Strategic Planning Foundations

Course details

Learn how to implement a strategic planning process in your organization—one that can be repeated yearly and ensures you get input from all relevant stakeholders. In this course, Mike Figliuolo shows you how to establish and articulate your organization's mission, vision, core competencies, and strategic filters. Using these criteria, he shows how to prioritize competing initiatives, how to allocate resources to best support those initiatives, and how all of these factors combine to create a compelling strategic plan. He also shares tips on how to make your process more efficient using AI, as well as how to adapt your planning approach to fast-changing, unpredictable conditions.

Learning objectives
Define the principles of strategic planning.
Identify forces used to assess the market.
Explain how to conduct a SWOT analysis.
Articulate how to establish guiding principles and set goals.
Explain what strategic filters are used for.
Describe the steps of a strategic planning process.
Explain ways AI can support the strategic planning process.

Concepts

Introduction

Introduction to strategic planning

Before You Begin Planning

Understanding the principles of strategic planning
Avoiding major strategic planning risks
Strategic planning process - Overview and tactical needs
Strategic planning process - AI tools
Building agility and avoiding disruption

Defining the Strategic Environment

Assessing the market
Conducting a SWOT analysis
Extracting insights from a SWOT analysis

Setting Your Strategic Direction

Defining the strategic direction
Creating a mission statement
Defining the organizational vision
Refining the mission and vision
Guiding principles and goals to set strategic direction
Factoring risk and uncertainty into strategic planning

Determining How You'll Compete

Core competencies
Focusing with core competencies

Evaluating and Prioritizing Opportunities

Understanding strategic filters
Creating strategic filters
Applying strategic filters
Comparing and prioritizing initiatives
Conducting deep analysis of high priority ideas
Initiative prioritization - Drawing the line

Assessing Your Initiative Portfolio

Applying the 2x2 matrix to assess portfolio
Creating multiple diversification views
Assessing initiatives over time

Organizing for Success

Planning resources for strategic initiatives
Driving accountability
The ongoing prioritization process
Running the strategic planning process

Conclusion

Key takeaways on strategic planning