When I began working for a non-profit 20 years ago, I was introduced to strategic planning. This process is a big jump from a to-do list regarding complexity. But it’s still something you can learn and use to set goals

Let’s start by looking at the parts that make up the plan:

• Mission: What we are compelled to do.
• Vision: What it will look like when we accomplish the mission.
• Values: What we consider important and should influence how we do the work.
• Current Reality: Where we are now.
• Critical Mass: What we currently have that is necessary to move toward our vision.
• Path Steps: The concrete steps we will take to move toward the vision.

Defining the Mission, Vision and Values.

To navigate the planning process, you need to get oriented, and the mission, vision, and values are your north star. The mission is what you must do. If you’re doing this as a team, this is why your team exists. Write it out as a single sentence like this.

Mission: To help teams find better ways to organize both their people and their work.

The vision is a description of the mission realized. It’s a little longer than the mission and should use visual language to create an image in people’s minds. An example of a vision that matches the mission above could be:

Vision: Each person knows their role and their people. They know what they need to do and see how they fit into the whole. Everyone on the team is working together, pulling in the same direction.

The values define how you will behave to reach the vision and fulfill the mission. If your team is using Scrum, you could begin with the Scrum values as a starting point:

• Commit to achieving the goals of the Scrum Team
• Courage to do the right thing and work on challenging problems
• Focus on the work of the Sprint and the goals of the Scrum Team
• Open about all the work and the challenges with performing the work
• Respect each other to be capable, independent people

Identifying your current reality.

You can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you are. The current reality is an honest look at how things are right now. A standard tool for this is the SWOT matrix, and SWOT stands for strengths, opportunities, weaknesses, and threats.

• Strengths: positive qualities currently inside your team.
• Opportunities: positive possibilities in the future or external to your teams.
• Weaknesses: issues currently within your team that could prevent you from accomplishing the mission.
• Threats: possible events in the future or external to your team that threaten the mission.

Use a two-by-two grid to write out a list in each category. The SWOT should give you a clear picture of where you are now.

Identifying your critical mass.

Your critical mass includes the essentials needed to begin moving toward your vision.

It comes from your current reality and fuels your critical path steps. It can take the form of a list or maybe a few lists. Think of it as what you need to pack from your current reality to travel toward your vision.

Setting your critical path steps.

It’s time to get moving. It’s essential to decide the timeframe for your strategic planning. Is it six months? A year? The vision may be years away, but your critical path steps should still be time-bound. 

You can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you are.

Now decide what significant progress looks like in the time frame. If you only saw three things happen, which three would be most impactful? Adding more steps will be tempting as you ideate, but try to keep it to three or fewer. Focus is essential to setting goals.

Each step can have subpoints that contribute to completing it. Similar to smart goals, these subpoints make your strategic plan concrete, specific, and actionable. Just be careful not to try and sneak in extra steps using the subpoints. That won’t help you.

Measuring your results.

If you don’t measure it, did it really happen? 

Ok, so maybe that’s a little extreme. However, measuring results is an easy but costly step to skip. If you are going to make progress and grow over time, you need to be honest about how things went. How does what happened measure against the goals you set out?

Decide how often you will update your results. It could be weekly or monthly. If you automate it, your data could be real-time.

The strategic planning process

It is called a process because strategic planning should be facilitated iteratively to make changes as the current reality changes. 

Unfortunately, this habit often seems to be lacking, and the strategic plan becomes an artifact to hang on the wall. Or, more likely, stuff in your desk drawer.

If you only saw three things happen, which three would be most impactful?

The strategic planning process can help you connect your activities with your priorities. It enables you to organize a lot of information. For it to be the most useful, you must keep it focused and revisit it regularly.

If you want to try the strategic planning process, take some time and work through each piece. You can check out the book Advanced Strategic Planning if you really want a deep dive. Or download the worksheet to get started.