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8 Tough Questions to Ask About Your Company’s Strategy

  • Paul Leinwand
  • Matthias Bäumler

strategic planning assessment questions

Most companies don’t have the answers.

Many leadership teams struggle to connect strategy and execution. What can companies do to build a culture of accountability and transparency throughout their organizations? The authors suggest three tactics: First, give executives time to step away from their day-to-day urgencies in order to discuss and debate important strategic questions openly. Next, involve a larger part of the organization in a discussion around how the company is doing on both strategy and execution. Finally, get the board more involved. Senior leaders owe their shareholders, customers, and employees clear answers about why they exist and what they are doing every day to fulfill that purpose.

Companies often fail to address the tough questions about strategy and execution: Are we really clear, as a leadership team, about how we choose to create value in the marketplace? Can we articulate the few things the organization needs to do better than anyone else in order to deliver on that value proposition? Are we investing in those areas, and do they fit with most of the products and services we sell?

strategic planning assessment questions

  • Paul Leinwand is a principal at PwC U.S., a global managing director at Strategy&, and an adjunct professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg School. He is a coauthor, with Mahadeva Matt Mani, of Beyond Digital: How Great Leaders Transform Their Organizations and Shape the Future (HBR Press, 2022).
  • Matthias Bäumler is an advisor to executives in resource and process industries for Strategy&, PwC’s strategy consulting business. He is a Managing Director with PwC Strategy& Germany and leads the firm’s Chemicals business as well as Enterprise Strategy in Europe, Middle East and Africa. He has co-authored a number of publications, including Strategy&’s Future of Chemicals series.

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The strategic planning process in 4 steps, to help you throughout our strategic planning framework, we have created a how-to guide on the basics of a strategic plan, which we will take you through step-by-step..

Free Strategic Planning Guide

What is Strategic Planning?

Strategic Planning is when organizations define a bold vision and create a plan with objectives and goals to reach that future. A great strategic plan defines where your organization is going, how you’ll win, who must do what, and how you’ll review and adapt your strategy development.

What

Overview of the Strategic Planning Process:

The strategic management process involves taking your organization on a journey from point A (where you are today) to point B (your vision of the future).

Part of that journey is the strategy built during strategic planning, and part of it is execution during the strategic management process. A good strategic plan dictates “how” you travel the selected road.

Effective execution ensures you are reviewing, refreshing, and recalibrating your strategy to reach your destination. The planning process should take no longer than 90 days. But, move at a pace that works best for you and your team and leverage this as a resource.

To kick this process off, we recommend 1-2 weeks (1-hour meeting with the Owner/CEO, Strategy Director, and Facilitator (if necessary) to discuss the information collected and direction for continued planning.)

Strategic Planning Guide and Process

Questions to Ask:

  • Who is on your Planning Team? What senior leadership members and key stakeholders are included? Checkout these links you need help finding a strategic planning consultant , someone to facilitate strategic planning , or expert AI strategy consulting .
  • Who will be the business process owner (Strategy Director) of planning in your organization?
  • Fast forward 12 months from now, what do you want to see differently in your organization as a result of your strategic plan and implementation?
  • Planning team members are informed of their roles and responsibilities.
  • A strategic planning schedule is established.
  • Existing planning information and secondary data collected.

Action Grid:

What

Step 1: Determine Organizational Readiness

Set up your plan for success – questions to ask:

  • Are the conditions and criteria for successful planning in place at the current time? Can certain pitfalls be avoided?
  • Is this the appropriate time for your organization to initiate a planning process? Yes or no? If no, where do you go from here?

Step 2: Develop Your Team & Schedule

Who is going to be on your planning team? You need to choose someone to oversee the strategy implementation (Chief Strategy Officer or Strategy Director) and strategic management of your plan? You need some of the key individuals and decision makers for this team. It should be a small group of approximately 12-15 people.

OnStrategy is the leader in strategic planning and performance management. Our cloud-based software and hands-on services closes the gap between strategy and execution. Learn more about OnStrategy here .

Step 3: Collect Current Data

All strategic plans are developed using the following information:

  • The last strategic plan, even if it is not current
  • Mission statement, vision statement, values statement
  • Past or current Business plan
  • Financial records for the last few years
  • Marketing plan
  • Other information, such as last year’s SWOT, sales figures and projections

Step 4: Review Collected Data

Review the data collected in the last action with your strategy director and facilitator.

  • What trends do you see?
  • Are there areas of obvious weakness or strengths?
  • Have you been following a plan or have you just been going along with the market?

Conclusion: A successful strategic plan must be adaptable to changing conditions. Organizations benefit from having a flexible plan that can evolve, as assumptions and goals may need adjustments. Preparing to adapt or restart the planning process is crucial, so we recommend updating actions quarterly and refreshing your plan annually.

Strategic Planning Pyramid

Strategic Planning Phase 1: Determine Your Strategic Position

Want more? Dive into the “ Evaluate Your Strategic Position ” How-To Guide.

Action Grid

Step 1: identify strategic issues.

Strategic issues are critical unknowns driving you to embark on a robust strategic planning process. These issues can be problems, opportunities, market shifts, or anything else that keeps you awake at night and begging for a solution or decision. The best strategic plans address your strategic issues head-on.

  • How will we grow, stabilize, or retrench in order to sustain our organization into the future?
  • How will we diversify our revenue to reduce our dependence on a major customer?
  • What must we do to improve our cost structure and stay competitive?
  • How and where must we innovate our products and services?

Step 2: Conduct an Environmental Scan

Conducting an environmental scan will help you understand your operating environment. An environmental scan is called a PEST analysis, an acronym for Political, Economic, Social, and Technological trends. Sometimes, it is helpful to include Ecological and Legal trends as well. All of these trends play a part in determining the overall business environment.

Step 3: Conduct a Competitive Analysis

The reason to do a competitive analysis is to assess the opportunities and threats that may occur from those organizations competing for the same business you are. You need to understand what your competitors are or aren’t offering your potential customers. Here are a few other key ways a competitive analysis fits into strategic planning:

  • To help you assess whether your competitive advantage is really an advantage.
  • To understand what your competitors’ current and future strategies are so you can plan accordingly.
  • To provide information that will help you evaluate your strategic decisions against what your competitors may or may not be doing.

Learn more on how to conduct a competitive analysis here .

Step 4: Identify Opportunities and Threats

Opportunities are situations that exist but must be acted on if the business is to benefit from them.

What do you want to capitalize on?

  • What new needs of customers could you meet?
  • What are the economic trends that benefit you?
  • What are the emerging political and social opportunities?
  • What niches have your competitors missed?

Threats refer to external conditions or barriers preventing a company from reaching its objectives.

What do you need to mitigate? What external driving force do you need to anticipate?

Questions to Answer:

  • What are the negative economic trends?
  • What are the negative political and social trends?
  • Where are competitors about to bite you?
  • Where are you vulnerable?

Step 5: Identify Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths refer to what your company does well.

What do you want to build on?

  • What do you do well (in sales, marketing, operations, management)?
  • What are your core competencies?
  • What differentiates you from your competitors?
  • Why do your customers buy from you?

Weaknesses refer to any limitations a company faces in developing or implementing a strategy.

What do you need to shore up?

  • Where do you lack resources?
  • What can you do better?
  • Where are you losing money?
  • In what areas do your competitors have an edge?

Step 6: Customer Segments

What

Customer segmentation defines the different groups of people or organizations a company aims to reach or serve.

  • What needs or wants define your ideal customer?
  • What characteristics describe your typical customer?
  • Can you sort your customers into different profiles using their needs, wants and characteristics?
  • Can you reach this segment through clear communication channels?

Step 7: Develop Your SWOT

What

A SWOT analysis is a quick way of examining your organization by looking at the internal strengths and weaknesses in relation to the external opportunities and threats. Creating a SWOT analysis lets you see all the important factors affecting your organization together in one place.

It’s easy to read, easy to communicate, and easy to create. Take the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats you developed earlier, review, prioritize, and combine like terms. The SWOT analysis helps you ask and answer the following questions: “How do you….”

  • Build on your strengths
  • Shore up your weaknesses
  • Capitalize on your opportunities
  • Manage your threats

What

Strategic Planning Process Phase 2: Developing Strategy

Want More? Deep Dive Into the “Developing Your Strategy” How-To Guide.

Step 1: Develop Your Mission Statement

The mission statement describes an organization’s purpose or reason for existing.

What is our purpose? Why do we exist? What do we do?

  • What are your organization’s goals? What does your organization intend to accomplish?
  • Why do you work here? Why is it special to work here?
  • What would happen if we were not here?

Outcome: A short, concise, concrete statement that clearly defines the scope of the organization.

Step 2: discover your values.

Your values statement clarifies what your organization stands for, believes in and the behaviors you expect to see as a result. Check our the post on great what are core values and examples of core values .

How will we behave?

  • What are the key non-negotiables that are critical to the company’s success?
  • What guiding principles are core to how we operate in this organization?
  • What behaviors do you expect to see?
  • If the circumstances changed and penalized us for holding this core value, would we still keep it?

Outcome: Short list of 5-7 core values.

Step 3: casting your vision statement.

What

A Vision Statement defines your desired future state and directs where we are going as an organization.

Where are we going?

  • What will our organization look like 5–10 years from now?
  • What does success look like?
  • What are we aspiring to achieve?
  • What mountain are you climbing and why?

Outcome: A picture of the future.

Step 4: identify your competitive advantages.

How to Identify Competitive Advantages

A competitive advantage is a characteristic of an organization that allows it to meet its customer’s need(s) better than its competition can. It’s important to consider your competitive advantages when creating your competitive strategy.

What are we best at?

  • What are your unique strengths?
  • What are you best at in your market?
  • Do your customers still value what is being delivered? Ask them.
  • How do your value propositions stack up in the marketplace?

Outcome: A list of 2 or 3 items that honestly express the organization’s foundation for winning.

Step 5: crafting your organization-wide strategies.

What

Your competitive strategy is the general methods you intend to use to reach your vision. Regardless of the level, a strategy answers the question “how.”

How will we succeed?

  • Broad: market scope; a relatively wide market emphasis.
  • Narrow: limited to only one or few segments in the market
  • Does your competitive position focus on lowest total cost or product/service differentiation or both?

Outcome: Establish the general, umbrella methods you intend to use to reach your vision.

What

Phase 3: Strategic Plan Development

Want More? Deep Dive Into the “Build Your Plan” How-To Guide.

Strategic Planning Process Step 1: Use Your SWOT to Set Priorities

If your team wants to take the next step in the SWOT analysis, apply the TOWS Strategic Alternatives Matrix to your strategy map to help you think about the options you could pursue. To do this, match external opportunities and threats with your internal strengths and weaknesses, as illustrated in the matrix below:

TOWS Strategic Alternatives Matrix

Evaluate the options you’ve generated, and identify the ones that give the greatest benefit, and that best achieve the mission and vision of your organization. Add these to the other strategic options that you’re considering.

Step 2: Define Long-Term Strategic Objectives

Long-Term Strategic Objectives are long-term, broad, continuous statements that holistically address all areas of your organization. What must we focus on to achieve our vision? Check out examples of strategic objectives here. What are the “big rocks”?

Questions to ask:

  • What are our shareholders or stakeholders expectations for our financial performance or social outcomes?
  • To reach our outcomes, what value must we provide to our customers? What is our value proposition?
  • To provide value, what process must we excel at to deliver our products and services?
  • To drive our processes, what skills, capabilities and organizational structure must we have?

Outcome: Framework for your plan – no more than 6. You can use the balanced scorecard framework, OKRs, or whatever methodology works best for you. Just don’t exceed 6 long-term objectives.

Strategy Map

Step 3: Setting Organization-Wide Goals and Measures

What

Once you have formulated your strategic objectives, you should translate them into goals and measures that can be communicated to your strategic planning team (team of business leaders and/or team members).

You want to set goals that convert the strategic objectives into specific performance targets. Effective strategic goals clearly state what, when, how, and who, and they are specifically measurable. They should address what you must do in the short term (think 1-3 years) to achieve your strategic objectives.

Organization-wide goals are annual statements that are SMART – specific, measurable, attainable, responsible, and time-bound. These are outcome statements expressing a result to achieve the desired outcomes expected in the organization.

What is most important right now to reach our long-term objectives?

Outcome: clear outcomes for the current year..

Strategic Planning Outcomes Table

Step 4: Select KPIs

What

Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are the key measures that will have the most impact in moving your organization forward. We recommend you guide your organization with measures that matter. See examples of KPIs here.

How will we measure our success?

Outcome: 5-7 measures that help you keep the pulse on your performance. When selecting your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), ask, “What are the key performance measures we need to track to monitor if we are achieving our goals?” These KPIs include the key goals you want to measure that will have the most impact on moving your organization forward.

Step 5: Cascade Your Strategies to Operations

NPS Step #5

To move from big ideas to action, creating action items and to-dos for short-term goals is crucial. This involves translating strategy from the organizational level to individuals. Functional area managers and contributors play a role in developing short-term goals to support the organization.

Before taking action, decide whether to create plans directly derived from the strategic plan or sync existing operational, business, or account plans with organizational goals. Avoid the pitfall of managing multiple sets of goals and actions, as this shifts from strategic planning to annual planning.

Questions to Ask

  • How are we going to get there at a functional level?
  • Who must do what by when to accomplish and drive the organizational goals?
  • What strategic questions still remain and need to be solved?

Department/functional goals, actions, measures and targets for the next 12-24 months

Step 6: Cascading Goals to Departments and Team Members

Now in your Departments / Teams, you need to create goals to support the organization-wide goals. These goals should still be SMART and are generally (short-term) something to be done in the next 12-18 months. Finally, you should develop an action plan for each goal.

Keep the acronym SMART in mind again when setting action items, and make sure they include start and end dates and have someone assigned their responsibility. Since these action items support your previously established goals, it may be helpful to consider action items your immediate plans on the way to achieving your (short-term) goals. In other words, identify all the actions that need to occur in the next 90 days and continue this same process every 90 days until the goal is achieved.

Examples of Cascading Goals:

What

Phase 4: Executing Strategy and Managing Performance

Want more? Dive Into the “Managing Performance” How-To Guide.

Step 1: Strategic Plan Implementation Schedule

Implementation is the process that turns strategies and plans into actions in order to accomplish strategic objectives and goals.

How will we use the plan as a management tool?

  • Communication Schedule: How and when will you roll-out your plan to your staff? How frequently will you send out updates?
  • Process Leader: Who is your strategy director?
  • Structure: What are the dates for your strategy reviews (we recommend at least quarterly)?
  • System & Reports: What are you expecting each staff member to come prepared with to those strategy review sessions?

Outcome: Syncing your plan into the “rhythm of your business.”

Once your resources are in place, you can set your implementation schedule. Use the following steps as your base implementation plan:

  • Establish your performance management and reward system.
  • Set up monthly and quarterly strategy meetings with established reporting procedures.
  • Set up annual strategic review dates including new assessments and a large group meeting for an annual plan review.

Now you’re ready to start plan roll-out. Below are sample implementation schedules, which double for a full strategic management process timeline.

Strategic Planning Calendar

Step 2: Tracking Goals & Actions

Monthly strategy meetings don’t need to take a lot of time – 30 to 60 minutes should suffice. But it is important that key team members report on their progress toward the goals they are responsible for – including reporting on metrics in the scorecard they have been assigned.

By using the measurements already established, it’s easy to make course corrections if necessary. You should also commit to reviewing your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) during these regular meetings. Need help comparing strategic planning software ? Check out our guide.

Effective Strategic Planning: Your Bi-Annual Checklist

What

Never lose sight of the fact that strategic plans are guidelines, not rules. Every six months or so, you should evaluate your strategy execution and strategic plan implementation by asking these key questions:

  • Will your goals be achieved within the time frame of the plan? If not, why?
  • Should the deadlines be modified? (Before you modify deadlines, figure out why you’re behind schedule.)
  • Are your goals and action items still realistic?
  • Should the organization’s focus be changed to put more emphasis on achieving your goals?
  • Should your goals be changed? (Be careful about making these changes – know why efforts aren’t achieving the goals before changing the goals.)
  • What can be gathered from an adaptation to improve future planning activities?

Why Track Your Goals?

  • Ownership: Having a stake and responsibility in the plan makes you feel part of it and leads you to drive your goals forward.
  • Culture: Successful plans tie tracking and updating goals into organizational culture.
  • Implementation: If you don’t review and update your strategic goals, they are just good intentions
  • Accountability: Accountability and high visibility help drive change. This means that each measure, objective, data source and initiative must have an owner.
  • Empowerment: Changing goals from In Progress to Complete just feels good!

Step 3: Review & Adapt

Guidelines for your strategy review.

The most important part of this meeting is a 70/30 review. 30% is about reviewing performance, and 70% should be spent on making decisions to move the company’s strategy forward in the next quarter.

The best strategic planners spend about 60-90 minutes in the sessions. Holding meetings helps focus your goals on accomplishing top priorities and accelerating the organization’s growth. Although the meeting structure is relatively simple, it does require a high degree of discipline.

Strategy Review Session Questions:

Strategic planning frequently asked questions, read our frequently asked questions about strategic planning to learn how to build a great strategic plan..

Strategic planning is when organizations define a bold vision and create a plan with objectives and goals to reach that future. A great strategic plan defines where your organization is going, how you’ll win, who must do what, and how you’ll review and adapt your strategy..

Your strategic plan needs to include an assessment of your current state, a SWOT analysis, mission, vision, values, competitive advantages, growth strategy, growth enablers, a 3-year roadmap, and annual plan with strategic goals, OKRs, and KPIs.

A strategic planning process should take no longer than 90 days to complete from start to finish! Any longer could fatigue your organization and team.

There are four overarching phases to the strategic planning process that include: determining position, developing your strategy, building your plan, and managing performance. Each phase plays a unique but distinctly crucial role in the strategic planning process.

Prior to starting your strategic plan, you must go through this pre-planning process to determine your organization’s readiness by following these steps:

Ask yourself these questions: Are the conditions and criteria for successful planning in place now? Can we foresee any pitfalls that we can avoid? Is there an appropriate time for our organization to initiate this process?

Develop your team and schedule. Who will oversee the implementation as Chief Strategy Officer or Director? Do we have at least 12-15 other key individuals on our team?

Research and Collect Current Data. Find the following resources that your organization may have used in the past to assist you with your new plan: last strategic plan, mission, vision, and values statement, business plan, financial records, marketing plan, SWOT, sales figures, or projections.

Finally, review the data with your strategy director and facilitator and ask these questions: What trends do we see? Any obvious strengths or weaknesses? Have we been following a plan or just going along with the market?

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strategic planning assessment questions

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  • What is strategic planning? A 5-step gu ...

What is strategic planning? A 5-step guide

Julia Martins contributor headshot

Strategic planning is a process through which business leaders map out their vision for their organization’s growth and how they’re going to get there. In this article, we'll guide you through the strategic planning process, including why it's important, the benefits and best practices, and five steps to get you from beginning to end.

Strategic planning is a process through which business leaders map out their vision for their organization’s growth and how they’re going to get there. The strategic planning process informs your organization’s decisions, growth, and goals.

Strategic planning helps you clearly define your company’s long-term objectives—and maps how your short-term goals and work will help you achieve them. This, in turn, gives you a clear sense of where your organization is going and allows you to ensure your teams are working on projects that make the most impact. Think of it this way—if your goals and objectives are your destination on a map, your strategic plan is your navigation system.

In this article, we walk you through the 5-step strategic planning process and show you how to get started developing your own strategic plan.

How to build an organizational strategy

Get our free ebook and learn how to bridge the gap between mission, strategic goals, and work at your organization.

What is strategic planning?

Strategic planning is a business process that helps you define and share the direction your company will take in the next three to five years. During the strategic planning process, stakeholders review and define the organization’s mission and goals, conduct competitive assessments, and identify company goals and objectives. The product of the planning cycle is a strategic plan, which is shared throughout the company.

What is a strategic plan?

[inline illustration] Strategic plan elements (infographic)

A strategic plan is the end result of the strategic planning process. At its most basic, it’s a tool used to define your organization’s goals and what actions you’ll take to achieve them.

Typically, your strategic plan should include: 

Your company’s mission statement

Your organizational goals, including your long-term goals and short-term, yearly objectives

Any plan of action, tactics, or approaches you plan to take to meet those goals

What are the benefits of strategic planning?

Strategic planning can help with goal setting and decision-making by allowing you to map out how your company will move toward your organization’s vision and mission statements in the next three to five years. Let’s circle back to our map metaphor. If you think of your company trajectory as a line on a map, a strategic plan can help you better quantify how you’ll get from point A (where you are now) to point B (where you want to be in a few years).

When you create and share a clear strategic plan with your team, you can:

Build a strong organizational culture by clearly defining and aligning on your organization’s mission, vision, and goals.

Align everyone around a shared purpose and ensure all departments and teams are working toward a common objective.

Proactively set objectives to help you get where you want to go and achieve desired outcomes.

Promote a long-term vision for your company rather than focusing primarily on short-term gains.

Ensure resources are allocated around the most high-impact priorities.

Define long-term goals and set shorter-term goals to support them.

Assess your current situation and identify any opportunities—or threats—allowing your organization to mitigate potential risks.

Create a proactive business culture that enables your organization to respond more swiftly to emerging market changes and opportunities.

What are the 5 steps in strategic planning?

The strategic planning process involves a structured methodology that guides the organization from vision to implementation. The strategic planning process starts with assembling a small, dedicated team of key strategic planners—typically five to 10 members—who will form the strategic planning, or management, committee. This team is responsible for gathering crucial information, guiding the development of the plan, and overseeing strategy execution.

Once you’ve established your management committee, you can get to work on the planning process. 

Step 1: Assess your current business strategy and business environment

Before you can define where you’re going, you first need to define where you are. Understanding the external environment, including market trends and competitive landscape, is crucial in the initial assessment phase of strategic planning.

To do this, your management committee should collect a variety of information from additional stakeholders, like employees and customers. In particular, plan to gather:

Relevant industry and market data to inform any market opportunities, as well as any potential upcoming threats in the near future.

Customer insights to understand what your customers want from your company—like product improvements or additional services.

Employee feedback that needs to be addressed—whether about the product, business practices, or the day-to-day company culture.

Consider different types of strategic planning tools and analytical techniques to gather this information, such as:

A balanced scorecard to help you evaluate four major elements of a business: learning and growth, business processes, customer satisfaction, and financial performance.

A SWOT analysis to help you assess both current and future potential for the business (you’ll return to this analysis periodically during the strategic planning process). 

To fill out each letter in the SWOT acronym, your management committee will answer a series of questions:

What does your organization currently do well?

What separates you from your competitors?

What are your most valuable internal resources?

What tangible assets do you have?

What is your biggest strength? 

Weaknesses:

What does your organization do poorly?

What do you currently lack (whether that’s a product, resource, or process)?

What do your competitors do better than you?

What, if any, limitations are holding your organization back?

What processes or products need improvement? 

Opportunities:

What opportunities does your organization have?

How can you leverage your unique company strengths?

Are there any trends that you can take advantage of?

How can you capitalize on marketing or press opportunities?

Is there an emerging need for your product or service? 

What emerging competitors should you keep an eye on?

Are there any weaknesses that expose your organization to risk?

Have you or could you experience negative press that could reduce market share?

Is there a chance of changing customer attitudes towards your company? 

Step 2: Identify your company’s goals and objectives

To begin strategy development, take into account your current position, which is where you are now. Then, draw inspiration from your vision, mission, and current position to identify and define your goals—these are your final destination. 

To develop your strategy, you’re essentially pulling out your compass and asking, “Where are we going next?” “What’s the ideal future state of this company?” This can help you figure out which path you need to take to get there.

During this phase of the planning process, take inspiration from important company documents, such as:

Your mission statement, to understand how you can continue moving towards your organization’s core purpose.

Your vision statement, to clarify how your strategic plan fits into your long-term vision.

Your company values, to guide you towards what matters most towards your company.

Your competitive advantages, to understand what unique benefit you offer to the market.

Your long-term goals, to track where you want to be in five or 10 years.

Your financial forecast and projection, to understand where you expect your financials to be in the next three years, what your expected cash flow is, and what new opportunities you will likely be able to invest in.

Step 3: Develop your strategic plan and determine performance metrics

Now that you understand where you are and where you want to go, it’s time to put pen to paper. Take your current business position and strategy into account, as well as your organization’s goals and objectives, and build out a strategic plan for the next three to five years. Keep in mind that even though you’re creating a long-term plan, parts of your plan should be created or revisited as the quarters and years go on.

As you build your strategic plan, you should define:

Company priorities for the next three to five years, based on your SWOT analysis and strategy.

Yearly objectives for the first year. You don’t need to define your objectives for every year of the strategic plan. As the years go on, create new yearly objectives that connect back to your overall strategic goals . 

Related key results and KPIs. Some of these should be set by the management committee, and some should be set by specific teams that are closer to the work. Make sure your key results and KPIs are measurable and actionable. These KPIs will help you track progress and ensure you’re moving in the right direction.

Budget for the next year or few years. This should be based on your financial forecast as well as your direction. Do you need to spend aggressively to develop your product? Build your team? Make a dent with marketing? Clarify your most important initiatives and how you’ll budget for those.

A high-level project roadmap . A project roadmap is a tool in project management that helps you visualize the timeline of a complex initiative, but you can also create a very high-level project roadmap for your strategic plan. Outline what you expect to be working on in certain quarters or years to make the plan more actionable and understandable.

Step 4: Implement and share your plan

Now it’s time to put your plan into action. Strategy implementation involves clear communication across your entire organization to make sure everyone knows their responsibilities and how to measure the plan’s success. 

Make sure your team (especially senior leadership) has access to the strategic plan, so they can understand how their work contributes to company priorities and the overall strategy map. We recommend sharing your plan in the same tool you use to manage and track work, so you can more easily connect high-level objectives to daily work. If you don’t already, consider using a work management platform .  

A few tips to make sure your plan will be executed without a hitch: 

Communicate clearly to your entire organization throughout the implementation process, to ensure all team members understand the strategic plan and how to implement it effectively. 

Define what “success” looks like by mapping your strategic plan to key performance indicators.

Ensure that the actions outlined in the strategic plan are integrated into the daily operations of the organization, so that every team member's daily activities are aligned with the broader strategic objectives.

Utilize tools and software—like a work management platform—that can aid in implementing and tracking the progress of your plan.

Regularly monitor and share the progress of the strategic plan with the entire organization, to keep everyone informed and reinforce the importance of the plan.

Establish regular check-ins to monitor the progress of your strategic plan and make adjustments as needed. 

Step 5: Revise and restructure as needed

Once you’ve created and implemented your new strategic framework, the final step of the planning process is to monitor and manage your plan.

Remember, your strategic plan isn’t set in stone. You’ll need to revisit and update the plan if your company changes directions or makes new investments. As new market opportunities and threats come up, you’ll likely want to tweak your strategic plan. Make sure to review your plan regularly—meaning quarterly and annually—to ensure it’s still aligned with your organization’s vision and goals.

Keep in mind that your plan won’t last forever, even if you do update it frequently. A successful strategic plan evolves with your company’s long-term goals. When you’ve achieved most of your strategic goals, or if your strategy has evolved significantly since you first made your plan, it might be time to create a new one.

Build a smarter strategic plan with a work management platform

To turn your company strategy into a plan—and ultimately, impact—make sure you’re proactively connecting company objectives to daily work. When you can clarify this connection, you’re giving your team members the context they need to get their best work done. 

A work management platform plays a pivotal role in this process. It acts as a central hub for your strategic plan, ensuring that every task and project is directly tied to your broader company goals. This alignment is crucial for visibility and coordination, allowing team members to see how their individual efforts contribute to the company’s success. 

By leveraging such a platform, you not only streamline workflow and enhance team productivity but also align every action with your strategic objectives—allowing teams to drive greater impact and helping your company move toward goals more effectively. 

Strategic planning FAQs

Still have questions about strategic planning? We have answers.

Why do I need a strategic plan?

A strategic plan is one of many tools you can use to plan and hit your goals. It helps map out strategic objectives and growth metrics that will help your company be successful.

When should I create a strategic plan?

You should aim to create a strategic plan every three to five years, depending on your organization’s growth speed.

Since the point of a strategic plan is to map out your long-term goals and how you’ll get there, you should create a strategic plan when you’ve met most or all of them. You should also create a strategic plan any time you’re going to make a large pivot in your organization’s mission or enter new markets. 

What is a strategic planning template?

A strategic planning template is a tool organizations can use to map out their strategic plan and track progress. Typically, a strategic planning template houses all the components needed to build out a strategic plan, including your company’s vision and mission statements, information from any competitive analyses or SWOT assessments, and relevant KPIs.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. business plan?

A business plan can help you document your strategy as you’re getting started so every team member is on the same page about your core business priorities and goals. This tool can help you document and share your strategy with key investors or stakeholders as you get your business up and running.

You should create a business plan when you’re: 

Just starting your business

Significantly restructuring your business

If your business is already established, you should create a strategic plan instead of a business plan. Even if you’re working at a relatively young company, your strategic plan can build on your business plan to help you move in the right direction. During the strategic planning process, you’ll draw from a lot of the fundamental business elements you built early on to establish your strategy for the next three to five years.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. mission and vision statements?

Your strategic plan, mission statement, and vision statements are all closely connected. In fact, during the strategic planning process, you will take inspiration from your mission and vision statements in order to build out your strategic plan.

Simply put: 

A mission statement summarizes your company’s purpose.

A vision statement broadly explains how you’ll reach your company’s purpose.

A strategic plan pulls in inspiration from your mission and vision statements and outlines what actions you’re going to take to move in the right direction. 

For example, if your company produces pet safety equipment, here’s how your mission statement, vision statement, and strategic plan might shake out:

Mission statement: “To ensure the safety of the world’s animals.” 

Vision statement: “To create pet safety and tracking products that are effortless to use.” 

Your strategic plan would outline the steps you’re going to take in the next few years to bring your company closer to your mission and vision. For example, you develop a new pet tracking smart collar or improve the microchipping experience for pet owners. 

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. company objectives?

Company objectives are broad goals. You should set these on a yearly or quarterly basis (if your organization moves quickly). These objectives give your team a clear sense of what you intend to accomplish for a set period of time. 

Your strategic plan is more forward-thinking than your company goals, and it should cover more than one year of work. Think of it this way: your company objectives will move the needle towards your overall strategy—but your strategic plan should be bigger than company objectives because it spans multiple years.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. a business case?

A business case is a document to help you pitch a significant investment or initiative for your company. When you create a business case, you’re outlining why this investment is a good idea, and how this large-scale project will positively impact the business. 

You might end up building business cases for things on your strategic plan’s roadmap—but your strategic plan should be bigger than that. This tool should encompass multiple years of your roadmap, across your entire company—not just one initiative.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. a project plan?

A strategic plan is a company-wide, multi-year plan of what you want to accomplish in the next three to five years and how you plan to accomplish that. A project plan, on the other hand, outlines how you’re going to accomplish a specific project. This project could be one of many initiatives that contribute to a specific company objective which, in turn, is one of many objectives that contribute to your strategic plan. 

What’s the difference between strategic management vs. strategic planning?

A strategic plan is a tool to define where your organization wants to go and what actions you need to take to achieve those goals. Strategic planning is the process of creating a plan in order to hit your strategic objectives.

Strategic management includes the strategic planning process, but also goes beyond it. In addition to planning how you will achieve your big-picture goals, strategic management also helps you organize your resources and figure out the best action plans for success. 

How to improve strategic planning

In conference rooms everywhere, corporate planners are in the midst of the annual strategic-planning process. For the better part of a year, they collect financial and operational data, make forecasts, and prepare lengthy presentations with the CEO and other senior managers about the future direction of the business. But at the end of this expensive and time-consuming process, many participants say they are frustrated by its lack of impact on either their own actions or the strategic direction of the company.

This sense of disappointment was captured in a recent McKinsey Quarterly survey of nearly 800 executives: just 45 percent of the respondents said they were satisfied with the strategic-planning process. 1 1. “ Improving strategic planning: A McKinsey Survey ,” The McKinsey Quarterly , Web exclusive, September 2006. The survey, conducted in late July and early August 2006, received 796 responses from a panel of executives from around the world. All panelists have mostly financial or strategic responsibilities and work in a wide range of industries for organizations with revenues of at least $500 million. Moreover, only 23 percent indicated that major strategic decisions were made within its confines. Given these results, managers might well be tempted to jettison the planning process altogether.

But for those working in the overwhelming majority of corporations, the annual planning process plays an essential role. In addition to formulating at least some elements of a company’s strategy, the process results in a budget, which establishes the resource allocation map for the coming 12 to 18 months; sets financial and operating targets, often used to determine compensation metrics and to provide guidance for financial markets; and aligns the management team on its strategic priorities. The operative question for chief executives is how to make the planning process more effective—not whether it is the sole mechanism used to design strategy. CEOs know that strategy is often formulated through ad hoc meetings or brand reviews, or as a result of decisions about mergers and acquisitions.

Our research shows that formal strategic-planning processes play an important role in improving overall satisfaction with strategy development. That role can be seen in the responses of the 79 percent of managers who claimed that the formal planning process played a significant role in developing strategies and were satisfied with the approach of their companies, compared with only 21 percent of the respondents who felt that the process did not play a significant role. Looked at another way, 51 percent of the respondents whose companies had no formal process were dissatisfied with their approach to the development of strategy, against only 20 percent of those at companies with a formal process.

So what can managers do to improve the process? There are many ways to conduct strategic planning, but determining the ideal method goes beyond the scope of this article. Instead we offer, from our research, five emergent ideas that executives can employ immediately to make existing processes run better. The changes we discuss here (such as a focus on important strategic issues or a connection to core-management processes) are the elements most linked with the satisfaction of employees and their perceptions of the significance of the process. These steps cannot guarantee that the right strategic decisions will be made or that strategy will be better executed, but by enhancing the planning process—and thus increasing satisfaction with the development of strategy—they will improve the odds for success.

Start with the issues

Ask CEOs what they think strategic planning should involve and they will talk about anticipating big challenges and spotting important trends. At many companies, however, this noble purpose has taken a backseat to rigid, data-driven processes dominated by the production of budgets and financial forecasts. If the calendar-based process is to play a more valuable role in a company’s overall strategy efforts, it must complement budgeting with a focus on strategic issues. In our experience, the first liberating change managers can make to improve the quality of the planning process is to begin it by deliberately and thoughtfully identifying and discussing the strategic issues that will have the greatest impact on future business performance.

Granted, an approach based on issues will not necessarily yield better strategic results. The music business, for instance, has discussed the threat posed by digital-file sharing for years without finding an effective way of dealing with the problem. But as a first step, identifying the key issues will ensure that management does not waste time and energy on less important topics.

We found a variety of practical ways in which companies can impose a fresh strategic perspective. For instance, the CEO of one large health care company asks the leaders of each business unit to imagine how a set of specific economic, social, and business trends will affect their businesses, as well as ways to capture the opportunities—or counter the threats—that these trends pose. Only after such an analysis and discussion do the leaders settle into the more typical planning exercises of financial forecasting and identifying strategic initiatives.

One consumer goods organization takes a more directed approach. The CEO, supported by the corporate-strategy function, compiles a list of three to six priorities for the coming year. Distributed to the managers responsible for functions, geographies, and brands, the list then becomes the basis for an offsite strategy-alignment meeting, where managers debate the implications of the priorities for their particular organizations. The corporate-strategy function summarizes the results, adds appropriate corporate targets, and shares them with the organization in the form of a strategy memo, which serves as the basis for more detailed strategic planning at the division and business-unit levels.

A packaged-goods company offers an even more tailored example. Every December the corporate senior-management team produces a list of ten strategic questions tailored to each of the three business units. The leaders of these businesses have six months to explore and debate the questions internally and to come up with answers. In June each unit convenes with the senior-management team in a one-day meeting to discuss proposed actions and reach decisions.

Some companies prefer to use a bottom-up rather than top-down process. We recently worked with a sales company to design a strategic-planning process that begins with in-depth interviews (involving all of the senior managers and selected corporate and business executives) to generate a list of the most important strategic issues facing the company. The senior-management team prioritizes the list and assigns managers to explore each issue and report back in four to six weeks. Such an approach can be especially valuable in companies where internal consensus building is an imperative.

Bring together the right people

An issues-based approach won’t do much good unless the most relevant people are involved in the debate. We found that survey respondents who were satisfied with the strategic-planning process rated it highly on dimensions such as including the most knowledgeable and influential participants, stimulating and challenging the participants’ thinking, and having honest, open discussions about difficult issues. In contrast, 27 percent of the dissatisfied respondents reported that their company’s strategic planning had not a single one of these virtues. Such results suggest that too many companies focus on the data-gathering and packaging elements of strategic planning and neglect the crucial interactive components.

Strategic conversations will have little impact if they involve only strategic planners from both the business unit and the corporate levels. One of our core beliefs is that those who carry out strategy should also develop it. The key strategy conversation should take place among corporate decision makers, business unit leaders, and people with expertise essential to the discussion. In addition to leading the corporate review, the CEO, aided by members of the executive team, should as a rule lead the strategy review for business units as well. The head of a business unit, supported by four to six people, should direct the discussion from its side of the table (see sidebar, "Things to ask in any business unit review").

Things to ask in any business unit review

Are major trends and changes in your business unit’s environment affecting your strategic plan? Specifically, what potential developments in customer demand, technology, or the regulatory environment could have enough impact on the industry to change the entire plan?

How and why is this plan different from last year’s?

What were your forecasts for market growth, sales, and profitability last year, two years ago, and three years ago? How right or wrong were they? What did the business unit learn from those experiences?

What would it take to double your business unit’s growth rate and profits? Where will growth come from: expansion or gains in market share?

If your business unit plans to take market share from competitors, how will it do so, and how will they respond? Are you counting on a strategic advantage or superior execution?

What are your business unit’s distinctive competitive strengths, and how does the plan build on them?

How different is the strategy from those of competitors, and why? Is that a good or a bad thing?

Beyond the immediate planning cycle, what are the key issues, risks, and opportunities that we should discuss today?

What would a private-equity owner do with this business?

How will the business unit monitor the execution of this strategy?

One pharmaceutical company invites business unit leaders to take part in the strategy reviews of their peers in other units. This approach can help build a better understanding of the entire company and, especially, of the issues that span business units. The risk is that such interactions might constrain the honesty and vigor of the dialogue and put executives at the focus of the discussion on the defensive.

Corporate senior-management teams can dedicate only a few hours or at most a few days to a business unit under review. So team members should spend this time in challenging yet collaborative discussions with business unit leaders rather than trying to absorb many facts during the review itself. To provide some context for the discussion, best-practice companies disseminate important operational and financial information to the corporate review team well in advance of such sessions. This reading material should also tee up the most important issues facing the business and outline the proposed strategy, ensuring that the review team is prepared with well-thought-out questions. In our experience, the right 10 pages provide ample fuel to fire a vigorous discussion, but more than 25 pages will likely douse the level of energy or engagement in the room.

Adapt planning cycles to the needs of each business

Managers are justifiably concerned about the resources and time required to implement an issues-based strategic-planning approach. One easy—yet rarely adopted—solution is to free business units from the need to conduct this rigorous process every single year. In all but the most volatile, high-velocity industries, it is hard to imagine that a major strategic redirection will be necessary every planning cycle. In fact, forcing businesses to undertake this exercise annually is distracting and may even be detrimental. Managers need to focus on executing the last plan’s major initiatives, many of which can take 18 to 36 months to implement fully.

Some companies alternate the business units that undergo the complete strategic-planning process (as opposed to abbreviated annual updates of the existing plan). One media company, for example, requires individual business units to undertake strategic planning only every two or three years. This cadence enables the corporate senior-management team and its strategy group to devote more energy to the business units that are “at bat.” More important, it frees the corporate-strategy group to work directly with the senior team on critical issues that affect the entire company—issues such as developing an integrated digitization strategy and addressing unforeseen changes in the fast-moving digital-media landscape.

Other companies use trigger mechanisms to decide which business units will undergo a full strategic-planning exercise in a given year. One industrial company assigns each business unit a color-coded grade—green, yellow, or red—based on the unit’s success in executing the existing strategic plan. “Code red,” for example, would slate a business unit for a strategy review. Although many of the metrics that determine the grade are financial, some may be operational to provide a more complete assessment of the unit’s performance.

Freeing business units from participating in the strategic-planning process every year raises a caveat, however. When important changes in the external environment occur, senior managers must be able to engage with business units that are not under review and make major strategic decisions on an ad hoc basis. For instance, a major merger in any industry would prompt competitors in it to revisit their strategies. Indeed, one advantage of a tailored planning cycle is that it builds slack into the strategic-review system, enabling management to address unforeseen but pressing strategic issues as they arise.

Implement a strategic-performance-management system

In the end, many companies fail to execute the chosen strategy. More than a quarter of our survey respondents said that their companies had plans but no execution path. Forty-five percent reported that planning processes failed to track the execution of strategic initiatives. All this suggests that putting in place a system to measure and monitor their progress can greatly enhance the impact of the planning process.

Most companies believe that their existing control systems and performance-management processes (including budgets and operating reviews) are the sole way to monitor progress on strategy. As a result, managers attempt to translate the decisions made during the planning process into budget targets or other financial goals. Although this practice is sensible and necessary, it is not enough. We estimate that a significant portion of the strategic decisions we recommend to companies can’t be tracked solely through financial targets. A company undertaking a major strategic initiative to enhance its innovation and product-development capabilities, for example, should measure a variety of input metrics, such as the quality of available talent and the number of ideas and projects at each stage in development, in addition to pure output metrics such as revenues from new-product sales. One information technology company, for instance, carefully tracks the number and skill levels of people posted to important strategic projects.

Strategic-performance-management systems, which should assign accountability for initiatives and make their progress more transparent, can take many forms. One industrial corporation tracks major strategic initiatives that will have the greatest impact, across a portfolio of a dozen businesses, on its financial and strategic goals. Transparency is achieved through regular reviews and the use of financial as well as nonfinancial metrics. The corporate-strategy team assumes responsibility for reviews (chaired by the CEO and involving the relevant business-unit leaders) that use an array of milestones and metrics to assess the top ten initiatives. One to expand operations in China and India, for example, would entail regular reviews of interim metrics such as the quality and number of local employees recruited and the pace at which alliances are formed with channel partners or suppliers. Each business unit, in turn, is accountable for adopting the same performance-management approach for its own, lower-tier top-ten list of initiatives.

When designed well, strategic-performance-management systems can give an early warning of problems with strategic initiatives, whereas financial targets alone at best provide lagging indicators. An effective system enables management to step in and correct, redirect, or even abandon an initiative that is failing to perform as expected. The strategy of a pharmaceutical company that embarked on a major expansion of its sales force to drive revenue growth, for example, presupposed that rapid growth in the number of sales representatives would lead to a corresponding increase in revenues. The company also recognized, however, that expansion was in turn contingent on several factors, including the ability to recruit and train the right people. It therefore put in place a regular review of the key strategic metrics against its actual performance to alert managers to any emerging problems.

Integrate human-resources systems into the strategic plan

Simply monitoring the execution of strategic initiatives is not sufficient: their successful implementation also depends on how managers are evaluated and compensated. Yet only 36 percent of the executives we surveyed said that their companies’ strategic-planning processes were integrated with HR processes. One way to create a more valuable strategic-planning process would be to tie the evaluation and compensation of managers to the progress of new initiatives.

Although the development of strategy is ostensibly a long-term endeavor, companies traditionally emphasize short-term, purely financial targets—such as annual revenue growth or improved margins—as the sole metrics to gauge the performance of managers and employees. This approach is gradually changing. Deferred-compensation models for boards, CEOs, and some senior managers are now widely used. What’s more, several companies have added longer-term performance targets to complement the short-term ones. A major pharmaceutical company, for example, recently revamped its managerial-compensation structure to include a basket of short-term financial and operating targets as well as longer-term, innovation-based growth targets.

Although these changes help persuade managers to adopt both short- and long-term approaches to the development of strategy, they don’t address the need to link evaluation and compensation to specific strategic initiatives. One way of doing so is to craft a mix of performance targets that more appropriately reflect a company’s strategy. For example, one North American services business that launched strategic initiatives to improve its customer retention and increase sales also adjusted the evaluation and compensation targets for its managers. Rather than measuring senior managers only by revenue and margin targets, as it had done before, it tied 20 percent of their compensation to achieving its retention and cross-selling goals. By introducing metrics for these specific initiatives and linking their success closely to bonus packages, the company motivated managers to make the strategy succeed.

An advantage of this approach is that it motivates managers to flag any problems early in the implementation of a strategic initiative (which determines the size of bonuses) so that the company can solve them. Otherwise, managers all too often sweep the debris of a failing strategy under the operating rug until the spring-cleaning ritual of next year’s annual planning process.

Some business leaders have found ways to give strategic planning a more valuable role in the formulation as well as the execution of strategy. Companies that emulate their methods might find satisfaction instead of frustration at the end of the annual process.

Renée Dye is a consultant in McKinsey’s Atlanta office, and Olivier Sibony is a director in the Paris office.

This article was first published in the Autumn 2007 issue of McKinsey on Finance . Visit McKinsey’s corporate finance site to view the full issue.

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  40 Strategic Questions to Ask

Asking intelligent questions of employees or customers and analyzing their responses is critical for executives who are responsible for making decisions and setting corporate strategy. Ask the wrong questions of the wrong people, and you will not receive the necessary organizational intelligence needed to drive optimal outcomes. Worse yet, you might waste valuable time and resources in the process. Instead, find the right strategic questions to ask.

At 9Lenses, we are experts at helping leaders ask the right strategic questions and analyze the feedback to: determine the success of existing strategies, identify gaps in the strategy, and establish optimal strategic actions going forward. Consultants, Fortune 500 companies and SMBs alike have used our digital client engagement platform to automate this questioning process, asking thousands of questions to tens of thousands of stakeholders.

Below are 40 strategic questions to ask your employees or yourself from   our platform  that you can use that evaluate strategy comprehensively. These questions cover such areas as: General Strategy, Competition, Product, Pricing, Customers, Sales, etc. – just a small sample of the areas that our platform is capable of pulsing.

Strategic Questions to Ask

Assessing your current strategy.

1. Does your organization’s corporate responsibility strategy match the availability of your current resources?

This question addresses your strategy in terms of the funding, time, people, and information necessary to make the strategy work, determining its feasibility.

2. How often does your organization assess its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in order to understand the current business climate?

Measuring these aspects of the strategy will help to analyze the company’s current approach to strategic evaluation and reveal if it is necessary to analyze it more often.

3. How effectively does your organization form and make profitable use of partnerships?

Partnerships can be helpful assets to your company, but they must actively be sought out and well-utilized.

4. If you were in charge of strategic planning for your organization, what changes would you make?

Asking your employees for their own ideas can not only provide interesting suggestions for future initiatives, but also can reveal any discontent with current strategy. With the high importance of strategic planning, it is crucial to ensure your company is creating analytical, actionable plans.

5. How efficient is your organization from an operational standpoint?

Determining operational efficiency can assist in revealing the reasons behind the success (or lack thereof) of your current strategy. By discovering the operational inefficiencies inhibiting success, your company can identify key process improvements.

6. How well does your organization utilize its people as an asset to help it improve, stay competitive, and strategically meet goals? Are people used efficiently or is talent wasted due to lack of effective strategy?

A major problem in many companies is a lack of utilization of existing resources, including the use of people and their particular strengths. Employing an effective strategy can better reveal the particular assets of your employees that can then be engaged to better the company overall.

Assessing your Competition

7. How often does your organization analyze the competition in order to understand competitive advantages and disadvantages as well as identify areas for investment or needs for improvement?

Regular assessment of the competitive landscape is a crucial determinant of corporate strategy, and fine-tuning the frequency of this evaluation will help to reveal how your company’s doing in terms of competitor analysis.

8. How well does your organization strategically differentiate from the competition in terms of the capabilities of its product? How clear is your organization’s strategy for this?

This question helps to analyze and assess competition in a clear, specific way that will yield insight into the differentiation strategy.

Assessing the Future

9. How clear is your vision for what corporate responsibility should be like in your organization in the future? Is the direction that the organization wants to go in clear and understandable?

Clarity is an important part of strategic success, and this question can help determine the intelligibility of your strategy from the perspective of your employees.

10. Is our long-term view reflected in our short-term priorities? Are we pouring effort into initiatives today that have connections with where we expect ourselves and the market to be in the future?

Strategy without long-term perspective is useless, and clear, direct thinking about the future can help ensure the durability of your strategy.

11. Is your organization pursuing growth and new business/market development with as much passion as it does operational efficiency?

This question still addresses the importance of planning for the future, but also focuses on the sense of urgency for growth. Finding the balance between day-to-day operations and new developments is critical for your company’s future success.

12. How effective is your organization’s strategic vision?

A strategic vision involves a clear view of the desired future position of an organization within a market, giving your company a goal to plan around that, when implemented correctly, will produce results.

13. When developing and implementing strategy, does your organization effectively balance short and long-term priorities?

This question further addresses the balance between concentrating on daily operations and on future growth that must exist in your company.

14. How efficient and organized is your organization’s plan for how to improve and evolve the strategic objectives over time?

Just having a set plan for the future is not enough; it must be structured, logical, and well-communicated in order to help direct your company.

15. How do the potential negative consequences that could occur with the implementation of a new strategy compare to the potential positive outcomes?

If the results of these questions suggest that a new strategy is necessary, your company must ensure that this new plan will not cost your company more than it will benefit it. This return analysis helps to evaluate if the pros of new strategic implementations can outweigh the cons.

Distribution

Assessing your connections.

16. How many established outlets does your organization have through the Internet (social media, websites, etc.)?

By assessing the Internet outlets of your company, you can discover insight into how well your business is utilizing available online resources.

17. How many established connections to other businesses does your organization have?

Connections with other businesses can be used to create new partnerships and go-to-market opportunities, and therefore determining how many connections already exist for your company can help assess current strategy.

18. How many established connections does your organization have with consistent and dependable customers?

Customer advocates can be a lucrative avenue for your company to sell products and thus generate revenue, so determining the extent to which your company capitalizes on these relationships can help assess the effectiveness of your distribution strategy as a whole.

Assessing your Outlets Overall

19. How effective is your organization’s delivery model?

Your company’s delivery model is the method for getting your offering to your customer, and a successful model is a key aspect of your go-to-market strategy.

20. How much potential benefit for the organization does the distribution strategy have?

It is crucial to determine the positive outcomes that the current distribution strategy permits in order to analyze if your company is effectively utilizing its delivery outlets.

21. Considering all possible outcomes, how much risk does the distribution strategy have?

On the other hand, it is important to determine the risk in this strategy. Answering these questions separately then comparing the results can help to fully analyze both sides of the issue.

Product Offering

Assessing your market.

22. To what degree are your offerings clearly differentiated in their market?

This question is important to ask in order to analyze how your company is distinguishing its products from that of competitors and thus working to permeate the market as much as possible. This type of question is important to ask when assessing your competition (see also #8), as well as when analyzing your product itself.

23. How much ease and expense is required for your customer to switch to a competitor’s offering?

It is important to understand product stickiness and customer switching costs to determine how your customer values your product.

24. How often does your organization analyze the competition in order to understand competitive advantages and disadvantages as well as identify areas for investment or needs for improvement?

This question can reveal whether or not your company is evaluating your competition often and in a thorough manner.

25. Based on your knowledge of current efforts to promote your services, what are the major internal barriers to selling your services to clients?

By determining impediments to selling services, your company can find ways to avoid these hindrances and strategise better as a whole.

26. How well does your organization maximize existing resources in order to deliver the product offering?

This question evaluates the method for getting your offering to your customer in order to reveal certain resources that your company could be better utilizing.

27. How aligned are your organization’s offerings to meet market demand?

Not only do you want to be producing the offerings that leverage your organization’s resources, but you also want to be delivering the right products for your target market.

Assessing the Value to your Customers

28. Does your product offering encourage innovation for the customer through versatility, usability, and efficiency?

The more innovative your company’s offerings are, the more valuable they can be to your customers, for innovation is key in any product.

29. How well do the organization’s products solve the customers’ problems and meet their expectations?

Evaluate how your product meets the expectations of your customers in order to ensure the value in your offerings.

30. How frequently does your organization deliver new value-adding ideas to your customers to keep them engaged?

This question addresses how fresh your company is staying with your product and your customers, which is crucial in terms of retaining them as clients.

31. What is the direction and state of our innovations? Is the direction right for now, 5 years from now, and 10 years in the future?

A great tactic to use when analyzing the strategy of your company is to envision your product years from now and determine if your product roadmap is truly innovative.

32. Does your organization have several strategies for differentiation, innovation, customer alignment, and a detailed plan of forecasted strategies?

This multifaceted question assesses how well your company is planning for the future in terms of your offerings.

Pricing & Promotion

Assessing your pricing.

33. Considering factors such as competition and timing of discounts, does your organization provide the right amount of discounts and at the right price?

Discounting, when executed correctly, can be a great tactic to utilize, and this question addresses how well your company is using this strategy.

34. Does your organization’s pricing strategy match with the availability of your current resources?

This question addresses prime optimization, which is how well your organization prices its work in comparison to other organizations without forfeiting profit.

Assessing your Promotions

35. Does your organization promote itself through its people? Do the people actively promote your organization?

One of the greatest resources that many companies fail to use is their own people. Employees of an organization can be a company’s best proponents if they are actively and enthusiastically promoting the organization.

36. How effective is your organization at using product placement to subtly appeal to the customer?

Product placement deals with strategically implementing your offerings in context without advertisements, and can be a useful promotion strategy when employed correctly.

37. How often are your organization’s web strategies updated in order align with current organization news and capabilities?

Web strategy must be updated frequently in order to be useful to your company, and this question addresses the regularity of these revisions.

38. Is your organization’s website professional, visually pleasing, and effective at generating customer revisits?

Analyze your website design in order to determine if your company is fully optimizing its web presence.

Assessing your Sales

39. How effective is your organization at ensuring loyalty of current customers by extending various incentives for loyalty to your offerings?

Loyalty marketing is a promotional tool that can help your strategic advancements, as long as the incentives are right for your market, customers, and product.

40. How often does your organization convert leads for potential sales into actual sales in the long run?

This question, though basic, must be asked in order to reveal any problems in your current sales strategy that could be modified in order to better your company’s sales overall.

We hope you find our list of strategic questions to ask your employees or yourself valuable and beneficial to your company. These questions represent a small sample of our diagnostic library that we draw upon when running 9Lenses diagnostics for our clients. Because each question tends to elicit an in-depth response, we tend to ask fewer questions per assessment so as not to overwhelm participants. Beyond asking the right questions, it’s important to involve the right set of stakeholders, to analyze the responses for new insights, and measure any changes in performance over time – all of which is possible with our platform.

strategic planning assessment questions

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20 Questions for Strategic Planning Readiness

strategic planning assessment questions

March 26 2018

BY   MATTHEW TRENT TRAINUM, ED.D. 

When is the right time to undergo a new strategic planning process? Is it w hen the old plan expires? Or perhaps when a new president arrives? Or should it be when the environment shifts so much that instability forces change?

Deciding on the right time for a new strategic plan isn’t easy. At Credo, we talk about how the "new normal" in higher education requires institutions to double down on the following key areas:

  • Clarity to our stakeholders  (e.g., students, faculty, board, etc.)  on our direction and priorities

Agility to move strategically and quickly to leverage emerging opportunities

Alignment of our focus, people, work, and resources

  • Accountability to stakeholders 
  • Transparency with our campus stakeholders

Increased revenue and reduced expenses through greater effectiveness and efficiency

When we are trying to determine if a campus is ready for strategic planning, these expectations generate 20 questions (more or less) to consider. If your campus community is unable to answer many of these questions in the positive—or is unable to clearly articulate the reasoning behind their answers—it is probably time to update your plan, your communications, or both.

Clarity to our stakeholders on our direction and priorities

  • Does our campus community know our top institutional priorities?
  • Do we have community buy-in on our most important priorities and initiatives?
  • Do we spend team meetings talking about strategic items (versus constantly putting out fires)?
  • Are we more proactive than reactive in our operations?
  • Are we responding to changes in the higher education environment fast enough?
  • Are we set up institutionally to move rapidly regarding new needs and possibilities, both in academic programs and student success efforts?
  • Do the structures supporting our daily actions and operations pull us closer together around the work that is most important to the institution?
  • Do we work to transcend silos and perform interdisciplinary operations in a holistic, integrated manner?
  • Do we have many clear examples of successful cross-divisional teams across our campus?
  • Do those in academic positions work well with those in student affairs and other student-support services?
  • Do all units view each other as equal partners in the success of students and of the institution?

  Accountability to stakeholders (students, faculty, board, etc.)

  • Does everyone have a similar picture for what success looks like in one year, three years, or five years from now?
  • Is it clear what measures we are taking to mark progress?
  • Are the majority of our efforts going into initiatives that will move the needle on those measures?

  Transparency with our campus stakeholders

  • Do we communicate frequently and meaningfully? Do strategic messages bookend most presidential statements, messages, and meetings?
  • Are we communicating all that we do, and do we show how our accomplishments connect to each other and to our goals?
  • Is the community consistently apprised of the rationale for priorities, changes, and progress?  
  • Are our plans directly connected to resources? Does our plan redeploy current resources for more strategic purposes?
  • Do the metrics selected accurately represent the financial health of the institution?
  • Can we clearly connect strategic initiatives to outcomes that improve the financial condition of the institution?

How did you find yourself answering these questions? If you didn't have a clear, resounding "yes" for each question, it may be time to revisit your institution's planning process.

If you'd like to learn about what sets the Credo strategic planning process apart, please download your complimentary Strategic Planning & Implementation Guide , including key benefits, outcomes, process milestones, and a Sample Strategy Map based on the Balanced Score Card. 

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24 questions to ask before strategic planning

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Before we begin the Strategic Planning process, I like to meet with several key people within the organization.

I try to ask several questions below, doing my best to document the responses.

From the responses and how much overlap or separation I understand, we can develop the best way to co-create a strategic plan for the organization.

24 pre-strategic planning questions

  • What have you done in the past with strategic planning that pleased you the most?
  • How did you determine what worked and did not work from those plans?
  • What is the CEO’s longest goal (what by when) accountable for?
  • What is the longest goal that the Senior Management team is accountable for?
  • What is working well within the organization – that can be left alone?
  • Describe trends you see in the industry. How will we evaluate those trends, and which do we need to be in front of?
  • Who will be a part of this planning process?
  • What will be their role for the people who are a part of this process?
  • How much creative dissonance vs. resonance are you seeking?
  • What are areas of the company distinct/unique/special?
  • How long will this plan be?
  • Who can I talk with to understand the agency better?
  • What do you feel was the best part of your past/current strategic plan? Worst part?
  • How will we track progress/regress?
  • Forecast your financials? Up – down – stable?
  • Forecast staffing? Up – down – stable?
  • Describe the role + accountability you expect from me.
  • What is the most significant threat or challenge?
  • On a scale of 0 – 10, with 10 being prepared and 0 being the opposite, where are you about this threat/challenge?
  • What does +2 look like? How will you know? What will be different?
  • What areas are you willing to let go of, shed, or eliminate? What makes you sure those are the areas?
  • What uncomfortable changes does the agency have to make in the next 5 years?
  • What is ‘untouchable’? Where are those boundaries?

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SOAR Analysis: What It Is & Step-By-Step Guide (2024)

Download our free SOAR Analysis Template Download this template

An organization needs strategy tools that focus on more than just repairing weaknesses. The company-wide vision must also amplify internal strengths—both current successes and aspirational opportunities. 

A SOAR analysis can be the perfect strategic tool for future-focused goal creation. You can use this framework to align present market opportunities with desired outcomes and growth targets. 

This guide will help you understand the concept of the SOAR framework and how to use SOAR analysis in the strategic planning process. 

  • A SOAR analysis is a strategic planning tool organizations can leverage to create a shared vision of the future that aligns with the current organization’s strengths.
  • Organizations can use a SOAR analysis to visually depict on a 2x2 grid the core attributes of a company and how to execute upon those strengths.
  • Pros: A SOAR analysis is easy to use and ideal for cross-discipline, multi-department strategic planning.
  • Cons: Since a SOAR analysis offers a forward-looking perspective of an organization's aspirations, it lacks competitive threat assessment.

Free Template Download our free SOAR Analysis Template Download this template

What Is a SOAR Analysis?

A Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, Results (Acronym: SOAR) Analysis is a strategic planning framework . Visually presented in a 2x2 grid, this strategy tool helps organizations depict and contrast current organization abilities with future potential. 

When outlined, you create a shared vision of the company, one that best represents the unique values of the organization. A SOAR analysis helps your organization to draw connections between present business conditions and desired achievements. 

A forward-focused and strength-based outlook can help refine the core vision and action-oriented strategy for your business.

soar-analysis-matrix

The top row of the SOAR matrix outlines the current reality of the business, while the bottom row emphasizes what you want to achieve. The left column focuses on internal situations, while the right column showcases external factors.   

Let's get into each one of the matrix quadrants:

When you state what works – right here, right now – you can ensure all outcomes connect to your future ambitions. It is the SOAR analysis quadrant that focuses on what you excel at, rather than on your weaknesses (save those insights for your SWOT analysis ). 

Possible questions to ask your team members: 

  • What does our organization do well?
  • What are our current strengths?
  • What is our organization's greatest achievement?
  • What is our Unique Selling Proposition (USP)?
  • What does our organization currently do better than all competitors?

TIP: Include your customers in the process and ask them what they love most about your products or service. You might discover factors you weren’t aware of before. This will help your business to double down on strengths, and influence sales and profits. 

Opportunities

When you clarify the available opportunities in the marketplace, you can determine which methods can leverage the current conditions for a wider market share. It is the strategy quadrant that focuses on the tangible external advantages you can achieve, rather than listing unknown and untested goals as a hail mary. 

  • What current trends can our organization capitalize on?
  • What partnerships or collaborations can our organization pursue?
  • Is there a market gap that we might be able to fill?
  • Do our customers have unfulfilled wants or needs?

Aspirations

When you describe the future objectives and intentions of your company, you can determine what goals are possible and where to invest your energy. It is the section of the SOAR designed to challenge the status quo and innovate towards new ideas, rather than settle with the same old boring routine.

  • What inspires our organization?
  • What do we hope to achieve?
  • What does our organization care about?
  • What is our desired vision of the future?

When you define measurable results, you can determine tangible ways to improve your performance. It is the SOAR model quadrant that helps you set your target goals to confirm progress in your business model, rather than rely on guesswork and assumptions of success. This could include your KPIs , OKRs , or any other performance management system your organization is using.

  • How does the organization track its performance?
  • How do we convert our future aspirations into measurable data?
  • How does the organization define its success?
  • Do we have the right tools in place? 

TIP: Make sure you have the right tools in place so you can track progress, provide accurate data and make informed decisions. You can use a balanced scorecard , strategy dashboards , or strategy execution software like Cascade.

How To Do a SOAR Analysis And Turn Insights Into Results (In 5 steps)

Plans often die in the boardroom. It is one thing to understand the benefits of a SOAR analysis and fill in the matrix, but it is an entirely different task to execute the strategy . 

To get the most out of your SOAR analysis, use the following steps to influence the actual change within your organization. 

1. Analyze your current state and desired future performance

First, schedule a brainstorming workshop with your colleagues and relevant stakeholders. Perform a detailed examination of your organization. Using the top row of the SOAR matrix (Strengths and Opportunities) , list the raw data that depicts or showcases the current state of your organization. 

The next step is to identify your desired future state. This means filling out the bottom row of the SOAR matrix (Aspirations and Results) . 

For example, the brainstorming session could list out key success factors (Results quadrant) such as: 

  • Current client relationships
  • Growth trends in new markets
  • Positive feedback from stakeholders
  • The return on investment timelines for company assets

The more information you and your strategy team can clearly label on the SOAR matrix, the more effective your SOAR analysis will be—and the better your decision-making. 

Tip: Run workshops with all key stakeholders, and include a cross-discipline group of employees and customers in the strategy session when possible. Collaboration from internal and external stakeholders is a critical element of co-creation and empowering your entire organization—use it while building your SOAR analysis.

2. Prepare a strategic plan with defined focus areas

Strategy brainstorming, by nature, is informal. Open problem-solving allows you to combine and test ideas from many different perspectives and viewpoints. 

But to turn the creative thoughts and themes that spill out into action , you need to filter and narrow down the wild variety of ideas. That's why in stage two of your SOAR analysis, you must define your priorities and prepare an action plan to close the gap between your current and future state. 

You can’t tackle everything all at once. You might have listed several different company-wide aspirations in your SOAR framework—now trim the fat and select the key goals that are attainable, relevant, and impactful. That's the very reason Cascade offers a strategic planning tool , a platform that helps you develop unified paths to action. Use the software to streamline how your company acts upon the ideas discovered through the SOAR strategy session.

3. Execute your strategy

With the plan set: execute. And that means more than just sharing a company memo. Employees who feel excluded from the overall company vision (or even worse, don’t even know about the organization’s new strategy) will simply fall back to the status quo of daily work. That can lead to a split between C-suite in their ivory tower and the actual performance by the boots on the ground. 

Disconnection can lead to confusion, low motivation levels, and a lack of engagement from disenfranchised company members, all of which will hurt business outcomes. 

The answer: communication. Management needs to invest in tools that foster understanding and buy-in from all stakeholders. Be sure to:  

  • Set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and assign ownership
  • List desired strategic objectives and outcomes 
  • Invest in education and review meetings 
  • Showcase transparency from all organizational levels 
  • Utilize software that promotes inter-department connection

Side benefit: when you take the time to execute your strategy, you build a culture of accountabilit y, which further improves engagement metrics and overall business performance.

4. Measure and review your performance

Once you set it, do not forget it. A SOAR analysis is not a one-off event—it should help transform the entire direction of the company, over time. It is all too easy to enjoy a honeymoon phase and then fall back into old, ineffective patterns.

To prevent strategic drift , invest in continuous review. You need to measure your progress against set targets. And wherever you see the inevitable slide back into habits or outdated thinking, take steps to rectify the issue. 

No one wants to report back to the board missed performance goals and failed strategic action, all because of a lack of evaluation or oversight.  

We know the importance of monitoring your strategy execution, which is why we created Cascade strategy dashboards . Consider it a one-stop home for your strategy. If you have the right strategy execution tool to track and review your organizational progress, you can discover data insights to act upon before it’s too late.

5. Adapt and adjust to capture new market opportunities

Lastly, adapt to a shifting industry—your SOAR analysis will need to evolve as internal and external market conditions change. What may work now will need reevaluation later. Opportunities that you can capitalize on now may disappear as the trends of the industry shift. 

Plus, your organization will develop as it scales, and that will require new assessments. Reframe your perspective, adapt your strategy and revisit your SOAR analysis as required.

Soar Analysis Pros

The main pros of SOAR analysis are: 

  • Easy to use and create
  • Sets action and outcome-oriented strategic objectives
  • Functions as a cross-discipline, multi-department strategic framework
  • Creates a positive and realistic organizational forecast 
  • Builds a flexible and scalable collaborative approach to strategic planning

Soar Analysis Cons

The main cons of SOAR Analysis are: 

  • Does not explore organizational weaknesses or threats
  • Can lack granularity and detail
  • Can overlap and repeat elements found in other strategy frameworks (e.g. aspirations are often listed in your organization's vision ) 
  • Bottom-row quadrants (Aspirations and Results) may offer limited analysis and data grounded in the current marketplace

Where and When Should You Choose SOAR Analysis?

Your unique strategy needs and business environment determine if you should use a SOAR analysis. 

For example, a SWOT Analysis is far more applicable for a business about to engage in risky company initiatives , as it better assesses threats. And since a SOAR analysis provides more internal investigations and forecasting, it is not ideal for an organization that wants to test detailed components against market competitors.

SOAR analysis focuses on an appreciative inquiry as its strategic basis, so it is best suited for company discovery, learning, organization, and innovation. 

A SOAR should be used by those who benefit from a general and future-focused summary of the organization's strategic initiatives, rather than detailed threat assessments or investigative frameworks that uncover company weaknesses in need of correction.  

SOAR Analysis isn't what you're after? Check out this article with 23 best strategy tools for your organization in 2022 .

FAQs about SOAR Analysis

How often should i update my soar framework.

You should evaluate and update your SOAR Analysis on annual basis.

How Long Does A SOAR Analysis Take?

SOAR analysis shouldn’t take more than an hour. But it depends on the size of your organization, the complexity of your business, and how well-prepared your team is for the brainstorming session.

Who Should Be Present In A Brainstorming Session?

You need a mix of employees from all organizational levels to better capture the current reality of your business and its future desires.

Can I use a SOAR Analysis Individually?

You can use SOAR Analysis individually, but it’s best suited for cross-department planning.

Who Created The SOAR Analysis?

Jacqueline Stavros, David Cooperrider & D. Lynn Kelley created the SOAR Analysis in their paper SOAR: A new approach to strategic planning.

What Is The Difference Between A SOAR Analysis And A SWOT Analysis?

The difference between A SOAR Analysis and a SWOT analysis is that the first one focuses on current strategic goals and how they relate to future desired outcomes, while a SWOT Analysis focuses more on identifying organizational weaknesses and ways to improve them.

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Strategic planning survey questions and sample questionnaire template

These strategic planning survey questions help gain insights into an organization's strengths and weaknesses. This questionnaire helps in pin-pointing potential improvement areas, make business decisions to address these, and ensure continuous growth on the collected data or feedback. With this sample, a survey maker can edit the questions as per their application and send out the survey for improved strategic planning.

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Top 3 reasons to use this strategic planning survey template

1. Evaluate organizational strengths and weaknesses: This survey template allows the organization to know their strength and weaknesses and ensure to create an effective strategy to improve the product/service and serve better to future customers.

2. Evaluate product/service satisfaction: Measure the customer satisfaction level towards the product or service in terms of features, quality, cost, marketing techniques, and customer service.

3. Evaluate strengths for the following organizational attributes: It evaluates various aspects of the organization, including production, research, sales, marketing, organization culture, product/service quality, finance, and senior management.

Related templates and questionnaires

Client evaluation of company services survey questions, supplier service evaluation survey template, business to business demographics survey template.

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