Strategic Planning Solutions

Everyone talks about planning or strategy, but rarely both. Ignoring their link makes both weaker, not stronger. A plan is the how. Strategy defines what and why. There's no doing one without the other. Strategy comes first and must be rock-solid before planning. Too many leaders jump straight to "how" without nailing "why." 70% of your time should be on strategic thinking, and 30% on planning. And they should be done consecutively If you're doing it right. To be successful at both, you have to understand their differences. I built a framework to bridge that gap. Here's the elements of strategy and planning in eight steps. STRATEGY: Step 1: Define the Arena - Where will you compete? - What game are you playing? The competitive dynamics - What's your aspiration? The measurable outcomes Step 2: Competitive landscape: - Who are the players and what are their moves? - Market forces: What trends, disruptions, and shifts create opportunity? - Internal capabilities: What are your unique assets and competencies? Step 3: Choose Your Approach - Where will you play? Select specific battles you can win - How will you win? Your differentiated value proposition - What won't you do? The deliberate choices to focus your resources Step 4: Challenge assumptions: - What must be true for this strategy to work? - Stress test scenarios: How does your strategy perform under different conditions? - Validate differentiation: Why can't competitors easily replicate your approach? PLANNING: Step 5: Break Down the Strategy - Strategic pillars: 3-5 major themes that support your strategy - Key initiatives: The big bets and programs that advance each pillar - Success metrics: Leading and lagging indicators that measure progress Step 6: Sequence and Resource - Timeline: Logical sequence of initiatives with dependencies mapped - Resource allocation: Budget, people, and assets assigned - Quick wins: Early victories that build momentum and credibility Step 7: Build Execution Systems - Governance structure: Decision rights, meeting cadence, escalation paths - Progress tracking: Dashboards, reviews, and course-correction - Communication: How strategy translates through organizational levels Step 8: Launch and Adapt - Implementation sprints: Break execution into manageable phases - Learning loops: Regular assessment and strategy refinement - Cultural alignment: Ensure behaviors and incentives support direction The Integration Imperative Strategy without planning is wishful thinking. Planning without strategy is busy work. The sweet spot is when both work together. Master this framework, and you transform your team from someone just creating plans into a team that drives strategic planning. ----------- Please share your thoughts in the comments. Repost if you feel this will benefit your network. Follow me, Beverly Davis, for more strategic finance insights.

Good strategic workforce planning is different from operational planning... ...because it looks much further ahead to determine what kind of workforce is needed to deliver the company’s long-term strategy. It can be a valuable and natural extension of the business strategy that yields a major competitive advantage, positioning a firm for sustained growth and innovation, no matter the changes to come. Key takeaways on the four principles to achieve that: 💡 It is future-back, not today-forward - the best leaders take a future-back approach—they envision the distant future and then build a plan to achieve it. They understand that good strategic workforce planning often enters an uncomfortable space where some aspects of the “how” are unknown. 💡It is uneven - Successful strategic workforce planning often involves focusing differentially on a few job families—groupings of roles with reasonable skill overlaps. The best plans focus exclusively on large or scarce workforce populations that expect to see change. 💡It is learning-based - leaders can guard against incorrect assumptions by making the plan easily adaptable and updating it each year based on what they’ve learned. They will watch carefully for the right signposts and distinguish between offsetting forces (e.g. leaders might make assumptions around increasing headcount due to business growth and decreasing headcount from automation productivity gains) 💡 It is simple enough to be repeatable - When leaders make the workforce plan too granular, it becomes a bureaucratic, wasted effort that the business resents. The best processes are tied to annual strategic planning. They feel like a light addition to thinking through the strategy’s people implications. Overall: A good strategic planning thoughtfully assesses both human and financial capital. HR teams can help the business define the future at the job family level in the same way that finance supports forecasting major P&L and capital lines. #workforceplanning #strategy

Across industries, clients are sharing with me that something quiet, yet significant, is unfolding in boardrooms: strategic planning is being fundamentally rethought, not just refreshed. Two signals are driving the shift: 1️⃣ Corporate Restructuring Is Accelerating Kraft Heinz’s decision to split into two companies is just one recent example. We're seeing more leadership teams acknowledge that legacy structures built for scale may now be barriers to growth: nimble entities are far more adaptable in uncertain times. In my own practice, I’m currently working with a large-scale healthcare executive client reorganizing around service-line profitability (not geography), and a fintech firm exploring spinouts to unlock value in client-driven capabilities. Clarity is the new currency and leading strategy discussions. Exclusionary growth-oriented strategies are passe. 2️⃣ Capital Markets Are Opening Back Up Another observation is that IPO momentum is returning. Axios recently reported up to 60 IPOs are expected before year-end. Klarna, Gemini, and others are moving forward, and even mid-market firms are reevaluating M&A plans. One client postponed a deal this summer, not because of funding obstacles, but to sharpen their investor story in light of the competition. The most impactful shift? Strategic planning itself is being rebuilt. Traditional planning models are losing trust and relevance. In today’s politicized and noisy environment, many of my clients are curating their own data ecosystems. Some have added “noise filters” to adjust for narrative manipulation. Others are shortening cycles from annual to rolling 6–9 months. Here are 3 practices I’m seeing among forward-looking orgs: ✅ Scenario Loops over Static Models Dynamic updates based on volatile indicators (commodities, regulation, consumer trust) guide real-time adjustments. ✅ Strategy + Structure Are Now Linked One tech firm redesigned its org chart during its strategy retreat, not 6 months later. ✅ Investor Storytelling Is Part of Planning Especially for firms near funding or IPO, strategic planning now includes a messaging track. My O&G CFO client called it their “Investor GPS.” As you prepare for your next planning cycle, ask: ·       Is our structure aligned for where we’re going, not just where we’ve been? ·       If the capital window opens, are we ready? ·       Are we telling a story the market believes? In 2026, strategy is more abut being directionally clear, structurally agile, and ready to move. #ExecutiveLeadership #StrategicPlanning #CapitalMarkets #IPO #CorporateRestructuring #2026Strategy #BoardLeadership

“You must forget the daily problems to build a strategic plan.” But what if those daily problems are also the plan? S&OP (Sales and Operations Planning) promises an end-to-end approach, aligning supply chain strategy with operations. It’s necessary. But here’s the problem: Strategic plans rely only on aggregated data, blind to the ERP interdependencies that drive execution: • Open sales orders depend on production orders. • Deliveries are tied to invoices. • Invoices depend on accurate credit limits and payment terms. Without addressing these transactional realities, the plan remains disconnected from execution. Does this mean you abandon strategy? No. But it means you need both: 1. A strategic plan built on future goals. 2. An operational framework that prioritizes and resolves 𝘾𝙖𝙨𝙝 & 𝘾𝙪𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙧 𝘾𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡 𝙗𝙤𝙩𝙩𝙡𝙚𝙣𝙚𝙘𝙠𝙨 in real time. Forget either one, and you’re stuck: • Focus only on the big picture, and daily 𝘾𝙖𝙨𝙝 & 𝘾𝙪𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙧 𝘾𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡 𝙗𝙤𝙩𝙩𝙡𝙚𝙣𝙚𝙘𝙠𝙨 derail execution. • Fix only today’s problems, and tomorrow’s vision disappears. The Answer? Build a Two-Way Bridge. 👉 ➝ Use S&OP for strategic alignment and capacity planning. 👉 ➝ Empower teams with tools like the 𝘿𝙖𝙞𝙡𝙮 𝙒𝙤𝙧𝙠 𝙈𝙖𝙣𝙖𝙜𝙚𝙧 to resolve operational bottlenecks at the frontline. 👉 ➝ Make ERP interdependencies part of your improvement plan — not an afterthought. Strategy and execution aren’t enemies. They’re partners. Success comes from bridging both, so the perfect plan meets reality, and reality shapes the perfect plan. #SOP #SupplyChain #Strategy #Execution #Bottlenecks

An Advancement Plan That is Truly Strategic Most organizational strategic plans are not strategic so it's no wonder that the same is true for the advancement plans produced by those organizations. A strategic plan is not a projection of what we want or what we hope to achieve; it is the means by which we relate our aspirations to societal hopes and needs. It is not about what others should do for us but what we intend to do for others. A nonprofit cannot be more strategic without defining how it intends to better serve - either larger numbers of people or the same cohort of people in more helpful ways. A fine example of truly strategic advancement plan is the one produced under the direction of Annalisa Holcombe, senior vice president of advancement at Western Governors University (WGU). Her plan lays out fundraising objectives for each of the schools and colleges within the University, with each goal tied to a societal imperative, as in: COLLEGE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: Problem: Lack of BHI2+ women (less than 3%) in national tech talent and leadership pipelines. Solution: The College of IT wants to be the leading institution of advancing equity in access and attainment for underrepresented (BHI2+) women in the tech industry. LEAVITT SCHOOL OF HEALTH Problem: National shortage of nurses across U.S. is at dire levels. Solution: The Leavitt School of Health will expand and diversify the U.S. nursing pipeline with prelicensure scholarships and clinical simulation labs to educate more than 13,000 students and provide 4,800+ more newly qualified nursing graduates to the workforce by 2027. SCHOOL OF BUSINESS Problem: Occupations in design and communication fields will grow 16.9% and produce 3.27M new jobs from 2022-2032, yet universities are failing to prepare graduates with the business acumen needed to optimize the value and impact of their creative design and communication skills. Solution: An interdisciplinary approach to skill development and a learning experience infused with employer connections is needed to meet the evolving requirements of businesses.  These are just snapshots of the opening paragraphs of each section in her larger plan, which covers the aspirations of all key units within WGU - AS THEY RELATE TO SPECIFIC SOCIETAL NEEDS AND OPPORTUNITIES. Unlike so many advancement plans, it is not about raising more for more's sake or raising money to fill buckets or support pillars. It is a great example of a plan that demonstrates how people can give through WGU to achieve significant, sustainable societal impacts - not just to the organization as so many continue to do.

The future is shifting—is your 2025 plan ready for it or just recycling past goals? As we dive into strategic planning for 2025, I’ve noticed many clients primarily focusing on lessons from last year, tweaking previous targets slightly, but often overlooking the need to zoom out and take in the bigger picture. 🌎 The world today is vastly different from a year or three years ago. Political climates have shifted. Interest rates have fluctuated. Access to capital has evolved. Hiring trends have transformed. It’s essential to step back from the immediate data and look at the broader business landscape that influences your industry. 😳 Leave room for the unexpected. While it’s crucial to set 3-5 clear KPIs that align and engage your entire team, consider these scenarios: ✔️ What if an acquisition opportunity arises? Is your team stretched so thin that they couldn’t possibly take on new challenges? ✔️ What happens if you lose a few key employees? Do you have a strategy to safeguard institutional knowledge and maintain momentum? ✔️ What happens if you lose a couple of your largest clients? Do you have a plan to mitigate the impact on revenue and operations? ‼️Annual strategic planning isn’t just about setting goals—it’s about identifying your ultimate objectives, defining the metrics for success, and mapping out the necessary actions to achieve them. Once those are in place, ask yourself: 🤓 Do we have the right people to execute? 💯 Do our employees have the skills and desire to meet these targets? ⏳Can we grow our talent in time, or do we need to bring in new expertise? ✅ Equally important, consider how your team will need to collaborate across functions to reach these goals and identify potential risks or organizational barriers that could hinder progress. 🫥 Strategic planning means brainstorming various scenarios, even difficult and costly ones, and developing plans to address them. ⚠️ Bringing in an external consultant can elevate this process. 💡 A good consultant can challenge your assumptions, offer new perspectives, and uncover hidden biases. 💡 They can amplify your efforts, helping you build an accountability framework that ensures the responsibility for execution is shared across your team—not just resting on your shoulders. ⚡️Take this opportunity to plan boldly, prepare for the unexpected, and set your team up for a successful 2025. #strategicoffsite #businessretreat #leadershipoffsite #culturecrafters

How is your organization proactively navigating the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world we are in? The “HR Guide to Scenario Planning” from McLean & Company enables organizations to adopt a proactive mindset to navigate uncertainty. ✴️ Few organizations follow structured and disciplined scenario planning. ✴️ Barriers prevent organizations from conducting structured scenario planning, such as the practice’s complexity and required investment, lack of expertise, focus on risks over opportunities, perceived lack of value, and workload and capacity issues. ✴️ Confusion remains around how scenario planning is integrated into the strategic planning process and how it relates to other strategic methodologies, including business continuity planning and contingency planning. Critical Insights from McLean & Company: 👉🏿Scenario planning goes beyond risk mitigation and preparing for worst-case scenarios. 👉🏿Proactively identifying environmental trends, developing scenarios, and preparing next steps enables organizations to capitalize on potential opportunities while minimizing risks in an uncertain future. Impact and Result: ✴️ Improved ability to proactively identify internal and external trends, develop scenarios, capitalize on opportunities, and identify risks. ✴️ Enhanced resilience, equipping organizations to compete and avoid competitive disruption. ✴️ Greater organizational collaboration and agility by bringing together leaders and other key players to align strategic thinking and develop flexible action plans for future scenarios. Acknowledgement: McLean & Company #chro #ceo #humanresources

Strategic planning - demystified Here is how to approach it: Having led FP&A teams for more than a decade at P&G, Unilever, and Squarespace... And having taught strategic planning to over 500 finance professionals (including teams at Google, Merck, and Lowe's).... Here is my blueprint for a strategic plan. The long-range plan is the financial representation of a company's strategy. It’s also called the Strategic Plan. The goal is to help senior executives make high-level decisions and serve as a starting point for the annual budget. 📌  What’s included in a strategic plan: 1. Executive Summary 2. Vision and Mission Statements 3. Strategic Goals and Objectives 4. Market Analysis 5. SWOT Analysis 6. Financial Projections 7. Risk Management 8. Performance Metrics 9. Review and Update Mechanism - Refer to the Infographic for details of every step - 📌 Roles & Responsibilities: The CEO and CFO prepare the long-range plan, typically with support from the FP&A team. These plans are prepared top-down without asking the department heads to prepare a detailed bottom-up exercise. 📌 Planning Techniques: Companies tend to use time series analysis combined with high-level driver-based planning and expert judgment. Which of these recommendations do you follow? Comment below. -Christian Wattig P.S.: Subscribe to my newsletter for more insights about FP&A at https://www.fpaprep.com/f

You’ve all heard the advice: During strategic planning, you need to prioritize. But how do you *actually* do that? There are two common approaches I use (I'll share them below!). I'm thrilled to share we successfully applied Approach 1 at our sustainability planning retreat yesterday. It helped us prioritize in an objective, transparent way. . APPROACH 1: Criteria-based decision-making for prioritizing. ⮕Useful for new programs, when there aren’t enough pilot projects to have tested what works and what doesn’t work. ⮕Have the whole project team develop the criteria together. ⮕First, use the criteria to help you develop initial draft priorities that are focused on factors important for your organization’s success – and your impact. ⮕After you’ve developed a list of draft priorities, you can assign numerical scores to each priority and for each criterion. This results in an aggregate score per priority that can be used for ranking importance. ⮕ Finally, based upon ranking (combined with some group discussion) you can narrow your total number of priorities. . APPROACH 2: Consensus-based approach for narrowing strategic priorities. ⮕ People get nervous about consensus! But I have seen this work time and time again, in the context of a well-designed planning process. ⮕Even in a consensus-based approach, it’s still common to have one final decision maker who approves the goals (most often the executive director). 🔔Stay tuned, new blog coming later this week to share more on this approach! ________________________________________________ Hi, I'm Elizabeth, Environmental Economist with Sustainable Economies Consulting, LLC. We help organizations gain clarity and have more impact through strategic planning, community engagement, and economic analysis. We're proud to partner with many small firms, including Hannah Tyler, MPA with Tyler Tactics Consulting.

Interactive planning, developed by Russell L. Ackoff, revolutionizes traditional problem-solving in organizations by addressing interconnected issues, or ‘messes,’ holistically. Disillusioned with the technique-driven focus of operational research, Ackoff promoted participative and systemic approaches. This method involves diverse stakeholders in a collaborative redesign process, treating problems as interconnected systems rather than isolated issues. Ackoff argued that solving problems individually often leads to short-term success but long-term failure due to new issues arising. Interactive planning represents a shift towards a systemic worldview, emphasizing root cause analysis and collaborative innovation. It is particularly relevant in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world, where traditional methods may fall short. Ackoff’s ideas laid the foundation for Problem Structuring Methods and influenced the systems thinking community globally. This approach, known for its adaptability, fosters sustainable competitive advantage through stakeholder engagement and intellectual asset utilization, providing a sense of security and confidence in its applicability. In summary, interactive planning addresses complex organizational challenges by embracing complexity, encouraging participative problem-solving, and fostering innovation through a systemic lens. It continues to shape systems theory and organizational development today. #systemsthinking #designthinking #Strategicplanning #changemanagement #complexproblemformulation https://lnkd.in/er8V3eei