Strategic Planning
“Strategic Planning is a process by which we can envision the future and develop the necessary procedures and operations to influence and achieve that future.”
- Clark Crouch
“Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.”
- Alan Lakein

Strategic Planning

Entrepreneurs, executives, and leadership groups are charged with the responsibility of ensuring the future growth and viability of their organization. Their leadership is necessary to identify direction; quantify growth & improvement goals; determine priorities; build & strengthen the core competencies; and craft initiatives that will measurably move the organization to the next level of performance.

Our consulting experience with a wide range of industries, businesses and associations enables us to design & facilitate a strategic process most suitable for your culture, planning experience, and desired outcomes.

Read a client's personal recommendation of Concord's strategic planning services.

Strategic Planning Process

The ability to set and implement business strategy is the key skill of leadership - it determines everything else that happens within the organization. Leaders must learn the key elements of strategic thinking and strategic planning for both themselves and their organization: how to determine key strategic objectives, how to plan, and how to organize resources to achieve objectives.

Strategic planning is a process that extracts out of the minds of people who run the organization their best thinking about what is happening in the business, what is happening in the environment, and how to position the organization in view of those variables. This then helps them to make vital choices, such as which products or services to pursue and not to pursue, which markets to seek and not to seek, and which customers to offer and not to offer our products or services to. It enables management to position the organization in order to survive and prosper within a constantly changing environment.

Any organization, through its leaders, can become more skilled at planning for both the expected and unexpected by implementing a strategic planning and management process that includes the following:

  1. Developing a Vision - a picture of a preferred future state, a description of what the organization would like to be some years from now. The Vision provides the context for designing and managing the changes that will be necessary to reach those goals.
  2. Evaluating and analyzing your current strengths & weaknesses and how they will help, or hinder, your ability to achieve your Vision.
  3. Determining and committing to specific objectives in key organizational areas from Sales to Engineering to Human Resources to I.T. that measurably move the organization towards your Vision.
  4. Understanding your “corporate culture” and its importance in achieving your goals.
  5. Preparing Strategic Action Plans and assigning accountability for implementation.
  6. Initiating annual updates and on-going monitoring processes to make necessary adjustments as conditions change.

Contact us to discuss how a strategic planning process could serve your organization. We are able to quickly define an appropriate process that meets the organization's needs, budget, and time availability.

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