The 6-Step Process to a Successful Strategic Plan
Summary: Strategic planning is one of the most important responsibilities of business leadership, yet even the most thoughtful plans can fall short when it comes to execution. A successful strategic plan does more than establish goals for the year ahead. It aligns teams around shared priorities, creates accountability, and gives leaders a framework for navigating change. The difference lies in how the plan is developed, communicated, and put into practice. These six steps can help turn strategic planning from an annual exercise into an ongoing driver of business performance.
1. Start Well in Advance with a Comprehensive SWOT Analysis (or several)
A month or more prior to working on the Strategic Plan, every division of the company should develop its own SWOT analysis: sales, accounting, operations, human resources, etc. Too often SWOT analyses include only the most senior leadership, and that could leave you with big blind spots. Every SWOT analysis should include information from your key customers as well.
Be certain that all teams understand that only strengths that are grounded in evidence are acceptable. Stating a strength as “great customer service” without any data to support it must be excluded. The same is true of weaknesses, though we seem to be more rigorous with stated weaknesses and more liberal with stated strengths.
Ultimately, a single, final, comprehensive SWOT should be compiled and presented to the leadership team at the start of the strategic planning session. Then ask the following questions:
Do your strengths align with your opportunities?
Do your weaknesses make you more vulnerable to threats?
Your strategy may be born here.
2. Create Strategies, Not Task Lists
Far too often, companies create laundry lists of to-dos and label them strategies. Tasks certainly must follow objectives, but it should never be the other way round. For example, launching a new website is a highly valuable task but only if you have an objective that includes something like, “creating a new 10% revenue stream from direct online sales”. If the reason for a new website is, “marketing thinks the old site needs a fresh look” then it’s not a strategy, it’s a task. A good test is to ask yourself,
‘Will this strategy create either a significant competitive advantage or financial performance?’ If the answer is no, then it should not be part of the strategic plan.
3. Involve All Levels of the Company
Strategies and goals inevitably fail if they are forced down from the top. Build goals from the bottom and hold them accountable at the top. When each team builds its SWOT analysis, they should also set their own Strategic Goals.
Ban the word “Improve”. Every team we have ever worked with has tried to add a goal that starts with the word “improve”. Goals that can’t be measured are not goals. They are intangibles that need a judgment call, which will lead to internal debates. That’s not good for success or culture. It’s CEO/Senior leadership’s role to do the hard work of meeting with teams well in advance of the final annual Strategic Planning Meeting to review and refine strategic goals to ensure judgment calls aren’t a part of any plan.
4. Allow Leadership to Buy in and Hold Each Other Accountable
At the final meeting, all leaders should present their goals. If the process is executed correctly, then team goals will intersect. For instance, if the sales team is going to meet its new goal of increasing revenue from existing business by 15%, then operations will need to create the output required to deliver on that new revenue, which may look like a goal that says: operations will be able to expand and collapse output by 20% while maintaining customer timelines and 15% margins. This means that teams will now hold each other accountable, rather than just the CEO.
This is the holy grail: shared responsibility for making goals.
5. Create Rigor (and camaraderie) around Reviewing and Monitoring Progress
Once your team understands that all the goals are interrelated, then it’s essential that the goals and the progress are reviewed regularly. It’s common for everyone to pat themselves on the back for a great plan but then not review it again until next year’s planning session. Since the goals are interrelated, all that matters is when goals are OFF TRACK. The question that should be asked at all strategic planning reviews is “What goals are off track for being met and what can the senior leadership, and their teams, do to help?” A group approach to tackling difficulties is the ideal process for creating success.
6. All Goals Change, Be Brave
The order of the day tells us that there will inevitably be change and uncertainty: tariffs, wars, new and more powerful AI, economic changes. Create quarterly targets and flexibility so that teams have the ability to adapt to changing conditions. Simply holding onto goals that can no longer be met, because of conditions beyond your control, diminishes the entire Strategic Plan. This is where the CEO is essential; adapt and change is the rule for those who want to succeed in an ever-changing business environment.
Don’t throw it all out when circumstances change; be the surgeon who adeptly carves away a small part so that the whole can survive without it.
Need Some Assistance?
Turning Point’s own goal is always the same: Create Better Outcomes for our Clients. Over the years, we have coached hundreds of businesses on successful Strategic Plans. We have documented those best practices, both with our team coaches as well as in a software package. It’s called Force 10, and if you’d like to have a conversation about what and how we do it, click here to schedule 15 minutes with a team member.
