Strategic planning is the all-important task of defining your business, brand or company?s strategy. How will you set, implement and meet your goals? What are your goals? Who is responsible for making these strategies real, tangible and credible?
According to nearly any business, strategic planning includes four, basic pillars:
- Vision
- Mission
- Values
- Strategy
Strategic Planning: Vision
Your vision embodies everything you inspire to be. For me, when vision planning for B Squared Media, LLC, I read many, many books. I thought about what I wanted the brand to be ? and even created a vision board.
I made a list of over 100 words that could represent me/my brand, and then narrowed it down to three specific words: Conversation, Connection and Strategic. These words eventually led me to our tagline, now trademarked, ?Think Conversation, Not Campaign.?
When your vision is starting to take shape, ask yourself these questions:
- Why do I what I do; what is my purpose?
- What problems do I solve? What value do I add? What are my customers saying (or what do you want them to say)?
Strategic Planning: Mission
When characterizing your mission, think about who you are. Coming from a family who has constantly fundraised and given back, I knew I wanted my business to do them same. We created a pro bono program where we made the commitment to give one charity an entirely free social media management program for an entire year.
This is critical to our mission. What is critical to your mission? Probe your thoughts and feelings to find out:
- Who you are.
- What?s your story?
- How do you give back?
Strategic Planning: Values
Once you have your vision and mission, values should be screaming at you. Values will set the tone for your brand, and will be the backbone of your company culture.
My advice is to involve everyone currently working with the company when deciding on values. Eventually these values will help you determine what you?re looking for in teamwork, new hires, and in communication with C-level executives and advisory boards.
Make a list and make sure it?s a living, breathing list that continually evolves.
Strategic Planning: Strategy
In this stage of strategic planning, you will want to connect daily operations to your long-term vision for your brand. Combining your vision, mission, and values can seem chaotic without a clear path.
My advice here is COMMUNICATION, and lots of it!
Be open with problems and obstacles you foresee. And instead of merely presenting problems, ask that they?re submitted along with solutions. This sparks ideas and innovation.
Other questions for formulating strategy:
- What are you looking to accomplish? Daily? Weekly? Monthly? Yearly?
- What do you identify as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
- Who will be responsible for different KPIs, and how will they be evaluated?
*This is also a place to perform your SWOT Analysis.
Putting Your Plan To Work
While your vision, mission and values may or may not change, your strategy most often will. Business, especially with the advent of online and social strategies, is going through a giant transformation. Some strategies will work, and some won?t. It?s your job to test, change, and test again.
It?s a constant, cyclical motion; being proactive vs. reactive will keep you stabilized in a constant-changing business climate.
And while?you?ll succeed the fastest by doing this planning from the beginning, it?s never too late to start utilizing strategic planning. You always need to be working on the business (not just in the business)!
Source: http://www.steamfeed.com/what-is-strategic-planning-and-how-do-i-get-started/
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