7 Strategic Planning Process Options

We are often asked what our strategic planning processes include. The short answer is, “It depends”. Our processes almost always include:

·       A project kickoff meeting

·       Interviews with senior leaders

·       Interviews with the board (if there is a board)

·       Interviews with stakeholders or partners

·       A retreat to digest the data and come up with some strategic goals and objectives

·       Action planning which turns the goals and objectives into concrete action steps.

However, there are also activities in the process that we sometimes, but not always, perform. Here are seven strategic planning options to consider when planning a process:

1.     Does your mission and vision need to be reviewed? For some organizations this is a five-minute conversation—their vision and vision statements are clear, concise, and inspiring. Others don’t have mission or vision statements or haven’t looked at them in years.

2.     At what level will staff be involved? We frequently conduct a few staff interviews, but sometimes we also administer a staff climate survey. Sometimes the staff is involved in the committee leading the process. If a goal of the process is to make sure staff are engaged with high morale, increasing staff involvement is advisable.

3.     At what level will customers be involved? Customer feedback is essential to strategic planning. Some organizations have this feedback in hand and don’t need to do anything more in the strategic planning process. If not, it may take work to get customer feedback. For example, at a private school parents may fill out a survey and show up at a focus group, but at a company selling LED lighting, getting this feedback will take more thought. Sometimes customers need to be incentivized to give feedback.

4.     Do you want or need industry research or an environmental scan? Sometimes it makes sense to call a few people who are doing new and innovative things in the industry. Other times the Executive Director has this information in his or her head. 

5.     What level of involvement do you want from partners? I usually recommend 6-10 phone calls. After 10 calls I usually no longer hear new themes. However, sometimes there is a marketing component to making additional calls. I recently called 24 different stakeholders for a strategic planning client. The organization’s reputation was suffering, and the leadership wanted to reach out to a broad network of stakeholders to let them know they were listening.

6.     How will the process be led? For many of my clients, I lead a kickoff event and then do not have much contact about the process until I send them an agenda for the retreat. They hire me and let me lead. Other clients want to be more involved and meet monthly to digest data and discuss the process

7.     What do you want for a written document? A summary externally-facing document takes less time to write than an internally-facing document that details the process and the findings. 

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