Erica Olsen. Strategic planning kit for dummies.
If you’re a decision-maker in an organization and you’re serious about strategic planning, I highly recommend this book by Erica Olson as a very thorough but practical reference. It will give you more than you need, but it is very clearly structured so that you easily focus on whatever aspects are relevant to you. It also includes a DVD with worksheets, templates, and videos.
Why does strategic planning matter?
Strategic planning offers a systematic process to figure out where you’re going – as a business or as any kind of organization.
Erica Olsen reports that CEOs of the Inc. 500 spend 50-90 percent of their time on strategy and business development. Why? Probably because they realize how much it pays off. According to her research, the firms with a high commitment to strategic planning had higher sales volumes as well as net incomes than those with lower commitment.
A good strategic plan informs not only your current obvious decisions, but will help you look for decision opportunities that you might otherwise miss. In other words, it helps the decision-makers be proactive, rather than reacting to problems.
Where a team is involved, the process of developing a strategic plan, and more importantly the culture of continued strategic planning, builds commitment and empowers group members to make their own decisions on a daily basis.
If you’re interested in a brief overview of the process, I’ve written an outline that will walk you through the classic steps of a strategic planning session. You can access it here (link at the bottom of the page). You can use it as a very simple cheat sheet in preparation for a team session, or, if you don’t have a team, you can go through the questions by yourself.
by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR