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.

When developing your company’s strategic plan, the elements of the question “Where are we going?” help you answer other questions, such as these: What will my organization look like in the future? Where are we headed? What is the future I want to create for my company? Because the future is hard to predict, you can have fun imagining what it may look like.

The purpose of a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) is to help produce a good fit between your company’s resources and capabilities and your external environment. Your SWOT analysis is a balance sheet of your strategic position right now. In the analysis, you bring together all your internal factors, strengths, and weaknesses, as well as your external factors, opportunities, and threats.

The vision statement, a key element of your strategic plan, needs to incorporate many elements. The following list contains elements that you can include in an effective vision statement (you don’t have to use every one, but keep them in mind when you’re writing or evaluating): Audacious: Your vision represents a dream that’s beyond what you think is possible.

Often overlooked are the five key components necessary to support implementation: people, resources, structure, systems, and culture. All components must be in place in order to move from creating to activating the plan. These five components are as follows: People: The first stage of implementing your plan is to make sure to have the right people on board.

Strategy means consciously choosing to be clear about your company’s direction in relation to what’s happening in the dynamic environment. With this knowledge, you’re in a much better position to respond proactively to the changing environment. The fine points of strategy are as follows: Establishes unique value proposition compared to your competitors Executed through operations that provide different and tailored value to customers Identifies clear tradeoffs and clarifies what not to do Focuses on activities that fit together and reinforce each other Drives continual improvement within the organization and moves it toward its vision Knowing what strategy is can also be explained by looking at what strategy isn’t.

Having a strategic plan and a succinct strategy that brings clarity and focus to your organization ensures that your time, resources, and actions aren’t wasted. Planning for the future is important, but very few businesses actually do it. Following are some warning signs that tell you whether you need a new strategy for your strategic planning process.

With the continual flux of technologies and the speed of development, the threat of substitute products taking the place of yours is greater than ever before. Substitute products can be an area of opportunity or an area of threat, depending on when you catch wind of the change. If you’re on top of it, you can produce the new product.

A company’s strategic plan is the game plan that management uses for positioning the company in its chosen market arena, competing successfully, satisfying customers, and achieving good business performance. Most business owners and executives have countless excuses for not having a formal strategic plan. I’ve heard everything from “We’re too new” to “We’re not big enough” to “We’ve never had one; why start now?