Organisational Development

Strategic Planning

We can assist you in facilitating your entire strategic planning process or any of the following stages:

Stage 1: Pre-planning and Organising

This step entails establish a core group to:

  • Assist with the design and logistics of the overall planning process
  • Develop and implement a strategy for data collection through benchmarking, interviews, focus groups, etc
  • Identify and recruit a representative strategic planning team
  • Determine organisational assistance needed to enhance the planning effort
  • Provide leadership and support throughout the strategic planning process

Stage 2: Environmental Scanning

This step is designed to:

  • Assess changes and trends in the external and internal environment that will have an impact on the future of your organisation, such as technology, competition, social, demographic and economic factors, etc.
  • Collect relevant data through:
    • Benchmark other leading organisations in your industry
    • Maximise the effectiveness of interviews and focus groups with key stakeholder groups to solicit input on trends impacting your organisation, perceptions of your organisation’s strengths and limitations, and the future direction your organisation should take
    • Assemble relevant descriptive data necessary for decision-making
    • Facilitate self-assessment through appropriate instruments and surveys

Stage 3: Clarification of Mission, Vision and Values

This step is designed to:

  • Identify shared values that are important to your organisation and that will drive it into the future. A discussion on shared values will help build an understanding of your organisation’s current and desired future organisational culture and operating philosophies.
  • Draft a mission statement that clearly defines the organisation’s primary mission, including what makes it distinct.
  • The mission statement should answer the following three questions: (a) what function does the organisation perform; (b) for whom; and (c) how? Answering these questions is usually very straightforward; writing the mission statement to the group’s satisfaction can be challenging.
  • Establish a vision of the organisation’s preferred future, assuming no constraints. This is a creative process that helps staff “break out of the box” and envision their preferred future in five or ten years. It specifically answers the question, “What would we like to become in the future?”

Stage 4: Analysis of Trends and Identification of Key Strategic Issues

  • After identifying external trends affecting your organisation, conduct a careful analysis of these trends.
  • Assess conditions inside the organisation, including strengths and limitations, and any changes that are in process or expected.
  • Conduct a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) and identify key strategic issues based on the external and internal trend analysis.

Stage 5: Documenting

This step entails documenting your new or revised strategy in a written strategic plan document.

Stage 6: Implementing the Strategic Plan

Implementation involves developing specific plans for each goal area as well as actually doing the work. Implementation is the bridge to action that brings the plans to fruition. It begins with the development and prioritisation of a series of detailed scheduled activities and includes assignment of responsibility, identification of resource requirements, establishment of a time frame for implementation, and methods for measuring progress.

The implementation phase involves group agreement to work together, share resources and support the approved plans. Various departments will need to make decisions about how to prioritise, generate, allocate and reallocate resources to fund the strategic initiatives based on strategic priorities.

Stage 7: Continuous Planning

Strategic planning is a process, not an act. All goals and objectives statements need periodic progress monitoring, updating and revision to address changes in the external and internal environment. Establishing a structure such as an annual planning retreat can help maintain momentum and build commitment to continuous planning.

Please contact me to explore how you may assist
us in our strategic planning process >