How to Develop Strategic Management Plans
Strategic planning is important to anticipate future trends and position the organization accordingly. Developing a strategic management plan saves time and resources as you focus your efforts toward a set number of goals. These plans can take time to develop and should be reviewed regularly, but are worth the efforts. Some companies hire consultants, but for small organizations it is possible to develop your plan alone.
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Instructions
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Involve your staff and stakeholders. A strategic plan should never be developed in isolation. Innovation and creativity require multiple perspectives from anyone with a current or present stake in the organization. This could include your staff, your managers or your Board of Directors. You may want to conduct separate sessions with each group, but if you are a smaller organization one session could work.
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Think backward. List your organization's previous successes and failures and try to identify themes. This process will help you develop a list of your organization's strengths and weaknesses supported by previous experience. The rest of your plan should capitalize on your strengths, or explicitly state where you deviate from your strengths to broaden the organization's skills.
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Think forward and determine your goals. There are two questions to consider. First, where is your sector going? Many organizations use an environmental scan to answer this question. Change will occur and you need to plan. The second part is to develop goals stating where your organization will be in the future. These goals state the outcomes you want to achieve in a given number of years.
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Develop strategies to reach your goals. Once you have the outcomes you want to achieve, you need to plan how you will achieve these goals. Based on your strengths identified above, develop specific strategies to pursue. For example, if your goal is "Deliver specialized health training for our industry," then your strategies could include developing health training certification programs or researching health needs of your industry.
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Develop actions to support the strategies. The actions are even more specific than the strategies. These are specific steps that will help achieve the strategies. Examples could include hiring specialized staff, planning a workshop or creating a project team.
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Determine measurable indicators of progress. You need to track your progress to avoid wasting resources and increase transparency. Ask yourself how you will know you reached your goal and look for benchmarks or indicators for each strategy. The actions should be self-explanatory (i.e., it was or was not completed), so focus on the strategies and goals.
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Tips & Warnings
For your goals, strategies and actions, think of the acronym SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely.
References
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