Decision-Making SkillsLeadership & StrategyPlanning & Organizing SkillsStrategic Planning

Strategic Plan Is A Tool For Guiding Day-To-Day Decisions, Monitoring, And Evaluating The Organization’s Progress

In our time, changes and developments are exponentially accelerating, and your organization evolves and grows in size and complexity. The challenges and requirements that you face due to changes in your work team and the evolution of your strategic priorities will force you to modify how you deal with your strategy and develop your work team to suit these variables. Note that the strategic plan sets your organization’s direction and measurable goals. It serves as a tool for guiding daily decisions and monitoring and evaluating progress in its field. Regardless of the stage of strategic maturity your organization has reached, here are some important and valuable ways for developing strategic plan:

1. Set smart goals

Make sure not to set and set goals that are difficult to achieve. If you set impossible goals, your strategic plan will almost certainly fail because goals must serve a specific purpose. To avoid ambiguity, make sure your goals are clear, measurable, quantifiable, and have a deadline for implementation.

2. Define decision-making criteria

Evaluate your strategic options against your organization’s pre-established priorities. Then define the appropriate criteria for making decisions that contribute to the progress of your organization and the achievement of its strategic plan.

3. Connect with your team

Connect with your team and hear their views on what might work and what might not work for them within the organization. Check to see if your team understands and adapts organizational values ​​that align with the organization’s mission and mission. There are several questions you can discuss with your team to contribute to the improvement and development of your strategic plan:

  • How familiar are they with the KPIs that support each priority area in your strategic plan?
  • Their level of awareness of their responsibility for the specific work items?
  • How to review the strategic plan and its current progress?
  • What are the current risks and uncertainties of your organization?

4. Conduct an Environmental Survey of Growth Opportunities

Unfortunately, many organizations do not specifically focus on new growth opportunities. From here, it turns out that one of the main reasons for having a strategic plan is to understand growth opportunities and make decisions about the best way to pursue these opportunities. From here, you should evaluate your strategic options. And then assess the market and the competitive environment to determine the best opportunities available to you. Develop and use a process to weight and rank growth opportunities. So you can ask the following questions that may help you achieve this:

  • How is your organization in the next ten years?
  • What kind of changes and trends are happening now that might affect your organization’s future?
  • Is your organization’s mission and mission clear and precise?
  • What are your three most important strategic priorities for the first year of your strategic plan?

5. Address strategic issues

It is effortless to get bogged down in everyday life. So avoid turning strategic planning into a tactical session:

  • Focus your strategic plan on strategic rather than tactical issues.
  • Consider using strategic problems rather than an evaluation-based planning cycle to develop your organization’s approaches to strategic planning.
  • Focus your strategic plan on decisions that allow the organization to overcome these issues and benefit from them.

6. Carry out the plan

Creating and developing strategic plan that reflects your organization’s goals and challenges is irrelevant if not implemented.

Hence, aligning management with strategy is necessary to support the implementation of the plan. So make sure you communicate all results explicitly throughout your organization.

7. Check out the achievements.

Defining and developing standards of achievement and success during the planning process contributes to implementing your strategic plan and measuring progress and achievement in the strategic plan. Establish flexible metrics that evolve and adjust to suit your organization’s rapid changes and challenges.

Planning is an essential and vital part of your business, take care of it and participate with your team in planning processes to achieve the best for your organization

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Dr Atef Awad

Dr Atef Awad is a university professor specializing in human resources management at Abu Dhabi University. More than 25 years of experience in academic and administrative work. Consultant in developing innovative HR policies and strategies. Extensive experience in developing future practices, including career development strategies, talent management, development programs, and integration strategies. Ability to direct complex projects from concept and ideas to fully operational state. He is a Certified international trainer in human resource development and organizational development.
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