Successful organizations tend to have a well designed strategic plan. The document helps employees understand the company’s goals and encourages them to work towards achieving them. By and large, strategic planning agencies in Australia include certain elements in the strategic plans that they create for their customers, including:

Mission statement

A mission statement guides the organization by reminding owners, employees, clients and suppliers why the organization exists. When developing the strategy, the company should consider the perspectives of different stakeholders because these individuals determine the success or failure of an organization. Consultants will seek to understand where the business owner wants to be in the next five years, and what the workers visualize the company accomplishing. After all, people can only achieve what they perceive. If the company doesn’t know where it is heading, it is literally bound to fail.

Strategy development

Strategic planning agencies develop strategies to achieve both the vision and mission statements of a company. When developing the strategic plan, the agencies will ask employees of the company to test each strategy, action plan, and objective to find out if it is realistic for them. The main concern of any organization should be whether the employees have the knowledge and skill to achieve intended result. If they are unable to do what’s expected of them, the company will not be able to achieve its mission, leading to failure.

Annual goals and objectives

The agencies also attach a set of goals and objectives to each strategy. These identify what the company has to accomplish in the next five years in order to achieve their mission and vision on time. All individuals in the planning group should “own” an objective. The team member should assume responsibility of monitoring the results of the objective and reporting the progress at management meetings. The owner of the objective could be the head of the department or an employee who will be involved in the implementation process.

Bottom Line

Strategic plans of many organizations fail because employees consider them to be planning documents and not guidelines. To achieve success, therefore, agencies advice companies to use the document as a management tool. At the beginning of every month, the organization should have a meeting that includes everyone charged with implementing the objectives. They should report on what was achieved or what wasn’t. The group can also change tactics and individuals tasked with achieving various elements of the objective. This will ensure that they not only keep track of the activities, but that everyone is doing everything to ensure success.