Finance Unit 1 Milestone Part 2

    If Company A has a lower TIE ratio than Company B, then Company A has _____ than Company B. poorer interest coverage. Select the option that reflects how revenue is typically organized on an income statement. Sales Cost of goods sold Other revenue. Lucas is worried about his company's short-term viability.

  15. Strategic Planning: the Key to Profitability in Business

    Business opportunities could include new markets, products and services, revenue streams and potential partnerships. Finally, consider both internal and external threats — everything from a potential economic downturn to new competition, reduction in cash flow and the loss of key employees. 2. NAIL DOWN YOUR MISSION AND VISION STATEMENTS.

  16. The Four Biggest Obstacles To Strategic Planning

    By including team members' feedback in your plan definition, you'll have valuable input to better understand your operations, challenges, opportunities and potential outcomes. 3. Lack Of ...

  17. Solved 1) A company's strategy consists of the action plan

    Question: 1) A company's strategy consists of the action plan that management executes in order to Multiple Choice compete against rivals and achieve sustainable profitability. stake out a unique market position and compete differently. develop a more appealing business model than rival firms. become better than the leader in one particu...

  18. Our Corporate Strategy

    The six pillars of our strategy are: Differentiating from our competition with our assortment of unique owned brands and curated leading national brands. Investing to create an engaging, convenient, safe, and differentiated shopping experience for our guests. Leveraging our stores as fulfillment hubs to efficiently meet our guests' needs ...

  19. Solved A company's strategic plan consists of a company's

    Question: A company's strategic plan consists of a company's strategic vision, strategic objectives, strategic intent, and strategy. identifies the company's strategy and management's specific, detailed plans for implementation. lays out its future direction and business purpose, performance targets and strategy. summarizes the company's strateg...

  20. 1) In what way does an entrepreneur's vision affect the company's

    Answered by PromptWritersCentre. 1. Since an entrepreneur is the organization's chief, his or her mindset and vision have a direct effect on the company's strategic strategy. As a consequence, whatever he feels has a big effect on the organization's operations. He must make the best decision possible on how to operate an organization.