Our strategic planning model for organizations is one of the most comprehensive and integrated approaches in practice. It starts with these eleven "critical success factors":

" Build a shared vision

" Involve others in collaboration

" Be inclusive of all stakeholders

" Build on experience

" Remove barriers to communication and implementation

" Secure buy-in to both the process and its recommendations

" Set realistic goals

" Create opportunities for early success

" Use a team approach

" Have a "bias toward action"

" Require evaluation and accountability

Implementing our conceptual model and integrating the principles above, ten key stages outline the planning process:

1. Defining the Planning Process: Define with stakeholders the planning model, structure, process, expectations, action plan, timeframes, and participants

2. Assessing Needs: Assess current and future needs over the planning horizon

3. Reviewing the Mission: Review and reconsider mission, vision and values statements

4. Developing a Vision: Develop a shared, stakeholder-wide vision of the future

5. Getting Feedback: Create an interactive dialog with all stakeholders

6. Identifying Pathways: Identify the pathways to the vision

7. Identifying Resources: Identify the resource requirements necessary to achieve the vision

8. Integrating Funding: Integrate strategic planning with strategic allocations

9. Defining Outcomes: Define critical success factors and outcome measures

10.Evaluating Results: Put an evaluation and feedback system in place to monitor, and make course corrections along the way

For the strategic planning effort to be implementable you must generate the same information that the most comprehensive effort in a business environment would. A wish list of unmet community needs is meaningless without an analysis of the resource requirements necessary, and an estimate of the capacity of community agencies and organizations to respond. Once issues of selecting the planning model, structure and timetable have been addressed, what follows next are the six core strategic planning elements:

1 Structure and Process

    a. Planning Commitment and Horizon; the Plan Charter

2 Organizational Assessment

    a. Mission and Values

    b. Vision Statement

    c. Organizational Audit

    d. Critical Success Factors

3 Community and Environmental Assessment

    a. Population Demographics

    b. Needs Assessment

    c. Strategic Assumptions

    d. Annual Giving and Endowment

    e. Demand and Utilization of Services

    f. Information Needs and Systems

    g. Human Resource Requirements

    h. Facility Requirements

    i. Proforma Estimate of Revenue and Expense

    j. Capital Requirements Forecast

4 Strategic Issues and Priorities

    a. Strategic Issues

    b. Future Scenarios

5 Implementation and Strategic Management

    a. Pathways to the Vision

    b. Barriers and Facilitators

    c. Strategic Plan Circulation Draft

    d. Second Opinion [outside independent review]

    e. Strategic Plan Final Report

    f. Implementation Plan and Process

6 Evaluation

    a. Evaluation Plan

    b. Evaluation Results Reporting, Actions Taken

A complete description of these core planning elements and their parameters are available from The Vantagepoint Group, LLC at no charge. Click on email below to receive the materials.



©2003 William D. Neigher, Ph.D., in press.