Archive for category: Strategic Planning

A company’s true value is largely determined by its long-term performance potential as shaped by management’s decisions made today. These decisions guide the translation of the company’s mission, its purpose for existing, into the products and services it provides and hopefully the market wants.

Strategic planning is an iterative, ongoing process consisting of:

• Analysis: assessment of the internal and external factors effecting the organization’s ability to achieve its mission
• Alternative Development: detailed assessment of the costs, benefits, and risks associated with strategic alternatives including both major, ongoing and newly proposed activities
• Alternative Selection: identification of the current portfolio components and proposed activities that will be pursued and the time frame for execution
• Resource Projections: aggregation of the personnel, financial, physical, and technological needs including an assessment of the ability to acquire these resources within the needed time frame
• Plan Development: final validation of the organization’s mission and compilation and approval of its long-range and annual business plans

Execution of these iterative processes takes place throughout the year with a frequency dictated by the pace of market change.

Focus of the Strategic Planning Forum

This forum will focus on the principles, best practices, and warning flags associated with the leading practices of companies that successfully execute strategic planning processes to define objectives, drive alignment, and enhance performance. The following articles, podcasts, documents, and resources cover those topics critical to an exceptional strategic planning program.

Articles

Principles

• Why Do Organizations Need Strategic Planning    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
• How Much Should Organizations Spend on Business Planning?    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]

Best Practices

• Best Practice – Make the Mission Measurable    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
• Best Practice – Prioritize the Mission    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
• Best Practice – Strategic Discipline    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
• Best Practice – Ongoing Planning and Execution    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
• Best Practice – Defined Program    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
• Best Practice – Focus on Strength    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
• Best Practice – Shared Accountability    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
• Best Practice – Results First, Actions Second    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
• Best Practice – Avoid Using Jargon    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
• Best Practice – Future Focus    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
• Best Practice – One Priority List    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
• Best Practice – Planning for the Best and the Worst    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
• Best Practice – The Use of Calendars    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
• Best Practice – Never Be Satisfied    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]

Warning Flags

• Warning Flag – Business Unit Versus Goal-Based Planning    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
• Warning Flag – Near-Term Focus    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor Articles

• Is Strategic Planning Still Relevant? by David Axson
• Strategy – Understanding the Art of War by Shoulders of Giants
• Lessons from Scrabble: How to Win the Strategic Game by Shelli Stinson
• The “Vision Thing”: How to Find It, Frame It, and Live It by Roxanne Emmerich
• Capitalism at the Crossroads – Mapping the Terrain by Stuart L. Hart
• Capitalism at the Crossroads – Beyond Greening by Stuart L. Hart
• Capitalism at the Crossroads – Becoming Indigenous by Stuart L. Hart
• MacroScope: Big Picture Perspective Takes Your Business Further by Hank Moore
• Ideas are the Easy Part by Pete Maulik
• Develop A Process For Continuing Business Model Innovation by Donald Mitchell

StrategyDriven Podcasts

StrategyDriven Podcast

• Introduction to Strategic Planning
• Making the Mission Measurable
• Prioritize the Mission, part 1 of 2
• Prioritize the Mission, part 2 of 2

StrategyDriven Podcast – Video Edition

• What Makes an Organization StrategyDriven?

StrategyDriven Podcast – Special Edition

• An Interview with John Leonetti, author of Exiting Your Business, Protecting Your Wealth, part 1 of 2
• An Interview with John Leonetti, author of Exiting Your Business, Protecting Your Wealth, part 2 of 2
• An Interview with Steve Steinhilber, author of Strategic Alliances
• An Interview with Ken Blanchard, author of Leading at a Higher Level
• An Interview with Nilofer Merchant, author of The New How
• An Interview with Robert Kolb, author of Corporate Boards
• An Interview with Robert Morison, author of Analytics at Work
• An Interview with Robert Simons, author of Seven Strategy Questions

Documents

Whitepapers

• Analysis    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]

Models

• Business Process Relationships    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
• Strategic Pyramid    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
• Strategic Organizational Alignment    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]

Resources

Books

• Essentials of Strategic Management by J. David Hunger and Thomas L. Wheelen
• Good to Great by Jim Collins
• The Accountable Organization by John Marchica