Your strategic plan should align everyone -- from senior executives to front-line employees -- to a common direction and goal. However, in too many organizations, strategic planning occurs only at the very top and its outputs -- often thick binders full of complex documents -- are not communicated beyond the executive team, nullifying the plan’s potential.

To make a strategic plan more actionable, there are some simple steps:

First, a thorough functional SWOT Analysis to identify key Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats, will help you discover exactly where your organization stands compared to competition, market conditions, and in light of current internal issues and opportunities. ActiveStrategy can help.

Once you know where you are, it’s easier to get where you’re going. Pull out the most critical objectives identified in your strategic planning and SWOT Analysis. Next, use these objectives to create a Strategy Map -- a simple, visual depiction of the key parts of a strategic plan, emphasizing the cause and effect relationship of the objectives.

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• Strategy Mapping
• Consulting Services for Strategic Planning & Mapping

Balanced Scorecards should be tightly aligned to your current strategic plan. The best way to achieve this alignment is to use your Strategy Map as the foundation for the top-level Balanced Scorecard. The Balanced Scorecard becomes the strategic “shorthand” that is the framework for dramatic long- and short-term results.

Find out more about Building a Top-Level Balanced Scorecard