Strategic planning process: Overview

- Strategic planning is an inherently simple process. There are some major tools and steps that you're going to follow as you pull together your strategic plan. First, you need to set direction and stay in a lane. That begins with articulating the vision, the mission and the goals of the organization. Once you've set that destination, it's important to define the organization's core competencies. What are you great at? And how are you going to compete in the market? The next step of the process is defining strategic filters. This is the heart of the method. These filters are going to be the objective functions you're trying to achieve. They'll be the evaluation criteria you'll use as you analyze the initiatives that you are or are not going to pursue. Next, you're going to say no to distractions. You're going to stay focused. You'll use tools like a two by two matrix to evaluate which opportunities should we pursue? And which ones should we avoid? You'll take all the initiatives on your list and run them through those strategic filters to identify the ones that are high value and high potential and the ones that should be avoided. Next, you're going to draw the line. Strategic planning is about focus and you'll have your list of initiatives. You're going to identify the top ones, the bottom ones and resource them appropriately, and only work on things above the line for which you have resources. Next is making sure you have a diversified portfolio of initiatives, and then executing the strategic plan. You'll look at your initiatives in terms of are they long term? Short term? Do they balance your core competencies? Are they balanced across products or markets or services? You'll look at your portfolio and how it evolves over time. So as you go through the strategic planning process, there will be major tools and frameworks you'll apply at each step, and you're going to come up with a very clear plan with a prioritized set of initiatives.