Strategic planning is an essential part of every organization. The process may seem daunting, and even a bit scary, but the best results often come from the hardest challenges. Strategic plans come in many different forms, shapes, and sizes, and typically range from 3-5 years of goals and action items. If you’re in that 3–5-year threshold or haven’t “completed” your strategic plan yet, when do you know it’s time for a new strategic plan?
1) You haven’t updated your strategic plan in years.
Your strategic plan was your guidepost at some point. You have one, and you’ve skated by for years without rethinking your strategies, goals, or objectives for your business. You’re probably doing okay without it but updating your strategic plan can take your organization to the next level. No risk = no reward.
2) You have a strategic plan but haven’t touched it in 6+ months.
You just went through completing a strategic plan, but you haven’t looked at it in months. Maybe you regret it. There are a lot of reasons strategic plans don’t work out. Sometimes, they’re boring slide decks with no action items, don’t hold anyone accountable for execution, and don’t tell you anything you didn’t already know.
There’s also a chance business fluctuates, and your strategic plan is now irrelevant. The goals no longer match up with your vision, and the company has pivoted. If that’s the case – it’s worth spending the extra time and money to get your strategic plan to where it needs to be.
3) There are no attainable KPIs or direct ROI attached to your strategic plan execution.
A strategic plan may include tactics and action items – but doesn’t always tell you what key performance indicators (KPI’s) or what sort of ROI is directly attributed to it. Strategic plans typically aren’t cheap, making success metrics incredibly important in measuring your plan’s impact on your organization. Ultimately, a strategic plan should pay for itself with the results it induces. If your strategic plan includes any “best practices” or tactics that can be found on the first search engine result page (SERP), it’s time to invest in a new strategic plan.
4) Your strategic plan isn’t driving revenue, relevancy, or impact for your organization.
Typically, our partners’ goals can all relate to maximizing their revenue, relevancy, and impact. Our Strategic Growth Plans goal is that, when executed, directly tie into fulfilling your mission, vision, and values. Whatever your growth goals or metrics may be, your strategic plan must be working towards them. Misalignment is a silent destroyer of strategic plan execution. A good strategic planning partner will help you identify, amplify, and communicate your organization’s growth goals, ensuring misalignment and miscommunication won’t be a problem when it’s time for implementation.
5) Your strategic plan is too restrictive.
When crafting strategic plans for our partners, we practice having an abundance mindset. Instead of focusing on creating guard rails, outlining what you shouldn’t do or what needs to be eliminated from your organization, we focus on what to amplify. Our goal is to help our partners continuously develop what is already working and build upon that foundation to accelerate growth. Instead of telling you what you can’t do, we focus on what you can do.
A good strategic plan is your playbook for exponential growth for your organization. It should clearly outline your goals, your current state, and detail what you need to do to achieve the success you’re looking for.
Prolific has helped hundreds of partners worldwide grow exponentially through growth strategy, growth capital, and growth performance. If you’re interested in learning more about Prolific, go to Growth Practices, see our Success Stories, or tell us about your growth metric.
