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Introduction to Strategic Planning Due Diligence

Strategic planning is a critical part of any organization’s foundations. Without a strong strategic plan, and an equally strong ongoing process to update the plan on a regular basis, any organization can easily flounder or even crash and burn.

Strategic planning is a lot of work. The process will take months, even in the most proactive organization. The ideal strategic plan is a living document, an ongoing roadmap, changing as rapidly as the organization changes. The process is really the key, not so much the end document. Every critical person must be fully engaged in the process, from the Board, to top executives, to middle management… any member of the team who needs to be involved in strategic planning. Outside constituents should also be involved, such as vendors, and of course, customers. There must be a strong commitment, and also a willingness to make changes, even in the face of disagreements from others on the team.

Here are some of the more important categories that are part of the strategic planning process, and a good strategic plan. Each of these categories will have a number of components, sometimes only a few, sometimes many, including sub-categories to better organize all the components.

• Advertising Strategy
• Brand Strategy
• Communications
• Competition
• Competitive Advantage Strategy
• Competitor Assessment
• Customer Strategy
• Demand
• Differential Advantage Strategy
• Environmental Factors
• External Environment
• Financial Aspects
• Financial Assessment
• Funding
• General
• Growth
• History
• Human Resources
• Information Systems
• Intellectual Property
• Management
• Market
• Market Research
• Market Segmentation Strategy
• Marketing administrative controls
• Marketing management
• Measurement
• Operations
• Personnel
• Physical Resources
• Plan Organization
• Plan Style
• Pricing Strategy
• Products/Services
• Projections
• Promotion Strategy
• Resources
• Resources
• Risk
• Strategy Assessment
• Value Proposition

This list is a very basic example, and is not complete, even for smaller organizations. Every organization will need to customize the categories and components for their strategic planning. Adding sub-categories and components, this list can easily run into the hundreds of components necessary for an organization to properly encompass all that is needed for an organization’s specific strategic plan and process.

Charles F. Bacon, CEO & Keeper of the Vision
charlesbacon (at) superdiligence (dot) com
Due Diligence, Inc.
www. superdiligence (dot) com