STRATEGIC PLANNING

The Strategic Planning Process

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 The skills needed for an effective Strategic Plan may already be available in your organisation, while others are available from consultants and facilitators.

While it is important to involve key stakeholders, developing a strategy is a management process and not something that can effectively be done by committee. There are many books and articles about master strategists, but none about brilliant strategic committees. Creating a strategic plan requires several steps. Below is a short list of issues worth considering:

  • Current influences (economy, politics, legislation, publicity)
  • Strengths you can build on, and weaknesses you need to address
  • Your objectives, and how they fit in to corporate goals
  • The recent history of your organisation
  • What others have achieved in similar environments
  • What tools are, or will soon be, available
  • What skills you currently have, and what skills are available in the wider market
  • What constraints you face (time, money, resources)

Often it is useful to employ a skilled consultant to facilitate the process - but generally the information and direction needs to come from your own  ICT executives and managers. Taking all of the above into consideration, the process then involves documenting your options, and selecting from those the ones that will best allow you to meet your objectives.

We recommend developing the minimum number of strategies. How many depends on your situation, but a few, well thought out, broad strategies will often be more effective than a shopping list of ideas.
Graphic used under Creative Commons from LuMaxArt