Strategic Planning

What is strategic planning, and how can it benefit your organization?

Strategic planning is the ongoing organizational process of using available knowledge to document a business's intended direction.

It's used to:

• Prioritize efforts,
• Effectively allocate resources,
• Align shareholders and employees on the organization's goals, and,
• Ensure data and sound reasoning back those goals.

Strategic planning benefits

Vision. It can create a single, forward-focused vision that can align your company and its shareholders. By making everyone aware of your company's goals, how and why those goals were chosen, and what they can do to help reach them, you can create an increased sense of responsibility throughout your organization.

Quality Decision-Making. Strategic planning helps to draw attention to preferences and flaws in reasoning. Our biases often influence our decisions, and taking part in the strategic planning process forces us to examine and explain why we're making each decision and back it up with data and evidence. This can help to combat cognitive biases such as the recency effect, Occam's razor bias, and inertia bias, to name a few.

Communication & Collaboration. Strategic planning helps to improve communication and collaboration within the organization. By involving various teams and departments in the planning process, everyone can better understand the overall strategy and how their role fits into it. This can lead to improved communication and collaboration and increased employee engagement.

Success. Finally, strategic planning can help increase your organization's chances of success. By setting clear goals and objectives and developing a plan to achieve them, you can increase the likelihood of success. It's also important to regularly review and adjust the plan to ensure it remains relevant and effective.

How SMS Consulting can help

SMS Consulting can help organizations through the strategic planning process of defining an organization's direction and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this direction. It involves setting goals, analyzing the competitive environment, and identifying external and internal factors that may affect the organization. The strategic planning process includes:

Defining the organization's purpose and vision: This helps to establish the objective and guiding principles of the organization.

Conducting a SWOT analysis: This involves identifying the organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Setting goals and objectives: These should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART).

Developing a strategy involves deciding on the actions the organization will take to achieve its goals and objectives.

Implementing the strategy: This involves putting the strategy into action, including allocating resources and coordinating the efforts of different departments and teams.

Monitoring and reviewing progress: This involves regularly checking in on the strategy's progress and making adjustments as needed.

In conclusion, effective strategic planning requires a significant investment of time and effort, and it is important to continually reassess and adjust your plans as necessary. By gathering input from a diverse group of stakeholders and actively combating biases in decision-making, you can set your business on the right track and develop a robust and agile strategy aligned with your organization's goals and key performance indicators. By remaining flexible and prepared to pivot as needed, you can ensure that your strategy evolves to meet your business's changing needs and challenges.

Some of our work:

> University of Hawai'i Strategic Plan 2023-2029

SMS Consulting is a Native Hawaiian and woman-owned subsidiary of SMS, led by Faith Sereno Rex. SMS works closely with clients to develop strategic plans that incorporate both quantitative market analysis and forward-thinking, future-first strategies. By using foresight and anticipating potential future challenges and opportunities, we can help clients to stay ahead of the curve and position themselves for long-term success. Our team of experienced consultants is dedicated to helping businesses succeed through these services, and we are committed to providing the highest level of support and guidance to our clients. Contact us today to learn more about how SMS Consulting can help your business achieve its goals.