How to Streamline Strategic Planning for Your Function

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    Build a clear plan in a rapidly changing environment.

    All corporate functions do strategic planning, but few do it well. All too often, concerns about meeting short-term targets, fear of failure and a preoccupation with operational issues overwhelm aspiration.

    This year, enterprise strategy setting is adaptive and must flex with scenario planning. Functional leaders must be equally responsive. As the pace of change and economic uncertainty make strategic planning more challenging, functional leaders must consider how to produce clearer, more effective plans more quickly.

    Streamline strategic planning to respond to adaptive strategy.

    As senior leaders reset business strategy, they’re increasingly relying on adaptive strategies that set long-term ambitions but still flex with evolving conditions. That strategy articulates what the enterprise will do to compete and succeed in its chosen markets or, for the public sector, what the agency will do to achieve its mission.

    Functional strategic plans follow, setting a roadmap of initiatives and investments and showing how the function will contribute to the enterprise business model and goals. Functional leaders must be able to create those plans quickly, focusing only on what’s material to the strategy. Streamlining puts the focus on critical assumptions, relevant metrics and the key initiatives your function needs to contribute effectively to business goals, even as they shift.

    The four core practices of adaptive strategy are to 1) start execution as early as possible, 2) respond to changes as they happen, 3) embrace and explore uncertainty, and 4) involve everyone in strategy.

    Select your function to download your step-by-step guide.

    Use the strategic planning templates and tools to save time.