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Strategic planning helps your organization determine collective direction, structure your goals, allocate resources effectively, and adapt to market changes. This process plays a crucial role in navigating the complex environments we work in and ensures everyone in the organization is working toward common goals. With a strategic plan you can create a roadmap to achieve long term goals and address the “what” and “why” of your organization’s activities.
The elements of a strategic plan
There are many elements to a successful strategic plan, many of which you may already have in place, like a vision or mission. The strategic planning process allows you to re-evaluate the items you already have in place, justify the direction they point toward, and build strategies and goals to move toward the ultimate vision for your organization. Think of the following elements of a strategic plan building on one another: Think of the following elements of a strategic plan in a pyramid with the mission and vision on top, followed by strategy, and so on down to the tactics. Below are brief descriptions of the elements you’ll find in a strategic plan:
Mission Statement: conveys who your organization is, what you value, and your purpose in business.
Vision Statement: outlines what your organization wants to become, how you see your impact on the industries you work in and clients you serve.
The mission and vision statement help communicate organizational purpose to stakeholders.
Strategy: the overarching approach to business that is unique to your organization; considering who you work with, how you do it, and what makes you unique.
Goals: are broad, overarching statements that describe a long-term aim of the organization, helping provide direction. A strategic plan will typically have between 3-4 goals.
Objectives: specific, measurable statements that break down goals into more manageable and actionable components. There are usually 3-5 objectives supporting each goal.
Tactics: specific actions, initiatives, projects, or activities that can help you achieve your goals. It is important to include who is responsible for the tactics in the plan to make it easy to implement.
Metrics: Metrics are the quantitative measures used to track progress toward your goals and objectives. They can be found at any level of the strategic plan and can include timelines, growth measurements, revenue increases, etc. A good metric helps assess the effectiveness of our goals, objectives, and tactics.
The steps to building a strategic plan
Step 1 – Background research
Before you can develop any of these elements thoroughly, there is background work that needs to be done. One of the biggest mistakes a group can make is skipping background work and diving right into developing tactics and goals. This background work may include meetings and interviews with key leaders, collecting relevant organizational data, conducting SWOT Analysis and Environmental Scans and conducting surveys. See our blog article on not satisfying before you identify for more information on this topic.
Step 2 – Pre-report development
Once the background information is gathered and analyzed by the planning facilitator, a report should be created for key leadership to review prior to meeting in person. This report generally includes items such as survey results, SWOT Analysis, and key findings from the data collection process. We find that this report helps the planning group digest key information needed to have a productive conversation in-person.
Step 3 – In-person strategy meeting
While this could be performed virtually, an in-person strategy meeting is a great opportunity to get your key stakeholders together to build the key elements of your strategic plan and align everyone in a unified direction. The pre-meeting report allows leaders to show up prepared, bring good ideas, and ask relevant questions that will help facilitate the best version of your strategic plan. AOE’s team of consultants is skilled at facilitating these meetings over the course of one 6-8 hour meeting.
Step 4 – Finalizing and implementation
Once the planning team has had the strategy meeting, the facilitator will take all the information gathered and the insights from the meeting and start crafting the draft of the strategic plan. This process generally takes a month. The nice part about having AOE facilitate your planning efforts is that we take a collaborative approach as a team. You aren’t just getting one consultant looking at the draft of your plan. You get insights from multiple professionals with decades of industry experience working together to build the best version of the plan we can generate.
Once a solid draft is created, we like to sit down with key leaders (Executive Director, President, Board Chair, etc.), to review the plan and get any initial feedback they think needs to be implemented. With a solid final draft in place, we will then format everything into a PowerPoint and record a short video with high level insights to the plan. At this point, the plan and video is circulated to the entire planning team for consideration, edits, and/or adoption.
When it comes to implementation, reviewing the strategic plan regularly is crucial. At least once a quarter, discuss the plan with leadership, board members and your team to provide updates and adjust expectations. Incorporating the strategic plan into onboarding and training for board and team members is a good practice. Finally, consider creating a short video to accompany the plan, providing updates to leadership once or twice a year. AOE typically offers our clients a one-year check-in, where we will attend a board meeting to review the plan and help adjust goals and objectives as needed.
Strategic plan example
All these concepts can be difficult to grasp on their own, so looking at an example can help show how everything fits together. Below you’ll find a fictitious example for a state association of how goals, objectives, and tactics work together within a strategic plan.
Goal: Enhancing the value of association membership, advocate for member needs, and nurture future industry leaders.
Objective: Maintain membership market share of over 90%
Tactic: Membership committee and staff to develop annual membership report cards showing association touchpoints, event participation, and other items that convey membership value.
Tactic: Marketing committee to develop member marketing kits that help promote association tools/resources that include content, graphics, social media posts, etc.
Pulling it all together
It is important to recognize that the road to creating a strategic plan is a process that takes time and thought. Taking time to collect data and insights, review information and discuss your organizations direction is necessary to developing a comprehensive plan. Utilizing an objective 3rd party to facilitate the process provides fresh eyes and will help build consensus. AOE leverages decades of industry experience to help organizations create tailored strategic plans by utilizing a collaborative approach and state of the art methods to evaluate industry trends.
For more information on our process and methods of strategic planning, check out our frequently asked questions here. Contact AOE today to set up a consultation and take the first step in setting your organization up for success through strategic planning.