The Strategic Planning process is undertaken for the purpose of developing a concrete plan that would lead an organization towards accomplishing its long-term goals and objectives. The planning process is executed by the senior members, who sit together and analyze different situations affecting the state and affairs of business. In this process, they have a look at the current scenario of the organization, its internal and external environment; prepare suitable strategies and objectives according to their situation assessment as well as develop procedures to execute and weigh up the strategic plan. Ideally, strategic planning is done for a three to five year timeline; however it is also done for a shorter period, when the organization or its environment is dynamic. Typically, there are five stages in strategic planning: analysis of the current state, defining the future state, determining goals and objectives, implementation and evaluation.
- Analysis of the current state of an organization: The very first step is to determine the current state of business by having a complete understanding of the internal and external audits and internal and external environment of an organization. Leaders analyze the overall marketplace, the competitive environment within the industry and the core competencies of the organization. In short, they conduct a SWOT analysis to examine all the factors affecting the organization.
- Defining the future state of an organization: After analyzing the overall image and standing of organization, strategic planners then move to defining the probable achievements or future state of their organization. They develop a vision (future concepts) and mission statement (which can be about its products, customers, markets, etc.) by focusing on the main priorities of the organization. At this stage, they also highlight the organization’s future goals and give a proper direction to the organization by stating its expected core values, future place and probable functions.
- Determining goals and objectives of an organization: Strategic leaders then proceeds to identify common goals and objectives of their business, which are usually determined from the mission and vision statement. This helps an organization to understand what it needs to accomplish in order to address its priorities.
- Implementation: The next stage involves execution of the overall planning and determining accountability, that is, shouldering responsibility to the right person for specific processes. In this stage, leaders communicate about allocating time, money and human resources for achieving the desired objectives, thereby addressing prior issues.
- Evaluation: At the final stage, the leadership team only reviews the performance of the plan and ensures that it is fetching desirable results. Evaluation is scheduled in advanced and done at regular intervals of time, which is ideally once in three months. It is a consistent process and by doing so, strategic leaders examine and assess if the project is moving in the right direction and their planning has been credible.
Who to be involved in Strategic Planning
Strategic planning involves senior team members and the board members of your organization. The board members are primarily responsible for the entire process of planning and it completely depends on them whether to involve multiple stakeholders or not. It however is a good practice to engage different people in the planning process, so as to provide better insights into the planning document and to legitimize it.
To make your plan practical and realistic it is essential that the entire process is made participatory by involving all relevant stakeholders including both internal and external stakeholders. Very often strategic planning also involves various NGO stakeholders which includes donors, target beneficiaries, staff members, strategic thinkers (consultants) etc.
It is a good idea to engage your NGO partners either directly or indirectly in the planning phase. You can send an email to the identified partners and request them to provide you a feedback within some deadline. This feedback can be integrated in the planning document.
Another important group of people who should be involved in the planning are your office staff. There are high chances that the senior team members and the board are not well versed with the actual ground realities, it is thus important to engage few staff members who can provide insights about the on-field challenges etc.
Strategic Plan Components
Though there is no standard format for a strategic plan, a typical strategic plan consists of the following sections.
- Executive Summary: An executive summary is a section in the document that summarizes the entire strategic plan report. The primary purpose of the summary is that it serves as an excellent tool for communicating the report is a short and simple way.
- Organization Background: Mention about your organization, the kind of work it does , the processes it follows and the area it works in. You can also mention about the historical evolution of your organization.
- Management Structure: In this section describe how your organization works. Describe the governance mechanism (number of board members) and the management staff in the organization. Most organization usually provides a organizational chart in this section, so as to provide the reader about the governance and management structure.
- Organization Vision, Mission and Values: Each organization is based on certain core values or guiding principles mention these under these section.
- Strategic Analysis: Use the various tools to analyze the current situation. In this section clearly mention about the planning tool that you are using. Describe the final results of the analysis. This analysis will also include the current resource assessment.
- Goals and Strategies: Based on the results of the external and internal factors, your team will decide upon certain goals for the future. For each goal that the organization plans to achieve in the next 5 years, you should clearly detail out the strategy. This section should also detail out the processes you will use to execute the plan.
- Evaluation: This section will discuss about the evaluation procedures that will be used to evaluate the success of the plan.
Conclusion
Strategic planning is a critical component for effective governance and management of a NGO. In simple words, Strategic planning is a systematic process of deciding key decisions for an organization to thrive successfully in the next few years. The planning process is a disciplined and time taking process produces fundamental decisions and actions that shape the organization. Therefore, to conclude, strategic planning is one of the most essential job in NGOs and other organizations. Although it is time-taking, however, if diligently done, yields better results than desired. However, it happens with years of experience within an organization and a clear understanding about its existence, purpose and functions. By utilizing the most appropriate strategic tools at different levels of strategic planning, an organization gets its ideal strategy plan.