The Initial Plan for the Project Can Be Thought of as Its Strategic Plan.

How to Write a Strategic Programme Overview

Writing a strategic plan can be daunting, even for seasoned strategy professionals. Later on the chaos caused by the pandemic, businesses and organizations of all sizes take come to understand the importance of having a well-devised strategic plan.

Download our strategic planning template to help you write your strategic programme!

Hither at Cascade, we're often asked, "how do I write a strategic plan?" Overall, it seems there'southward a consensus that a strategic planning process should be complex and challenging.

However, if you have intimate knowledge of your business and a clear strategic model to follow, writing a strategic activeness plan is really surprisingly like shooting fish in a barrel.

This guide volition teach you how to write a strategic program using a elementary model that will help you clearly define your organization's goals and how you're going to achieve them.

This article is part one of our mini-series "How to Write a Strategic Programme" This first commodity will requite you a solid strategy model for your plan and get the strategic thinking going.

Think of it as the foundation for your new strategy. Subsequent parts of the series volition show you how to create the content for your strategic plan.

1. How To Write A Strategic Plan: The Cascade Model (This article)
2. How to Write a Practiced Vision Statement
3. How To Create Company Values
4. Creating Strategic Focus Areas
5. How To Write Strategic Objective
6. How To Create Constructive Projects
7. How To Write KPIs

Before creating your strategic program, you demand to decide which structure you volition apply. There are hundreds, if non thousands, of ways to construction a strategic plan. You've likely heard of famous strategic models such as OKRs.

But beyond the well-known ones, there's also a myriad of other methodologies ranging from the extremely simple to the bewilderingly complex.

The problem with many strategic models out there is that they work reasonably well on paper, only in reality, they don't show you how to write a strategic plan — or at least one that is truly meaningful to your organization.

Here are some common weaknesses about popular strategic models have:

• They're too complicated. People become lost in terminology rather than focus on execution.
• They don't scale. They work well for small organizations merely neglect when you attempt to extend them across multiple teams.
• They're too rigid. They force people to add layers for the sake of layers.
• They're neither tangible nor measurable. They're slap-up at stating outcomes just lousy at helping you mensurate success.
• They're non adaptable. As we saw in the final years, circumstances can change quickly. Your model needs to exist able to work in your current situation and adapt to irresolute economic landscapes.

In this article, we'll testify yous a simpler, more effective way to write a strategic programme. We call information technology the Cascade Strategy Model.

We establish that this approach is simply more effective when information technology comes to the execution and implementation of the strategy than whatever other model we've tried.

That holds true for small organizations besides as multinationals trying to figure out how to write a strategic programme. It's easy to utilize, and it works.

The Cascade Model

To give you an idea of how a strategic plan following the Cascade Model will look when it'southward finished, we've created a simple diagram below. It's adequately self-explanatory, but we'll explore the individual components in a moment.

Instead of a traditional roadmap, call up of your strategy every bit a flowchart that reads from top to lesser. Each row is a mandatory step earlier going down to the next one.

There is a reason that we call our product 'Cascade' — and that is considering strategy needs to not only cascade down throughout your organization, only it also needs to pour from a vision argument to values, focus areas, objectives etc.

Most of all, the Cascade Model is designed to be execution-fix — in other words, information technology'due south been tried and tested in delivering success far beyond the strategic planning phase. Information technology adds to a successful strategic management process.

Core Elements of Your Strategic Programme

Before we become into how to write a strategic plan, we first demand to explore the dissimilar components of ane.

Vision

Your vision statement defines where you desire to go to. You can retrieve of it as your mission statement or an executive summary or overview of your entire system's purpose. Practise non start your strategic plan without this.

Lots of articles have been written about the value of a proficient vision argument, simply we'll summarize:

• Your vision statement is the anchor that stops yous from getting lost at ocean (or past the madness caused by Covid, for example).
• It volition assistance tunnel your strategy towards the outcomes and long-term goals that matter the most to your organization.
• Everything you write into your program from this point onward volition ultimately be helping yous to go closer to your vision.

One of the biggest blocks to the successful execution of a strategic plan is trying to achieve too much in 1 go.

Creating a vision statement will aid yous to avoid that trap. A truly well-written vision statement will provide guidance and inspiration for your squad. It might even aid you to concenter talent and investment into your arrangement.

A bike manufacturing company might have a vision statement like:

'To be the premier bike manufacturer in the Pacific Northwest.'

This vision argument clearly articulates where the system would like to be and the value of the organization.

Values

Unfortunately, the notion of corporate values has been abused to the betoken of ridicule over the past century.

Remember, Volkswagen's corporate values include: "Integrity & Accountability." When it comes to writing a strategic plan, values represent how you'll behave equally an system as you work towards your vision.

As well oft, organizations simply throw out words that they think will audio good in a glossy marketing brochure but have little relevance to the real world. Our take on values is subtly dissimilar and hopefully somewhat more pragmatic.

Remember of values as the enablers to your vision statement. Don't exist afraid to be honest most how you want your people to deed and remember. 2022 and 2022 provided a good opportunity to examination a company'south values.

The companies that kept to them demonstrated a truthful reflection of how they operate, whereas companies that struggled internally may have had poorly written values, which affected the overall success of their strategic plans.

Nevertheless, it can be easy to become over-focused on strategic goals when realizing values. Outcomes affair, just if how you go almost achieving them is wrong, the outcomes themselves take chances becoming irrelevant.

Not simply that, only organizations are ultimately zip more than the sum of the people within them. The need for basic rules about how you desire those people to work together is no different from the demand for basic rules in soccer.

They exist to give your team a common purpose (scoring goals) and provide boundaries as to what people tin do to reach that purpose (no foul play).

Using the bike manufacturing case from earlier, some adept cadre values would include:

• Innovation
• Excellence
• Passion
• Accountability
• Compassion

These values reverberate the organization'due south desire to become the leading bicycle manufacturer — but not at any cost. How they get there is also of import. Staying accountable to employees, customers, and shareholders is crucial.

When y'all're ready to start creating some company values, cheque out our guide, How To Create Company Values.

Focus Areas

Your focus areas are the high-level things that you'll focus on every bit you strive towards your vision and terminal destination.

Focus areas should be tighter in scope than your vision statement merely not to the level of having any detail metric, time frame, or deadline. Post-obit our manufacturing example higher up, some proficient focus areas might include:

• Aggressive growth
• Producing nation'south best bikes
• Becoming a modern manufacturer
• Becoming a top place to piece of work

We usually suggest creating between 3 and 5 focus areas. Any fewer, and they will probably be too vague. Any more than, and well... I, for one, certainly tin't focus on more than five things at one time!

You want your people to experience empowered to come up up with innovative and creative ways to be successful. But giving them a framework to work in can exist hugely helpful.

Well-written focus areas tin can themselves be inspiring and motivational. They can help unite your organization behind a common purpose, ease tensions and encourage collaboration.

The third article in this mini-series walks through How to Write Constructive Focus Areas in depth.

Strategic Objectives

Strategic objectives represent what you lot desire to achieve, they're reasonably high level just should yet have a deadline attached.

Your strategic objectives should align with one or more of your focus areas. Typically, yous'll have between three and six objectives for each focus area.

It's here that we demand to get-go being a bit more specific for the showtime time in our journey. How specific? Let'south take a expect at an example of a well written strategic objective:

-Continue height-line growth that outpaces the industry by 31st Dec 2022

This is likewise specific to be a focus expanse. While information technology's withal very high level, information technology indicates what they want to reach and includes a articulate deadline. Both these aspects are critical to a skillful strategic objective.

Your strategic objectives are the middle and soul of your plan — without them, y'all take no programme!

The reason they're important and distinct from your projects (meet below) is that jumping straight into actions is a sure-fire mode to either (a) miss opportunities or (b) lose the connection between your actions and your vision statement.

If you're set to offset creating your strategic objectives, check out article 5 of this mini-series, 'How To Write Strategic Objectives'.

Projects

Projects are the actionable steps you volition accept to accomplish your objectives. They're near leveraging the assets you lot have.

They must be extremely specific, clearly articulate your actions, and contain a deadline. Your projects should align with at least i of your strategic objectives and describe how you volition achieve them.

Typically, you volition create multiple projects for each strategic objective.

Permit'due south take a look at an example of a well-written project continuing with our bike manufacturing visitor using the strategic objective from above:

Go on top-line growth that outpaces the industry by 31st Dec 2022.

A adept project to link to this could be:

'Expand into the fixed gear market past 31st December 2022.'

This is much more specific than the objective information technology links to, and it details what yous volition do to achieve the objective.

Projects are the layer of the strategic plan that outlines the tangible actions that people in the arrangement will take to achieve outcomes.

Another common trouble surface area for strategic plans is that they never quite get downwardly to the detail of what you're going to exercise.

It's easy to simply state "we need to grow our business," only without concrete projects, those plans volition sit down forever within their PowerPoint templates, never to come across the light of day afterwards their initial cosmos.

Projects are so important considering they connect the organizational goals with the bodily capabilities of your people and the resources at their disposal. Defining projects is a vital reality-bank check every strategic plan needs.

Larn more than well-nigh writing effective projects here.

KPIs

KPIs are how you will measure progress towards your strategic objectives. They're measurable values that show your organization's progress towards achieving primal business objectives.

KPIs should be developed in relation to a specific goal or objective. If they're not developed with a specific objective in mind, they run a risk stealing attention, time, and money from KPIs that actually assistance achieve strategic objectives.

Ideally, you'll want to include a mixture of both leading and lagging KPIs for each of your objectives.

Fundamental performance indicators are a form of communication in an organisation. They allow you to make up one's mind where you currently stand regarding your objectives.

They inform business leaders of their organization's progress towards reaching fundamental concern objectives and are key for operational planning.

If you're ready to kickoff creating KPIs, check out the sixth article in this mini-serial, How to Write KPIs - 4 Step Approach.

Hither'due south a quick infographic to aid you lot retrieve how everything connects and why each chemical element is disquisitional to creating an effective strategic plan:

To summarize:

Vision - where you want to get to.

Values - how you'll behave on the journeying.

Focus Areas - what you'll be focusing on to assist your progress.

Objectives - what y'all desire to achieve.

Projects - how you'll achieve them.

KPIs - how y'all'll measure success.

This simple approach for how to write a strategic plan avoids confusing jargon and has elements that the whole organization can both get behind and understand.

Scaling the Cascade Strategic Framework

I of the problems nosotros highlighted with other strategic models is that they often fail to effectively draw how to scale the model across multiple teams or through multiple layers of the organization.

In an ideal world, you want to have a maximum of two layers of particular underneath each of your focus areas. That means you'll have a focus area, followed by a layer of objectives. Underneath the objectives, you'll have a layer of projects and KPIs.

This works well for a single team, but what do you do if you want to implement a strategic plan beyond multiple teams, like a recruitment team under an 60 minutes squad?

Depending on how much time you want to invest in strategic planning, there are two approaches that you lot can take.

Selection 1: Create aligned cascading objectives

This approach involves just calculation lower-level objectives that link to your higher-level objectives, like this:

For each lower-level objective, you only repeat the Objective - Project - KPI structure as follows:

You tin can keep doing this as many times every bit you like, but do be aware that if you lot have a lot of layers, your strategic plan tin become quite messy.

Furthermore, the owners of the objectives towards the 'lesser' of the program are managing things that are very far 'downstream' from the focus areas they link to.

That could create an engagement trouble with people struggling to really understand how they contribute to the superlative levels of the strategic plan.

Because of these challenges, this approach is best suited to smaller organizations that only need to add together a couple of actress layers of objectives to their plan to get downwardly to the level of detail they want.

Option two: Created aligned/nested strategic plans

This approach involves creating a network of aligned strategic plans for each team within your organization. Each plan contains a set of focus areas, one single layer of objectives, each with its ain fix of projects and KPIs. Something like this:

The central to making this model successful is to ensure that the objectives of each of your lower-level strategic plans link straight to the objectives in the plan above it.

Doing so ensures that you maintain alignment throughout your organization only still allows you to cascade your strategy as deep equally you desire across a near-infinite number of people.

The other major benefit of this arroyo is that y'all'll typically run into much higher engagement levels in the strategy throughout your organization, as objective owners volition exist able to clearly see the links between the objectives they ain and the focus areas of their 'nearest' strategic program.

How To Write a Strategic Plan in 2022- Summary

Allow's take a quick await at how adopting the Cascade Strategic Framework solves the well-nigh common issues that people come across with writing a strategic plan:

• Not too complicated. Terminology is unproblematic to sympathize, and the linkages are articulate, without ever deviating from the objectives - projection - KPI 'triangle'.
• Scales easily. By linking objectives (either in a unmarried plan or across multiple nested strategic plans), the model scales infinitely without losing clarity or focus.
• Extremely flexible. The model balances the flexibility of linked layers with the minimum requirement of always having an effect (the objectives), an action (the projects), and a measure (the KPIs).
• Tangible & measurable. By incorporating KPIs directly in the model, you're forced to think conspicuously well-nigh what success looks like, and you'll ever have a relevant gear up of KPIs to runway for your strategy.

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Source: https://www.cascade.app/blog/how-to-write-a-strategic-plan

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