12 Steps to Creating a Strategic Plan

by John Johnson

Your company's strategic plan doesn't have to be a thousand-page document. Here's a concise, 12-step approach to putting together what you need to address the future of your organization.

1. Identify the strategic issue. When the results you experience fall well short of those you need, then a plan must evolve to create different/superior outcomes.
2. Identify the consequences. List the consequences of not solving the issue. List the consequences of solving the issue and estimate five years of revenue gain contributions.
3. Identify values and attitudes. Describe the prevailing attitudes and behaviors, the biofeedback, which regulate what can and can't be accomplished in the company.
4. Identify the vision. Detail the best imaginable outcomes for this issue, metrics that compel higher measurable performance and personal bests.
5. Identify customer benefits. Why will your only source of revenue, a.k.a. customers, financially support the above outcomes based on their personal return on investment?
6. Identify other constituency benefits. How will your associates be rewarded for the extra effort required of them to pitch in and produce the above outcomes.

Plan transition: Steps 1-6 are strategic. Steps 7-12 are tactical.

7. Identify obstacles. What stands in the way of accomplishing these outcomes? Identify at least seven reasons why you don't have these outcomes already.
8. Identify vital signs. Select two measures per step for steps 3,4,5 and 6-8 steps in total, to audit, monitor and reward project progress.
9. Identify S.W.O. What strengths will you build on? What weaknesses must you fix? What opportunities can you seize on to tackle your visionary outcomes?
10. Design strategies. Attack! Select 1-3 obstacles from step 7 and describe the needed transition for each obstacle from current status to desired outcome.
11. Take actions. Under each obstacle, list all the activities you can think of to move from current status to desired outcome.
12. Create a title. Capture the ultimate purpose of your vision, i.e., the rallying cry, in 3-4 words and title your strategic plan.

For each activity, hold someone accountable. Who does what? By when? Hold monthly project status meetings and never, never give up on due dates, even if rescheduled many times.

About the Author

TEC speaker John Johnson is based in Davis, California.