Frequency of Strategic Planning Exercises

A strategic planning exercise typically takes four to six months. It may be a little longer or a little shorter depending on your organization and the effort put forth. With that in mind, it’s not something you want to undertake every year, but we all know the world changes and so does our business more frequently than we would like.

Updates

Updates need to be more frequent, but you cannot change everything every day. Finding a pattern for making updates (not wholesale changes) is a fantastic way to make the strategic plan more useful. Our rule of thumb is to do it with budgeting every year. You are already taking a look at your overall operations, and thus it’s a good time to update your planning side of the strategic plan (looking at the planning, projected financials, and annual performance measures sections). An update should never be making a wholesale change to your strategy. If that’s the case, a new plan is needed. When you are updating how you’re fulfilling the strategy on a daily basis, it is clear that the current plan is not functional, and a new plan is essential.

New Planning

New plans should fall under two categories. The first category is when your old plan no longer reaches your current timeframe. This means that if you wrote a five-year plan previously and you are now approaching year six then your plan is not suited to your current timeframe. The second category is sometimes harder to recognize, but a new plan should be done if your strategy changes, whether it be your mission or vision, your strategic vision, or an environmental change.

When looking at new planning, we typically recommend every three to five years unless a major, unforeseen change has occurred. Remember this process should take four to six months, so you don’t want to engage it too frequently Likewise, you should ask questions if it is taking dramatically longer (we recently discussed with a client why their previous strategic planning had taken three years) This meant that most of what was heard initially was no longer relevant before the strategic plan was completed.

Overview

What’s probably most important here is to develop a pattern. Just like budgeting every year, your organization takes a look at any necessary changes/updates to your strategic plan,and then, on a five year or so basis, makes sure the direction is still correct. By doing this, you also ensure that your strategic plan isn’t just a document that sits on the shelf collecting dust. All too often, this “shelving” of plans has been known to happen at many organizations. The annual updates build in and ensure there is time to look back and make sure that you are meeting goals year by year and fulfilling the plan. Additionally, a complete reassessment every five years makes for a great opportunity to assess how your organization operates strategically.

For assistance with strategic plan development or simply some advice on how to perform update analysis and make sure your team is staying on track, contact NMBL Strategies today.