Strategic Planning Defined:

 There Are Several Different Views and Models — and the Process You Use Depends on your organizations need.

 Simply put, strategic planning determines where an organization is going over the next few years, how it’s going to get there and how it’ll know if it got there or not. The focus of a strategic plan is usually on the entire organization, while the focus of a business plan is usually on a particular product, service or program.

 There are a variety of perspectives, models and approaches used in strategic planning. The way that a strategic plan is developed depends on the nature of the organization’s leadership, culture of the organization, complexity of the organization’s environment, size of the organization, and involvement of key stakeholders. For example, there are a variety of strategic planning models, including goals-based, issues-based, and Visioning.

 1) Goals-based planning is probably the most common and starts with focus on the organization’s mission (and vision and/or values), goals to work toward the mission, strategies to achieve the goals, and action planning (who will do what and by when).

 2) Issues-based strategic planning often starts by examining issues facing the organization, strategies to address those issues and action plans.

 3) Visioning starts by articulating the organization’s preferred future and values, and then action plans to achieve the vision while adhering to those values.

 Some plans are scoped to one year, many to three years, and some to five to ten years into the future. Some plans include only top-level information and no action plans. Some plans are one to five pages long, while others can be considerably longer.

 Development of the strategic plan will help immensely to clarify the organization’s core functions and create a ‘roadmap’ to increase organizational effectiveness and efficiencies.  It is also a shared learning process that ensures key stakeholders are all “on the same page”. Far more important than the strategic plan document, is the strategic planning process itself.

 UWEX-Polk County can help develop a process and facilitate meetings for your organization.  Listed below are some resources we use:

• Strategic Planning Initial Diagnosis (PDF – 49KB – 7 Pages)
• 10 Step Strategic Planning Process (PDF – 60KB – 1 page)
• Strategic Planning Outline (PDF – 25KB – 5 pages)
• Developing S*M*A*R*T Goals (PDF – 19KB – 2 pages)