Is it Time to Review Your Strategic Plan?

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During my seminars on strategic planning, I mention that in most cases, strategic planning should be a revolving 1-year process. That means that every year the senior leadership should accomplish the planning process and adjust as necessary. The exception is organizations in which senior leaders find themselves in a position where emergency actions must be taken to save the organization or maybe stay out of jail. In that case, a six month cycle is better time frame.

The question I’m sometimes asked is why a 1-year cycle when many business plans are based on a 5 year cycle. It’s a valid question. Let me explain.

The strategic plan is a basic document that defines why the organization exists, what it does, and how it does it. To do that, it must stick with the basics.  It’s important to understand what the strategic plan is not. It is not a business plan, though it is an essential part of a business plan. It is not a marketing plan, though the marketing plan should be based on the strategic plan.

The organization will change over the course of a year and the plan must be able to change with it. While most parts of the plan will not change much, some will. A strategic plan that is not current will not be effective.

All this is not to say that the organization should have only 1 year goals. Quite the opposite. When reviewing the plan, the leadership team can remove those goals which have been completed and review those that are still in progress. It’s possible that a change over the last year has made a goal less important, or maybe it has become impossible to accomplish. It’s better to identify this than let the goal just sit there and fester. But, if a goal is still valid, but incomplete, there is no reason to change it.

Strategic planning should be a fairly short process. I usually accomplish the initial plan in 3 or 4 days because I’ve found when the process drags on longer than that, it can easily be overcome by events and never completed. When the initial plan is revisited a year later, the process is even shorter, as many of the details will not change that much. Therefore, this annual plan review can be accomplished without the great expenditure of time and effort that would be required if the plan was reviewed and revised on a 5-year basis.

If your strategic plan is more than 1 year old it’s time for a review.