How to Effectively Plan for Strategic Planning Process: Here’re the Key Steps

As per research, over 85% of executive teams do not spend more than one hour a month on strategy. Apart from that, around 95% of people in a workplace don’t understand their organization’s strategy. In this piece, you’ll learn all the steps to effectively plan for the strategic planning process.

In an organization, strategic planning is one of the roles of a manager. An effective plan helps achieve business objectives and improve the functionality within a team. 

What Exactly is the Strategic Planning Process?

It is a way of identifying goals and developing an actionable plan to accomplish them. Strategic planning can happen at any level in a workplace. There may be individual plans and strategies of a manager to achieve objectives at team levels. 

Strategic planning is an integral part of an organization for long-term goals. With an effective plan in place, a company can channelize its resources and energy to focus on achieving its business objectives. 

Steps of a Strategic Planning Process

 

• Identifying the Strategic Position

It is the initial phase to effectively plan for the strategic planning process that helps determine what you want to achieve and how. Here, an organization needs to identify strategic issues and collect data to understand its position in the current market. 

Also, this phase gives an organization and its people a clear image of success. 

• Prioritizing Objectives

After identifying its position on the market, the next step an organization should follow in the process is to set priorities. While prioritizing objectives, it must ensure that the objectives are in line with the company’s values and mission. 

To set objectives effectively, an organization should get answers to questions like:

1. Which of the initiatives can have greater impacts while achieving objectives?
2. What exactly is the priority: Gaining new customers or increasing revenue?
3. How to measure progress?

• Creating a Plan

Once the objectives are identified and objectives are prioritized, the next step in the process is to develop an effective plan to accomplish objectives. 

Using the strategy mapping technique, an organization can visualize a plan. The map can be helpful in noting different processes and identifying gaps to fill them in the right manner for improvements. 

• Executing a Plan

When the plan is ready, it’s time to implement it. First, it needs to be communicated within the organization. After that, it should go to the execution step. 

Here, it is essential to remember that launching a plan isn’t sufficient to achieve objectives. An organization needs to review the progress regularly. Apart from that, there must be check-in points to ensure that efforts are on the right track.

• Revising the Plan (If Needed)

It is the final step to effectively plan for the strategic planning process. Here, an organization can reevaluate its priorities based on the progress. If the plan needs to be modified or revised, it should be done in this phase. 

In the End 

A strategic planning process is called successful only if it helps meet the objectives. To make it work effectively, follow all the steps carefully and ensure that they meet the organization’s objectives.