The Business Development Knowledge Network
Strategic Plan Development Tool & SWOT Analysis Template

Strategic Plan Process

Strategic planning is creating a vision of the future and managing toward that expectancy. It's operating under a mission statement umbrella that focuses the organization's effort.  It's an effective process for aligning your short-term decisions with your long-term goals.

Strategic planning answers the three big questions:

• Where are we today?
• Where do we want to be in the future?
• What should we be focused on today, in order to make it more likely we will be where we want to be in the future?

It is a simple process with an incredible power to energize your organization and bridge the gap between long-term vision and day-to-day tactics. Having answered the big three questions the team than creates action plans that start them moving in that direction - now! Now means today, this week, this month, and this quarter.

The team planning process is as valuable as the plan it produces. (Some argue even more important.) Once in a while a CEO will try to save their company time and effort by sitting down and creating a vision, mission, strategy, and set of goals. Such plans are usually pretty good, after all the CEO is intelligent and highly intuitive. As an alternative, the CEO sometimes hires a consulting firm to develop a plan. The hard truth is that the best plan is one that actually gets implemented. That is why a plan developed by the implementation team will always beat a plan imposed on the implementation team.

If you are in the midst of a short term crisis such as an all out push to get a new product out the door you should wait until every member of the planning team won't be distracted during the two day process.

On the other hand if you are in a protracted crisis - months and months - then the planning meeting is an excellent opportunity to take a few steps back and triage the situation. Perhaps the only way out of crisis mode is to invest in changing the status quo through an upgrade of the infrastructure, entering a new market, creating a new product, developing a competitive strategy, replacing a team member in over their head, increasing the equity base, getting out of legacy products, markets, customers, or people.  

Time is short and resources typically limited when you're in crisis. You get fewer chances to get it right. It is important to reestablish what the vision, mission, strategy is so you not only solve today's problems but start building long-term value.

Strategic planning is not about predicting the future, reading crystal balls, or calling some psychic hotline.

Strategic planning is asking the people who's actions will create the future what they want that future to be.  Where do you want to be in five years?

• Not where do you think you'll be.
• Not where do you forecast you'll be.
• Where do you want to be.

Perhaps no one has ever asked the question before?  Once the team identifies where they want to be they ask the next big question. What has to change in order for us to get there? Those changes are articulated as a small set of strategic goals with implementation plans that start immediately.

While we talk about where we want to be in three to five years the focus on the plan is on what we are going to do during the next 1 - 12 months to get us there.  

SWOT Analysis

SWOT analysis looks at your strengths and weaknesses, and the opportunities and threats your business faces. By focusing on the key factors affecting your business, now and in the future, a SWOT analysis provides a clear basis for examining your business performance and prospects.