Strategic Planning for the New Year

4 min readDec 7, 2018

As the end of the year approaches, it is the perfect time to take a step back, evaluate the past year, and look to the future.

There are a myriad of ways that companies take on strategic planning, while others just ignore it (yikes!). The important thing is that it is done and everyone in the organization understands where they are going, what’s expected in 2019, and how they will get there.

As a strategy facilitator, you won’t be surprised to hear that I believe the best way to undertake strategic planning is by taking a few days at an offsite location to get away from the craziness, and use a structured process to make sure the time is used most effectively. Whether you head to a remote location that might offer opportunities to build rapport (ski resort, an interesting city, golf club, etc), or just find a conference room nearby your offices, the key is that your team dedicate focused, uninterrupted time and attention to this effort.

But we all know there’s more to it than just getting away. To make a strategic planning session successful, I recommend looking at the following areas:

Come Prepared

Everyone who attends should be there for a reason, representing a business unit, a profit center, or an operational structure. All attendees should have clear expectations for the preparation they need to do in advance. This would include presentations (past performance, future direction), advance reading, and homework which might ask to attendees to do some brainstorming ahead of time.

Review the Past Year

Every key business unit should be ready to present on their performance in the past year, reviewing previous objectives, progress, and changes made. It’s also important to celebrate the big successes, as those moments often get lost in the frey, and properly diagnose defeats or mistakes.

Recommit to Mission, Vision, Values

Every year, the organization’s mission, vision, and values (including BHAG) should drive any strategic planning that occurs. If there is misalignment based on changes that have happened or are anticipated, then take the time to refresh these important, long-term foundations. If your company hasn’t yet put these together in a clear and helpful form, then the strategic planning offsite is the perfect time to tackle them!

Define Strategic Imperatives

Driven by the top level direction (mission, vision, values) and the past year’s performance evaluation, your team should have a good sense of what the key imperatives are to make for a successful year. The CEO and Board will also have defined metrics or business objectives that meet ownership’s needs as well.

Dream about Opportunities

It’s time to take a break from all the analytical thinking and dream for a bit. This bold, imaginative thinking can produce new directions that are vital for the organization, especially if the past year was a difficult one. The team should have an eye on internal innovations, large trends in the marketplace, big bets the company can make, small but impactful improvements, and changes in the industry. Essentially this is a time to do a mini vision casting session for the upcoming year.

Run A Gap Analysis

Once you have a clear situational analysis of your current context and you have a vision for the new year, you can chart out what it will take to get you there. This is the backbone to turning the work into a strategic plan. You won’t have all the information to make perfect evaluations, but as a team, you should have a good sense of what it will take to make things happen.

Prioritize

This is the time to assess the big thinking and mandates you have, and start to prioritize them. This would look at the imperatives and opportunities by the level of investment (time, resources, people, cost, etc.) and difficulty, while ranking them based on impact and reward. You should have these objectives and imperatives at a company-wide level, and perhaps at the division, and business unit levels as well. Remember, it is wise to have no more than three major company-wide priorities in a given year, otherwise you will spread your focus too broadly for meaningful change.

Chart Strategic Plan

Once the key imperatives and objectives are outlined and prioritized, it is essential to allocate the resources necessary to make this happen. This may involve some intense negotiations on ownership of each item, budget, timing, re-orgs (if needed), human resource allocation, defining metrics and KPI’s, and so on. While difficult, sussing out these details will go a long way to providing clear and actionable next steps for the entire company.

Communicate The Strategy

No plan can work if it is not owned by everyone in the organization, and for that to happen it must be communicated with simplicity and clarity, then amplified across the organization over and over again. Coming out of the offsite, I suggest working with your design and communication teams to distill the plan down at the highest level, and then have it translated into different mediums and communicated through different internal channels. This is the last mile of any strategic plan and it is often the one that gets the least focus.

I hope this overview is useful to your strategic planning process this year. What other approaches do you use to hold effective planning sessions? Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments!