Steps of the Strategic Planning Process

Author: Charles Wilson

The strategic planning process needs significant thought and planning on the part of a business’s upper-level management. Before subsiding on a plan of action and then determining how to strategically execute it, executives may consider many likely options. In the end, a company’s management will, hopefully, settle on a strategy that is most likely to make positive results and that can be implemented in a cost-efficient manner with a high possibility of success, while avoiding excessive financial risk.

Strategic planning allows an organization to shape and guide its overall business objectives. Strategic Planning Management Training PPT helps to gain the knowledge that required to formulate, implement and monitor the strategic planning for organization, and it is based on proven analytical techniques and models. There are many different ways to approach strategic planning dependent on the type of business and the granularity mandatory. Most strategic planning cycles can be summarized in these steps:

Identify: A strategic planning cycle begins with the purpose of a business's current strategic position. This is where stakeholders use the present strategic plan, with the mission statement and long-term strategic goals to achieve assessments of the business and its environment. These assessments can include a essentials assessment or a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis to understand the state of the business and the path ahead.

Prioritize: Next, strategic planners set aims and creativities that line up with the business mission and goals and will move the business toward achieving its goals. There may be many possible goals, so planning prioritizes the most significant, related and urgent ones. Goals may contain a consideration of resource requirements such as budgets and equipment and they regularly contain a timeline and business metrics or KPIs for measuring growth.

Develop: This is the key thrust of strategic planning in which stakeholders cooperate to formulate the steps or tactics essential to reach a specified strategic objective. This may include creating numerous short-term tactical business plans that fit into the overarching strategy. Stakeholders complex in plan development use many tools such as a strategy map to help visualize and tweak the plan. Emerging the plan may contain cost and opportunity trade-offs that reflect business priorities. Developers may discard some creativities if they don't support the long-term strategy.

Implement: Once the strategic plan is developed, it's time to put it in gesture. This needs clear communication across the organization to set responsibilities, make investments, adjust policies and procedures, and establish measurement and reporting. Execution typically contains strategic management with regular strategic reviews to confirm that plans stay on track.

Update: A strategic plan is occasionally reviewed and revised to adjust priorities and revaluate goals as business conditions change and new opportunities arise. Fast reviews of metrics can happen periodical, and adjustments to the strategic plan can happen annually. Stakeholders may use balanced scorecards and other tools to assess performance against goals.

Source:

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