Strategic Planning Tools & Resources
Free Strategic Planning Tools & Resources Available Now
Strategic planning is a must—it provides your company with a framework for uncovering issues and identifying opportunities for improvement. The proper strategic planning tools work to create a decisive map on how to proceed with your plan, making the execution more intentional, measurable, and feasible.
To better explain and illustrate how StratOp—my preferred method of strategic planning—can completely transform your company and result in incredible growth, I am giving away free templates. After exploring these tools, you will have a better understanding of exactly how I can help you improve your business.
Each of my strategic planning clients walks away with a Plan on a Page. This comprehensive guide from StratOp includes every factor that will be covered more in-depth during the facilitation of our strategic planning sessions.
The Plan on a Page is a great, high-level view of where your company wants to be and what steps will be taken to get there. Here, you can find your:
A solid mission statement is incredibly important for a firm understanding of what your company seeks to be and wants to achieve.
These are your words to live by—core values serve as a foundation for every action and decision made.
A thorough vision takes an objective look at your current standing and outlines how to propel and excel forward.
These strategies are the overarching, high-level approaches your team will focus on to accomplish goals.
With more specific information regarding measurable goals, the reason for doing them, assignees, and estimated dates for completion, the AIP is a valuable section of information to refer back to often.
Have any questions about how the Plan on a Page can benefit your team? Let’s schedule a time to chat.
Strategic Planning Process & Agenda
It seems like no matter what humans try to do, plans start to go awry about 90 days in. As the EOS® framework puts it, this “fraying” can only be mitigated by coming back together to maintain and adapt the plan on a regular basis.
I use StratOp to conduct a two-day strategic planning event each year, with one-day strategic planning check-ins quarterly. This allows businesses plenty of time to utilize and assess what strategies have been previously implemented. Our full-day meetings every few months enable us to dive deep into issues, wins, and observations, and rearrange or adapt the strategy as needed.
Strategic Planning Tools from StratOp
I offer facilitated StratOp planning sessions for many kinds of businesses and organizations. StrapOp is a six-phase strategic planning system created by Tom Paterson. It improves companies’ practices by starting with perspective and remaining dedicated to reevaluating strategic decisions with data, creating a more cohesive and thoughtful future trajectory.
The following tools for strategic planning have helped many businesses develop confident, actionable strategic plans.
Four Helpful Lists
To gain a broader understanding of your current standing and begin the development of your plan and goals, ask yourself the following questions that are offered in this tool: What is right? What is wrong? What is confusing? What is missing? Your team will come away with a much better grasp of how to move forward with realistic, appropriate steps.
Thinking Wavelength
Part of strategic planning is determining what kind of people are on your team, and learning how to best delegate tasks in a manner that maximizes the outcome. The Thinking Wavelength is a talent assessment tool that uncovers the blend of creative, abstract and practical, concrete thinkers in your organization.
Patterns/Trends Analysis
Just as your business is ever-evolving and transitioning, so is the outside world and its patterns and trends. This tool allows a way to easily identify, map, and plan for these inevitable changes, whether they may be beneficial or detrimental to your business.
SWOT Analysis
A SWOT analysis is an extremely useful tool for uncovering an organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This tool can easily inform on a variety of business-related tasks, from organizational strategy to marketing plans. Decipher where your company is excelling, what needs immediate improvement, what you can capitalize on, and what to avoid or prepare for going forward.
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Other Tools to Help Your Business Grow
Take advantage of even more resources that can help a business grow, such as:
- The Eisenhower Matrix: Being a business owner or company leader means there are many tasks to complete at any given time. Learn to better manage yours with this simple yet effective tool by determining what is urgent and important versus what can be delegated to someone else.
- Talent assessments: These personality-based tools give business owners a better grasp on the work and communication styles of the team around them—this awareness can make all the difference between a disjointed, frustrating workspace and one that is not only cohesive and positive but also seeking to improve as a whole at every opportunity.
- Start-Stop-Keep: This tool is helpful for a team to understand what's most important. Start by identifying what needs to be done (your "starts"); then, identify what needs to be eliminated (your "stops"); lastly, identify what needs to stay in place (your "keeps).
- EOS®: The Entrepreneurial Operating System is not a framework I facilitate, though it is one many of my clients have experience utilizing, and there are components that line up incredibly well with certain phases of StratOp.
More Strategic Planning Resources
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