What is strategic planning?

And of course, companies that have a systemic process in place to guide these efforts are capable of reacting faster than their competition.

That systematic process is known as Strategic Planning and it's used to determine a plan of action based upon the values, culture and mission of your organization.

Now why is this information important to your employees? Well to start with, if your workforce understands the process of Strategic Planning it will be easier for them to see how their work objectives and individual responsibilities directly affect your organization's mission.

Explaining the Strategic Planning process to employees also has the added advantage of showing them your company's belief in transparency and sharing of information which leads to greater buy-in and involvement.

Okay, so let's outline Strategic Planning in very simple and easy to understand steps that can be used to create a briefing for your workforce. Generally, most experts agree that the systematic approach includes the following 6 steps:

1. Remember the Mission - Why does your Company, Division, Department or Section exist? What contributions do you and your team members makes? Do you understand the key values and priorities of the management team?

2. Identify the Opportunities & Threats - Analyze the factors that affects your work unit, such as, changes in technology, availability of resources, employee competency and all other factors so that potential opportunities for growth or threats to the current business operations can be identified.

3. Determine Strengths & Weakness - Evaluating your section's resources, employee's skills, facilities and organization structure in order to identify your real strengths and weaknesses.

4. Forecast Capabilities & Opportunities - Evaluate any and all upcoming changes (in terms of budget, resources and personnel) prior to forecasting future opportunities based on the current capabilities of your work unit.

5. Develop Goals & Objectives - Goals are nothing more the future targets that each individual work unit's efforts are directed at. Prior to establishing your goals, remember they need to be specific, measurable, realistic and agreed upon by all concerned individuals.

Once the goals are established, it is easy to clearly define objectives. Objectives are the specific tasks that outline what to do, when to do it, how to do it and how to measure the progress.

6. Implement Your Goals - Evaluate the results and revise the plan as you move forward.