Written by
Chuen Seet
Before creating a strategic roadmap, it’s necessary for business leaders and strategy consultants to conduct strategic planning. Strategic planning is the process by which an organization defines its direction and organizes strategic goals, resources, and objectives to get the company moving towards the fulfillment of its strategic vision.
However, before deciding what the business needs to accomplish, how the business will go about accomplishing those things, or when the strategic plan will be implemented, business leaders have to answer a very important question: Why? Why is this strategic plan being implemented? Why is this important to the business?
By defining their strategic vision and setting strategic goals, business leaders and strategy consultants are able to show why the company is implementing a strategic plan. Knowing the why gives weight to strategic initiatives and helps mobilize the entire organization towards the realization of those goals.
A strategic vision, or strategic vision statement, is a brief document that defines where the organization aspires to be and what it wants to accomplish in the mid- to long-term future. Strategic visions are forward looking statements that outline the direction a company is heading.
As opposed to mission statements, which are often all-encompassing, lofty, and a little vague, a strategic vision statement is specific, tangible, and grounded in reality. While a mission statement might represent an ideal that a company strives for throughout its lifetime, a strategic vision provides a realizable state or measurable outcome for the company to achieve over a predefined period of time. This time period might range from 3 to 6 months for smaller initiatives to 3 to 10 years for more ambitious, long-term initiatives.
In order to be successful, your strategic vision should inspire buy-in from every level of your organization. It should align every department within your organization or member of your team in working towards the desired outcome. In order to do so, a strategic vision statement should be:
When it comes to strategic planning, creating your strategic vision is just the first step. Next, it’s important to break your strategic vision out into a list of strategic goals that outline the desired outcomes that need to be achieved in order to actualize that vision.
For instance, if your strategic vision was, To be the most recognizable and profitable furniture retail chain in the southeast, there would be a series of strategic goals that would need to be achieved along the path of realizing that vision.
In the early stages of strategic planning, you should focus on setting broad, big-picture goals. Right now, you probably lack the necessary information and structure to determine how you will accomplish these goals and on what timeline. So for the hypothetical example above, a list of strategic goals might look like the following:
Notice how each of these strategic goals contributes towards the overall realization of the strategic vision. Achieving each of these goals would have a measurable impact on improving brand recognition as well as profitability. Later in the strategic planning process, you’ll be able to translate these strategic goals into objectives, by making them SMART: Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, and Timebound. But for now, it’s important not to get too hung up on specifics.
Later on, you’ll be able to use strategic roadmapping tools in order to assess capabilities, conduct cost-benefit analysis, prioritize objectives, and organize objectives a time horizon to create a roadmap.
Now that you have a strategic vision statement and a list of strategic goals, you’re equipped to answer why it’s important for your organization to implement a strategy plan. However, defining a strategic vision and setting strategic goals are just the first two steps in a nine-step process leading up to building a business roadmap.
Continue our strategic planning series:
Jibility gives you a fast and consistent means of exposing the traceability of each initiative back to the strategic objectives. This means pet projects that sound great but don’t truly align can be identified and discarded early.
Jibility is a dynamic tool, whereby it’s easy to apply changes and see the impact on budget instantly — either within your initial workshops or when a strategic pivot needs to happen out of the blue.
