Erica Olsen

A strategic plan is essential for a successful business, and creating a strategic plan that you can actually use is key. Your plan should include certain elements, like mission, values, and vision statements. It should also avoid common pitfalls, like neglecting the specific needs of your organization, so it becomes your road map for success.

In strategic planning, benchmarks are surveys and assessments that help determine how well your company performs compared to other companies in your industry or business size. Following are just a handful of benchmarking tools available: BizStats: Visit the BizStats website for instant access to useful financial ratios, business statistics, and benchmarks.

In the final phase of the strategic planning process, you will look at your own personal vision, determine the value of your company, and figure out how to plan for your company’s survival after you leave. Although publicly-traded companies get all the media limelight, roughly 90 percent of the businesses in the United States are privately held.

During the past several years, due to the economy, government entities have been forced to rethink what it means to be sustainable. Organizational sustainability isn’t an end, but rather a business process that understands the resources needed and emphasizes balance between the present and the future in a dynamic and constantly changing world in order to fulfill the organization’s mission.

As part of their strategic planning process, major corporations and research firms often develop and share future scenarios specific to an industry’s future or to address major global problems. Shell Oil continues to be the leader in scenario planning, with a specific eye toward the impact of oil on our society, economy, and environment.

For an excellent example of strategic planning at work, consider the following case study. Cisco and Monitor Global Business Network set out to develop scenarios that answered important questions about the future of the Internet. The following example may be relevant to your organization. Although you may not be able to use these scenarios in total because they weren’t created to solve your specific business issue, often you can use them as inputs to your scenario planning process.

Global food supply and food prices can jump-start their strategic what-if scenario planning thanks to a Food Supply Project commissioned by the United Kingdom in 2008. Chatham House commenced the project, which resulted in robust scenarios that organizations impacted by. The official title for this report is “Food Futures: Rethinking UK Strategy” and includes the following scenarios: Key Drivers: The driving forces are (1) demand for food is increasing because the global population is rising and major developing economies are expanding, and (2) global supply capacity, meanwhile, is struggling to keep up with changing requirements.

To maximize resources and funding, organizations need to focus on what they do best and outsource the rest. Easier said than done, right? The MacMillan Matrix, a tool developed by Wharton School of Business professor Ian MacMillan, was specifically designed to tackle this task. The MacMillan Matrix can help you discover the program areas that are most needed in your community and that you’re in the best position to provide.

Because government entities operate as monopolies in most cases, have elected boards that change every four to six years, and provide services that are legislated instead of based on market demand, these organizations must recognize how those factors affect their planning. Following are some ways to accommodate some factors that affect government strategic planning.