How to structure your corporate strategic planning

We have all heard the term planning to plan.

Conducting corporate strategic planning is very similar in nature to “planning to plan”. Most business executives and senior manager can talk for hours justifying how important corporate strategic planning is, but very few people would actually be able to tell you where to start.

So here are a few tips that you can use to start your own comprehensive corporate strategic planning exercise. A word of advise, strategic planning or building a strategy is not a one time exercise, it is an ongoing and ever evolving state of mind.

A good analogy can be to send a rocket to the moon, you know your objective, you know your target – yet you need to constantly conduct course correction to arrive at the end goal.

Use the following exercises to come up with a comprehensive strategic plan for your business.

1. SWOT Analysis

A conceptually very simple (and most used) tool, yet most misunderstood. The only way you will get good at SWOT analysis is if you do it again and again.

So what is SWOT analysis, it is a comparative study of an organizations strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats. You would list all of these together to have comprehensive view of where your company or its products stand in the market.

I will post more insight about SWOT analysis later, in the mean time to learn more click here.

2. Annual Operations Plan

Once you have completed your SWOT analysis and you have a good overview of your organization’s and products situation in the market the next step is to address your weaknesses and threats by setting up a tangible plan.

As part of your Annual plan you need to set targets and objectives. Objectives and targets must be precise, achievable, quantifiable and measurable (hint: identify, quantify, and measure).

3. Develop a Budget

Once you have defined what you want to achieve in within the a set amount of time you need to allocate budget for those objectives and break them down to individual tasks assigned to your employee or teammates.

4. Track and Followup

Make sure you review all of the above at least once a month with your employee and team members ensuring so conduct any course corrections along the way.

Quick Review for corporate strategic planning

1. Develop SWOT analysis to see where you stand

2. Identify weaknesses and threats to address and develop a task list/action plan

3. Allocate budget

4. Review and Followup