Strategy Design and Planning Best Practice

Strategy Design and Planning Best Practices have become a mission critical activity for organizations that want to succeed in the current business environment. Constructing a methodology to address the key principles involved in strategic planning can provide you with the needed structure to execute and measure the ROI of the deliverables upon execution, while remaining focused on the vision, mission, and culture of the organization and leadership.

AMS executive level consultants have facilitated strategy design and development sessions for organizations of all sizes, domestically and globally.  This experience and cross-industry awareness helps to leverage trends and more critically, build an “outside of the boardroom” perspective.  Many planning sessions do not produce innovative outcomes because the perspectives of the contributors are unchallenged, uninformed or misguided due to organization/industry silos. To produce clear strategy that can be disseminated into actionable, measurable, and scalable plans, you must integrate a diverse perspective from the start of the collaborative process.

Strategy Design and Planning Considerations

Strategy: (Directional action items required to reach our vision/mission while embracing our values) – A company’s strategy outlines a framework of choices that determine the nature and direction of an organization. This includes goals, objectives, and actions we will take to reach the organization’s mission and vision. It includes policies and key decisions adopted by management that have major impacts on financial performance. It may include expanding services, reaching new markets, or adapting new technologies. It may also include talent development and inform hiring and training practices.

Questions to Ask When Designing a Business Strategy

• What do we have to do extraordinarily well to compete or succeed?
• How do we bring unique value to our customers?
• How do we expect to serve the future needs of our customers?
• What do employees want or deserve in exchange for their efforts?
• What is this organization’s competitive advantage over others in the industry?

Environmental Factors that a Affect Business Strategy

• Ensuring your team understands the strategic planning process and purpose.
• Identify the steps to break out of the old paradigms during planning.
• Explore culture and applied strategic planning to ensure your sphere of perspective is unlimited.
• Conduct a strategic planning needs assessment to ensure we are building “new” strategy not recycling the old.
• Perform a stakeholder analysis to ensure the wider organization is applicable to change.
• Formulate a mission statement to support the efforts.
• Build a foundation using business modeling that depicts the current, the transformational, and future state.
• Conduct a SWOT analysis to validate the needs.
• Conduct a gap analysis to identify the space between the current and future state.
• Integrate action plans to support execution of the needed change.
• Conduct contingency planning in the know reality of agility along the way.

Business Strategy Integration

• Strategic to support the Vision, Mission, and Values.
• Operational to support the macro development and roll-out for implementation.
• Tactical to drive individual projects that roll-up to the macro plan.

Why Strategy Design and Planning Is Important Sucess

The strategy planning process is not an activity that is restricted to the boardroom, any longer.  In fact, most progressive organizations leverage a form of strategic planning throughout all levels of the company.  This activity is supported by skills such as strategic thinking, root cause analysis, and problem solving and is driven by good communications and networking presence.