In this post, I will walk through the five steps in the strategic planning process that we follow with our exclusive process, Aligned Strategy Development.
When we facilitate strategic planning sessions, we want to keep teams as focused as possible. We've found the simplest way to work through the strategic planning process is in five steps:
Step #1: Where are we now?
This involves getting a snapshot of the current state includes looking at our strengths and weaknesses as they are now and the opportunities and threats that impact our organization. We also look at what's happening for us as an organization and what trends are happening in the space around us.
Step #2: Where are we going?
What does success look like? What is our desired future state? For us, we look at the organization's vision, mission, and values. We begin with the things that we want to achieve in the future (vision) before we do anything further, and then we ask the questions: where are we now, what do we offer, and what behaviours do we need to get to where we want to be?
Step #3: What is going to get in our way?
In this step, we identify risks and roadblocks that might impact us on our way to accomplishing our desired future state. This way, we can be proactive instead of reactive to challenges that may come for us.
Step #4: What do we need to do to get us to where we want to go?
This step involves setting our strategic priorities, creating KPIs, goals, measurements, and targets for each of those strategic priorities, and then creating the action items that are going to move the needle towards accomplishing our goals.
Step #5: How are we doing?
This means really looking deeper on a monthly and quarterly basis to assess progress towards our strategic priorities. We ask: how are we doing with our leading and lagging indicators, how are we doing when it comes to our goals, and are we on track to accomplish our vision in an acceptable amount of time?
If you want more information on this, be sure to subscribe to our videos to learn more about the strategic planning process and how to create and execute a successful, strategic plan.
If you're developing your organization's strategy, we can walk you through each step:
