Vision statements should be short (a few sentences). While many organizations have both mission and vision statements, it’s not imperative. Get up and running fast with streamlined implementation and solution building to address your immediate business needs. Strategic initiatives involve the process of corporate planning, the design of long-term goals meant to improve a company. If your mission statement could define many companies in your line of work, it is not a good mission statement. “Not everyone has a vision statement,” McNerney says. Your research might show you should not go in a direction you might want to. Learn how the flexible, extensible Smartsheet platform can help your organization achieve more. Free your team from content sprawl with Brandfolder, an intuitive digital asset management platform. The Office of Strategic Initiatives (OSI) will conduct a public hearing, to be held remotely, regarding the State’s Low Income Home Energy Assistance Block Grant (LIHEAP) Annual Plan. Highlight the plan in a company newsletter. For example, your goal might be: Increase total revenue by 5 percent in three product areas by the third quarter of 2020. “Your strategies have to align with your values and vice versa,” she explains. Take out jargon like world class, best possible, state of the art, maximize, succeed, and so on, and cut vague or unspecific phrasing. ‌ ‌Download University Strategic Plan Outline – Word. “Strategic planning is a prompt or a facilitator for fostering strategic thinking, acting, and learning,” says Bryson. Using the information you discovered during your SWOT and mission statement process, come up with goals that align with your values. Writing a strategic plan for a school can be difficult because of the variety of stakeholders involved, including students, teachers, other staff, and parents. … Because you need to know your company’s goals and objectives to create an accurate vision statement, you might need to wait until you have more information about the company’s direction to write your vision statement. Avoid broad statements that could apply to any company or industry. 4. You should be able to defend your plan and reinforce its key areas. The office provides a structured format for project planning, communications, tracking, and reporting. An example goal: Increase website fundraising. In a for-profit organization, the marketing department works to promote the company’s product or services to bring in new revenue. The role of the committee is to shape initial ideas into a smaller and clearer set of goals, strategies and supporting initiatives through several iterations of discussion, drafting, review and redrafting. The answer (or answers) to the first question — where are we now? The mission statement explains what your business is trying to achieve. Do your competitors attract your target customers, or do you have a niche that sets you apart? The plan may be in the form of a document, a presentation, or another format. What do you value most in your life? This exercise will help you clarify your values. It contains related projects and single activities from operational business. What do you want to do more or less? Writing a strategic plan can be daunting, as the process includes many steps. There is no set time period for a strategic plan, but five years can be a sweet spot. He adds that focusing on one KPI can hurt other areas of a company’s performance, so reaching a goal can be short-sided. Values describe the behaviors you really want to advance,” McNerney says. The answers to this question help you outline the many routes you can take to achieve your vision and match your strengths with opportunities in the market. Keep your focus on what you can act on. Third-Century Faculty Initiative. Think of goal writing as a formula: Action + detail of the action + a measurable metric + a deadline = goal. See why Smartsheet is the platform you need to drive achievement, no matter the scale of your ambition. You can take many approaches to the process and consider differing ideas about what needs to go into it, but some general concepts stand. The operations plan maps out your initiatives and shows you who is going to do what, when, and how. The strategic planning process takes time, but the payoff is huge. Thus, they can concentrate on the process and ask difficult questions. Share the company description with everyone in your organization. If you distribute it outside of your company, you might want to attach a confidentiality waiver. Looking too far ahead can be daunting, especially for a new or changing company. Objectives are the turn-by-turn directions of how to achieve your goals. Select the Right Strategy. Downloaded 56,300 times. Our 16 Strategic Initiatives Read (PDF) and watch what we’ve accomplished in 2019 to transform the health care system. MoDNR Strategic Initiative Plan The Missouri Department of Natural Resources has finalized its Strategic Initiative Plan. Operating initiatives are more specific, leading specific operational changes in a company that carry out a process. Other terms similar to KPIs include performance measures and performance indicators. Some planning specialists use the term strategic objectives or strategic priorities when referring to goals, but for clarity, this article will use the term goals. In order to plot out a course for reaching your goals, … All Rights Reserved Smartsheet Inc. She recommends coming up with a kind of glossary that defines the terms for your team. Assign people who will be responsible for certain tasks and tactics necessary to achieve your goals. For more information about writing an effective executive summary, a checklist, and free templates, read this article. For example, your ideal customer five years ago might not be the same as the current standard or the one you want in five years. If something does not fit within your personal mission, you shouldn’t do it. “After the meetings are over, you have to turn your strategy into action,” says Stefan Hofmeyer, an experienced strategist and co-founder of Global PMI Partners. Objectives often begin with the words increase or decrease because they are quantifiable and measurable. Build those checkpoints into the plan. One symptom of this is not aligning the plan to fit the capacity or finances of the company. Unlike strategic objectives, which tend to be phrased as broad goals, strategic initiatives are projects that include a scope, budget, and start/end date. Objectives: Objectives support goals, and they’re usually quantitative and measurable. “Ideally, [the mission statement is] something that describes what you’re about at the highest level,” McNerney says. Schools often have set boundaries, missions, and budgets. Sample Goals, Strategies, and Initiatives. Include a section in your strategic plan where you talk about the capacity of your organization. Do not take shortcuts in the research phase — that will lead to bad information coming out further in the process. They describe how you will measure the progress needed to arrive at the destination you outlined in the goal. “The values are the core of how you operate [and] how you treat your people, both internally and externally. PMO, through the Chief of Strategic Initiatives, supports policy makers and bureau heads as they make major decisions on complex and transformative initiatives. Is it cost-effective to collect that data? You can choose from many templates to help you write this section. For a nonprofit, however, conveying that message needs to be part of the strategic plan. When teams have clarity into the work getting done, there’s no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time. Are your targets realistic and time-bound? Because you will be looking at your strengths and weaknesses, you might see things you do not like. Go deeper than saying family, happiness, and health. A marketing plan describes how you attract prospects and convert them into customers. Evaluate your organization's current standing. The answers to these questions make up the meat of the planning document. He always writes summaries last, after he has all the data and information he needs for the plan. Set program goals and objectives that deliver outcomes to achieve the objectives. Don’t plan so much that you ignore how you are going to put the plan into action. “If you do not consider the additional costs or revenues your plan is going to drive, you may be creating a plan you cannot implement.”. The Balanced Scorecard can be broken down into four basic components: Perspectives, Objectives, Measures (also known as “KPIs” in some organizations), and Initiatives. Performing this analysis will help you figure out what you do best and how you compare to your competition. “It’s important for facilitators to lead by asking questions,” Bryson says. Does the following sound like your situation? Company core values, sometimes called organizational values, help you understand what drives the company to do what it does. The following sections walk you through how to write common sections of a strategic plan. The first step in writing a strategic plan for your department is to pay attention to your company’s overall strategic plan. Bryson says that strong facilitators often ask the following questions: What is the situation we find ourselves in? How will we interact with others as a company? For example, a substance abuse prevention coalition is trying to keep teens from starting to drink or use drugs, and proving the coalition’s methods work is often difficult to quantify. “The terms are all over the map. Note the data source where you will get your information to measure and track. You can use many models and formats to create your strategic plan (read more about them in this article). 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