Strategic Planning Overview
Definition: A systematic process through which an organization agrees on and builds key stakeholder commitment to priorities that are essential to its mission and responsive to the organizational environment. Strategic planning guides the acquisition and allocation of resources to achieve these priorities.
Key Concepts:
- It is strategic because it involves making choices in the face of changing needs, funding, competition, and other factors. It requires an organization to recognize they need to make choices, and commit to one set of responses versus another. Strategic planning is as much about what NOT to do as it is what to do.
- Strategic planning is systematic, and needs to be structured. It raises a sequence of questions that helps the committee examine history, test assumptions, gather new information, and decide how best to respond going forward.
- The process is about building alignment and commitment. It should take into account information from all stakeholders, and engage them in the process to identify priorities. It allows for disagreements to be voiced and constructively resolved.
- Strategic planning guides the acquisition and allocation of resources. Planning shouldn’t be limited to what is in the budget, it should include all ideas to make the organization better along with ways to obtain the funding to accomplish this. The purpose is to recognize what needs to be done to accomplish the organization’s mission, and derive a plan that covers all angles of how to accomplish this.
Goals of a Strategic Plan:
- Generating an explicit understanding of the organization’s mission, strategy, and organizational values among staff, the board, and external constituencies
- Create a blueprint for action based on current information
- Design broad milestones with which to monitor achievements and assess results
- Collect information that can be used to market the organization to the public and to potential sponsors
Keep in Mind:
- Strategic planning is not a prediction of the future. It is a plan based on current information, and during the process remember that things will change in the future, and the plan can adapt.
- Strategic planning is a vehicle for informed decision making, and shouldn’t be used in place of the judgement of leadership. The goal is to establish a well-informed framework from which leaders can work.
- There is no right answer. Open communication about the information collected during the process and people’s informed opinions is critical to creating a plan the organization can utilize.
- Be flexible. Even though there is some structure to the process, it isn’t completely linear, and there are times when it may feel the process is stalled or even moving backwards.
- Implementing your Strategic Plan requires change in how your affiliate operates - be sure to incorporate change management principles in helping facilitate them (see Change Management Toolkit in the Template sidebar).