Organizations can either guess at the future and scramble to deal with each new obstacle or systematically plan, with thoughtful, effective, steps to get there. Anticipation of your future goals and what it will take to accomplish them will result in higher performance and growth and enable you to exceed your stakeholders’ expectations.

Why is strategic planning important for your company?

• Organizations and people perform better when they know what they are expected to achieve.
• The strategic plan is aligned with the vision and mission of the organization.
• Each year’s annual business plan is part of the roadmap to achieve the plan.
• Systematic planning facilitates alignment between departments.
• The organization drivers of the strategic and annual business plans cascade down the organization as the basis of performance objectives for each department and individual.
• The initiatives and strategies identified in the strategic planning process become individual performance objectives, action plans and responsibilities for employees throughout the organization.

Typical Planning Objectives:

• To develop a Strategic Plan built on thorough research of market trends and customer needs;
• To review the vision, mission and values of the organization to ensure their relevance and that the strategic plan is fully aligned with them;
• To define the quantitative targets (metrics) to be achieved;
• To develop the strategies and action plans to achieve the planned targets and objectives;
• To ensure recognition of the organization’s infrastructure needs (the human resources, organization structure, technology, business processes, facilities, etc.) to support planned growth;.
• To develop a high level of participation throughout the organization.

How PSG can assist in the strategic planning process:

• Direct activities of your own project team in preparing for the planning process;
• Conduct online customer perception surveys of key customer and stakeholder groups to gather critical inputs on how effectively your organization is meeting their needs;
• Survey Board members for feedback on issues facing the organization and solicit board guidelines for the strategic plan;
• Conduct an employee perception survey to obtain essential feedback on business and management practices, employee morale and issues facing employees;
• Oversee and/or facilitate staff research and preparation of preliminary plans for sales, marketing, communications, advocacy, legislative and other programs to promote the planned level of business, including infrastructure requirements (people, organization structure, technology, capital equipment etc.);
• Coordinate activities of the CFO in ensuring that action plans to support the strategic and annual business plans are in line with available financial resources and projected cash flows;
• Review materials to be presented at facilitated planning sessions;
• Facilitate planning sessions built around classic SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats);
• Summarize the issues and prepare the framework for write-up of the strategic plan;
• Review the plan write-up, providing feedback to those responsible for making corrections to the plan.

PSG typically does not write up the actual strategic plan since this is not usually cost effective and the leadership team needs to take ownership of the write-up. We will do it, if required.

Contact Performance-Solutions-Group, Inc.
For more information, please contact us at (203) 987-3338; info@performance-solutions-group.com