In today's rapidly changing business landscape, having a well-defined strategic plan is more than just a good idea — it’s essential for long-term success and resilience. When done well, strategic planning fosters cohesion, focuses resources on the most impactful areas, and keeps teams motivated with a clear sense of purpose and direction. Moreover, it allows organizations to anticipate challenges and pivot when necessary, ensuring they are not only prepared for the future but also positioned to thrive.
In this blog, we’ll outline the six steps to creating an effective strategic plan...
Strategic planning is the process an organization uses to get from “Point A” to “Point B.” Ultimately, strategic planning provides a roadmap that aligns an organization’s people and resources to achieve its vision and mission, enabling organizations to answer questions like:
Without strategic planning, organizations risk being reactive, which can lead to misaligned priorities, fragmented efforts, and missed opportunities for growth.
Organizations that master strategic planning are able to instill a companywide understanding of their purpose, creating better commitment to the organization and its goals.
Strategic planning helps organizations to:
The strategic planning cycle can be broken down into six steps…
The first stage is to collect information. Before you can make a plan, you’ll need:
Once you have the lay of the land, you can start to analyze.
This phase is where you’ll contextualize the state of internal affairs with the external factors you need to consider. To do this, we recommend a SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
In a SWOT analysis, the first two letters concern your internal state and the last two concern the external state.
Start by fully understanding your company’s strengths and weaknesses. Examine things like product quality, customer service, and employees. Include objective metrics as well, such as profitability or other performance indicators.
Then, you can look at opportunities and threats from the outside. Examples of these may include new market opportunities, chances to grow, or opportunities to purchase competitors. Threats would be things like strong competition, increasing material costs, or legislative changes.
The SWOT analysis should leave you with a comfortable understanding of where your company sits in the broader marketplace both internally and externally.
Your mission and vision statements are your guiding principles. If you don’t have them, we recommend you take this time to create them. If you already have these statements in place, it’s a good idea to refresh them as part of your strategic planning implementation.
Most companies will have a mission statement, but vision statements are less common.
A mission statement:
A vision statement:
With these guiding principles in place, your strategic planning will start to take shape.
In this phase, you’ll focus on identifying specific strategies and articulating the goals and action items you’ll need to realize these targeted strategies.
Start by looking at the opportunities you identified during your SWOT analysis. For each one, ask:
For each opportunity you want to pursue, form a statement of intent. For example, “Prepare the organization for a successful leadership transition within the next two years.”
Now, you need to articulate how you plan to hit your target. We recommend that you identify strategic objectives in four main business areas. We’ll continue using the example of a leadership change:
After setting goals, ensure you measure them with specific KPIs relevant to each department.
Typically, execution is the most difficult of the six steps. Successfully executing your plan will require:
Perhaps most importantly, it will require total commitment from your senior executives. That’s because they’ll be the ones driving action and attitudes. Without buy-in from the top, it will be impossible to shepherd the rest of the team.
Strategic planning is a process that is never truly finished. Your organization’s strategic plan is a guiding, living document that evolves with your company and requires periodic adjusting.
We recommend that every six months or so, you reevaluate your strategy execution and ask yourself:
Eliminating egos is key at this stage. Changing course is often required, and the more flexible you can be in your approach, the better the odds that you’ll ultimately realize your objectives.
At CMTC, we understand that effective strategic planning requires a substantial commitment of time and effort. A strategic plan can help guide your organization to success if given the proper attention. However, small and medium-sized manufacturers may not have the resources or bandwidth necessary to engage in effective strategic planning.
Fortunately, CMTC can step in and assist. Our expert consultants can help you understand, develop, implement, and monitor every component of your strategic plan.
Ready to get started? Contact us today!