The Top 5 Strategic Planning Methodologies

Strategic planning is an integral part of any business’ success, and it will ensure your business is heading in the right direction. Furthermore, it helps outline your objectives as it's crucial to helping business owners make their everyday decisions.

With the best strategic planning methodology in place, your business will be proactive as opposed to being reactive. You will seamlessly increase your operational efficiency with proper strategic planning and projects. Your profitability and market share will increase significantly. Your business will be more relevant in its respective industry since you will serve your customer base better. However, as important as strategic planning is, many businesses have yet to emulate this opportunity. Also, a single strategic model isn’t better than other models.

So, we’ve come up with the 5 best strategic planning methodologies that will help make your business thrive. But first, let’s see what a strategic planning model is and why it’s important.

What Is A Strategic Planning Model?

It refers to how a business creates a plan and implements it to make its operations better and further meet its business goals. Your business can benefit a great deal by having a well-defined strategic planning model in place.

For instance, a good strategic planning model will ensure all departments of a business work harmoniously. Moreover, it allows businesses to achieve their targets in the long-run.

 

Every business leader should know the basics of strategic planning to enable them to come up with an appropriate strategic planning model. Such basics include developing your business’ strategic goals, as well as their potential impacts. You have to define your goals while creating your plan. Factor in defining your key goals, long-term goals, operational goals, and company goals. The basics further include crafting strategies for the development of your strategic planning model.

Top 5 Strategic Planning Methodologies

Below are some suitable strategic methodologies you should emulate in your strategic planning process:

Basic Planning Methodology

The strategic planning methodology is also referred to as the simple strategic planning model. Businesses that utilize this structure include startups or businesses that have little knowledge in strategic planning. Moreover, the model is ideal for smaller companies that lack resources to execute complex strategic planning methodologies.

 

It also focuses on developing your business’ mission, vision statement and core values. Business leaders can use the model to outline the steps they should take to achieve their business goals. Basic strategic planning methodology can further enable business leaders to monitor the progress of their businesses.

The main advantage of using this strategic planning model is that it helps you create a solid mission statement that perfectly describes why your business exists. Furthermore, you can use it as a resource to select your company’s intermediate goals in regard to what you should accomplish first.

The basic strategic planning methodology helps you create actionable plans that outline the elaborate steps your business should take to implement certain strategies. You can effectively monitor your progress while using this model.

Goal-based Strategic Planning Methodology

Businesses that start with using basic strategic planning methodology shift to goal-based strategic planning methodology over time. The model is suitable for established organizations or businesses seeking for more complex strategic planning methodologies. It is the most frequently used strategic planning model.

It starts with an analysis of a business’ weaknesses, threats and opportunities. Goal-based strategic planning methodology also focuses on your business’ internal and external factors and threats and competition. Next, you can use the strategic planning model to identify issues and goals which you can use to prioritize your business objectives.

Alignment Strategic Planning Methodology

The methodology helps you craft a strong relation between your business’ mission and resources. The model can be a perfect tool for your business, especially if you are striving to fine tune your objectives and identify why you aren’t achieving your goals.

 

This model helps you outline your business’ resources. It further helps business owners establish the specific aspects of their businesses that are working appropriately, and which aspects need some adjustments. Finally, you can include these adjustments in your business plan. This step is the most important step in making an effective business plan.

Organic Strategic Planning Methodology

The strategic planning methodology doesn’t use linear methodological approaches, unlike other strategic planning models. Organic strategic planning methodology uses an approach that strategic planning experts call story boarding. This approach allows business owners to develop unique business ideas. It can prompt you to be active on matters that affect your business.

The planning models start with clarifying your business’ cultural values through dialogues and storyboarding techniques. Next, the strategic planning methodology focuses on articulating a business’ vision. The accomplishments of this methodology translate into a business’ goals.

Scenario Strategic Planning Methodology

This is another common strategic planning methodology to consider. It is more of a strategic planning technique rather than a strategic planning methodology. The methodology is highly effective in identifying issues, goals and external environments. It is useful for businesses that are preparing for a variety of scenarios that are the result of external forces of changes in the business environment.

The strategic planning model starts with establishing vulnerabilities that could possibly affect a business. After identifying possible vulnerabilities , you can look into strategies you can use for responding to the prevailing vulnerabilities.

Balanced Scorecard

The strategic planning methodology entails considering your business’ objectives, initiatives and measures. You can develop this model by using programs such as Google Sheets, PowerPoint and Excel. The strategic planning methodology gives you comprehensive details into your business’ initiatives and measures.

 

Strategy Mapping

The strategic planning methodology is a tool that is used for communicating a strategic plan. The tool is suitable for achieving high-level business goals. It helps communicate-high-level details across your business in an easy-to-understand model. The strategic planning model offers an array of benefits including:

• A simple and straightforward visual representation that is easy for organization and businesses to refer to during the development process
• It helps unify all company goals into one business strategy and comprehensive plan
• It can help you determine your key basic steps and goals
• It helps you establish how your business objectives affect others in real time

Other strategic planning tools

There are many strategic opportunities and complaints you can implement to accomplish your business objectives. Whether you are seeking to reduce complaints in your store by providing better purchase and return policies, or you would like to reduce your production manufacturing costs by implementing better processes and detailed action plans, these strategic planning tools will work for you.

SWOT Analysis

A SWOT analysis is a strategic planning model that businesses can use in the beginning of their strategic planning process.

 

The strategic planning methodology helps analyze your business’ weaknesses, threats, strengths, and opportunities. Conducting a SWOT analysis is vital to helping you identify your business’ progress and the specific areas you should improve. At the end of the day, managers and staff from human resources need to be on-board with their strategic plan in its entirety for it to be effective, including their SWOT strategy. Here is a breakdown on how to do a SWOT analysis:

• Decide on the objectivity of your SWOT analysis
• Research your market position and industry
• List your company’s strengths
• List your business’s weaknesses
• List potential external opportunities and repeatable processes
• List potential threats and major issues
• Establish the priorities from your SWOT analysis

SWOT analysis is a perfect methodology to start building a unique and impactful branding and positioning strategy.