The Process of Drafting a Strategic Plan

In every organisation, we often hear talk about new “strategic initiatives”, a new “strategic direction”, even a new “strategy”.  The issue is not that they are not effective, but that too many people, even in management, do not necessarily understand what “strategy” or “strategic planning” is.  Strategic planning is a process in where leaders of an organisation come together to ascertain their vision for the future, over the horizon, as well as identify specific goals and objectives.  The process must also include establishing the sequence in which those goals should fall so that the organisation is enabled to reach its stated vision.  This process is termed the mission. 

In reality, we have few such documents which effectively lay out any form of strategic plan.  Most such plans are, in effect, implementation of specific actions, with no consideration of the wider strategic positioning of the organisation.  Since the strategic goals are not addressed, or sometimes, even identified, they do not help the long-term positioning of the company.  Sometimes, we have these plans even working at cross-purposes to it.  There are is a certain methodology towards crafting an effective strategic plan. 

The very first step is the identification of stakeholders.  The world functions on self-interest.  People need to have a stake in the success of the organisation.  If they are disenfranchised, they are either unmotivated, or worse, they would work against the organisation, and become a threat to be addressed.  There are two kinds of stakeholders, what we call the internal customers and the external customers.  Internal stakeholders would be staff or volunteers, management, investors, shareholders, and any group within the organisation.  External stakeholders would include customers and clients, vendors, and regulatory authorities. 

The second step is to define the target demographic.  Defining the client or customer also means defining their motivations, and how we are to address them to seize market share.  There is no one type of customer base.  There is always a range, and the means to gain their interest may vary.  This allows focus in hiring and development since no organisation can achieve market dominance in every market, or leadership in every area.  Resources have to be marshalled and judiciously deployed. 

The third step is to qualify and quantify the needs of these stakeholders.  It is not enough to know who they are if we do not understand what we can offer them, and how we build that relationship with latent control in the power dynamic.  Just as we want to attractive to stakeholders, the organisation must also be clear about what it wants in return.  This is a transactional relationship, not pure altruism.  Organisations often make one of two mistakes: they either give too much with too little in return, or they do not value stakeholders, and lose them. 

Once we have addressed these three points, it is important to continuously track these relationships in terms of personnel turnover and growth, market share, client loyalty and such like.  This is a constant race of continuous improvement.  It is from these that strategic plans are developed, and strategic positions taken.  What we are advocating here is a series of steps to develop a system, not the system itself.  What makes it work is the values behind it: an unstinting culture of excellence.