Strategic plans are not an exercise.  Most strategic plans look like a computer dump with lots of pages of financials and projections.  The financials and budgets are not strategic plans, they are the tools to implement well thought out and agreed upon plans.

Effective strategic plans are an opportunity to express ourselves through our organization.   Detailed plans and programs are the guides to implement our vision and mission.  Strategic plans energize the organization and provide the focus to keep it on track.  Strategic plans are the roadmaps that define the journey we are undertaking and where we would like to end up.  Strategic plans integrate the personal and professional and link us to our customers and communities.

The Simplified Strategic Plan helps organizations to focus their thoughts and ideas and create effective strategic plans.  The key elements are the:

1.      Vision - Describe your idea or organization in a manner that captures the passion of the idea.  The vision statement is YOUR statement of what you want to do.

2.      Mission - Who will you serve?  Describe why customers will use your services and how you will connect to your customers and community.  What is your purpose and intention? 

3.      Objectives - Describe specifically what you will accomplish this year and how you define success.  What do you want to celebrate at the end of the year?  How will you measure success?

4.      Strategies - Describe your overall approach and methodology and set the direction for achieving your objectives.  What path will you follow?  What are your key success factors?  What are your critical problems?  Are your strategies consistent with your culture? 

5.      Plans - Describe the specific actions you will take to accomplish the objectives and follow the strategies.  Plans assign accountability and deadlines.

One of the key criteria for selecting a good strategy is to determine whether the strategy builds on your critical success factors.  While most of us are very good at defining problems, defining the keys to our success is more elusive.  It is also very important.  Your success factors are the one or two critical reasons why you have experienced success to date.  The reason(s) could be technical, financial, market position, leadership, a unique niche, persistence, low cost, outstanding quality, location, reputation, or many others.  These factors clearly define your edge, your reason for continuing and the keys to ongoing success.  They are based on internal strengths or external opportunities and are unique to your organization.  If you have defined more than two critical success factors, then you aren't yet to the core of what makes you succeed.  You may have lots of strengths and advantages and yet experience shows that there are not more than two critical factors that really drive all the other strengths and advantages.  Don't stop until you find them.

The strategic planning process is where we need to take the time and look at all the symptoms of what might be wrong with the organization and define the root or critical problems that must be addressed.  They are critical problems because they threaten the survivability of the organization.  They are root problems because they are the root cause of the other problems and symptoms.  There are usually only one or two critical problems that face a organization at a given time.  In rare cases there are three.  If you have defined more than that, you are probably not down to the root causes and critical problems.  Solving the problems is not normally as difficult as defining the critical problems that we need to solve. Find them, and then solve them.  Use them to guide your strategy.

Culture is a strategic factor in the success of our organizations and yet it is still poorly understood and used.  Organization culture is defined as the basic assumptions, beliefs, artifacts, and values that are: shared over time by the people in an organization; used to create meaning for the managers and employees; and drive the decisions and actions of the organization.   Culture is normally an unseen force inherent in the decisions and actions of the managers and employees, not a conscious force that is deliberated during those decisions and actions. 

As an unseen force, it takes some effort to define it for your organization and understand its effects on your organization.  We don't want to do that very often so it's best to look at culture when you are developing or reviewing your strategic plan.  The use of organization culture in the planning process is quite simple.  Strategies that are consistent with your culture can work and those that are inconsistent will not work.  For new organizations, the question can be asked a different way.  What culture do I need to develop to support the selected strategies?  Once a culture has developed and grown, it is very difficult to change.  Culture change should not be taken on except in very drastic circumstances.

Culture can be a very useful tool to check on the viability of proposed strategies.  Like success factors, we want to develop and nourish positive cultural factors.