Strategic planning

Strategic planning is an organisation's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy, including its capital and people. Various business analysis techniques can be used in strategic planning, including SWOT analysis and PESTEL analysis.

Strategic Planning is the formal consideration of an organisation's future course. All strategic planning deals with at least one of three key questions:

  • "What do we do?"
  • "For whom do we do it?"
  • "How do we excel?" or "How can we beat or avoid competition?"

In many organisations, this is viewed as a process for determining where an organisation is going over the next year or more -typically 3 to 5 years, although some extend their vision to 20 years.

In order to determine where it is going, the organisation needs to know exactly where it stands, then determines where it wants to go and how it will get there. The resulting document is called the "strategic plan". You may already have a strategic plan, but when did you last look at it? Does it still fit your organisation’s needs? Is it something you still refer to or is it gathering dust?

Vision: Defines where the organisation wants to be in the future. It reflects the optimistic view of the organisation's future.

Mission: Defines where the organisation is going now, basically describing the purpose, why this organisation exists.

Values: Main values protected by the organisation during the progression, reflecting the organisation's culture and priorities.

Strategic planning saves time, every minute spent in planning saves ten minutes in execution.

Useful links

NCVO – Strategy and Planning (currently under development)

Benchmark Index - Company Healthcheck

And the Benchmark Index homepage

The Cranfield Trust provides free management consultancy support to the voluntary sector through a national register of highly skilled volunteers from the commercial sector

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