How do you start strategic planning?

by Michael W. Van Belle, Senior Vice President and CFO of The High Companies

Our strategic planning process started with visioning sessions and scenario planning. This was an involved process that over several months helped the management teams in each of our operating companies develop a vision for their future. The mission, which describes the vision of the future, was then developed to ‘set a path’ for the company. We spent significant time in these activities as we have started to develop strategy further into the future.
The remainer of the activities followed the typical strategic planning process. Environmental scans of the company and their industry were completed to develop a SWOT (strength-weaknesses-opportunities-threats) analysis. The strategy formulation phase focused on improving our competitive advantages based one the internal and external influences determined by the SWOT analysis. Implementation and control of the results is an involved process that includes critical discussion at the board level, forecasting, the capital budgeting process, communication with all co-workers, Policy Deployment, cascading objectives in our human resource and performance planning processes, as well as many other activities.
Addition information on the strategic planning process is available at QuickMBA.com and the Free Management Library.