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Building a strategic plan or engaging in strategic planning can make a difference, particularly when it has a long-term focus and is used as a management tool, rather than simply being an exercise in forms completion. Traditional strategic planning can be broken down into four sequential steps:
- market research
- strategy formulation and planning
- strategy implementation
- results measurement and control
Market research to determine customer needs and identify future market trends is usually the initial step in strategic planning. Managers use the market research to define company mission, goals, and strategic plans for one, three, and five years. Company mission statements become refined by specifying financial, market share, and product mix goals. Implementation generally occurs through official directives and control systems that flow through divisions, departments, sections, and eventually to individuals. Each individual receive a set of objectives that, if achieved, allow the company to attain its mission and goals. Control systems focus on individual outputs or behaviors in the organization. Controlling outputs emphasizes results through management by objectives.
The strategy formulation and planning process consists of the following primary building blocks:
- assessment of the company's current position
- identification of the company's desired position
- evaluation of the strategic gap between the two and the critical issues to be resolved in order to close the gap
- formulation of strategies and action steps to resolve the critical issues
This website presents a creative model of the strategic panning process. The "strategic plan major steps" links at the top right present the specific steps involved in the planning process. In addition, strategic plan templates and tools are provided so you can develop an excellent strategic plan yourself. The set of strategic plan templates and tools are designed to help you cover all the various elements that go into the development of well thought out and comprehensive strategic plan.
Business managers are constantly faced with strategic choices, such as developing a new competitive approach to an existing market, evaluating a potential merger or acquisition, or divesting core products or businesses. While the circumstances surrounding the choice may be unique to a particular company, these decisions themselves are similar to those that regularly confront top management in every industry. Such choices often require substantial commitment of time and resources and may have broad, long-lasting effects. The strategic plan templates & tools provide a framework for decision making.
In summary, in order to determine where it is going, the organization needs to know exactly where it stands, then determine where it wants to go and how it will get there. The resulting document is called the "strategic plan".
