Essential Parts of a Strategic Plan

This extensive, free course walks you through the steps in the strategic planning process and outlines the required elements for a basic strategic plan.

Learn how to engage your team to produce this time-honored management tool and increase your impact!

Strategic Plans come in all shapes and sizes, and the process of strategic planning can range from simple to very complex!

This course keeps it simple. All strategic plans answer these key questions:

Where are we?

Where do we want to go?

How will we get there?

How will we know we got there?

And every strategic plan contains a minimum of these essential elements:

SWOT Analysis Learn about this simple but authentic way to capture a snapshot of your present state!
Vision and Mission Statement Understand the difference between a vision and a mission statement by looking at several examples, and provide your team with a compelling sense of purpose!
3-5 Core Goals Develop short-term targets you'll be able to recognize as landmarks on your path to your destination: Vision/ Mission-attainment.
3-5 Strategies Per Goal Learn to keep Goals straight from Strategies so your plan can be implemented with ease and confidence down the road, in implementation!
3-5 Tactics Per Strategy A strategic plan is an analytical tool for system alignment, and at this level, each department or special project gets direction for their part in contributing to the overall success.
Key Performance Indicators A solid strategic plan identifies the metrics each action will affect in order to monitor progress during implementation of the plan and inform future revisions!

Following the tips and using the tools you'll gain from this course, in short order, your team can develop a solid strategic plan containing all of the essential parts and answering these key questions.

You'll also learn the pros and cons of working with a third party consultant to assist this process, as well as how to find the right facilitator for your organization. Finally, we'll introduce you to some of the most common add-ons to the basic strategic plan template.

This course was designed so the local business owner or nonprofit leader could have no-cost access to expert guidance!

Sign up today for increased impact!

When you sign up for a free course, you'll get a login to access both the featured, free course PLUS all other free course content we publish regularly to help leaders improve their strategic thinking and increase their impact-- including articles, blogposts, videos, and stories that inspire and offer new tools for thought.

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Boost Your Skills Today!

Large corporations and conscientious nonprofits have been doing strategic planning for ages because they know a Strategic Plan creates aligned effort, focus, and efficiency in a team. With this free course, I share the essential questions any Strategic Plan should answer, offer best practices, and caution you of the pitfalls to avoid. Sign up for the course and get started today!