Strategic Planning Template - Free Download

Strategic plans are crucial in helping organizations continuously grow and deliver value to stakeholders. Often referred to the art and science of planning, setting and communicating goals, successful strategies are informed by data derived from interactions with customers, vendors, communities, and other stakeholders of the organization. It embraces the intuition of members throughout the organization who are dedicated to delivering value to customers and ensuring future growth. Download the template below to develop an effective strategic plan for your organization:

Free Strategic Planning Template:

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The strategic planning template is a downloadable document which is shareable across your organization. The template includes multiple sections to ensure you have all the core elements of a successful strategic plan. Learn more about these elements below: 

Framework for a Successful Strategy:

Vision Statements

The vision statement describes the future of the organization. It reveals what the company aspires to be or hopes to achieve in the long-term. The vision statement is inspirational and motivational but also provides direction, mapping out where the organization is headed. In this regard, it serves as a guide for choosing current and future courses of action.

An effective vision statement should be concise, unambiguous, futuristic, realistic, aspirational and inspirational. It should not be generic but rather focus on outcomes specific to the organization.  

When writing a vision statement, consider these questions:

• Where are we going moving forward?
• What do we want to achieve in the future?
• What kind of future society do we envision?

Values Statements

An organization’s values statement highlights the organization’s core principles and philosophical ideals. It is used to inform and guide the decisions and behaviors of the people inside the organization and signal to external stakeholders what’s important to the company. The organization’s core values shape daily culture and establish standards of conduct against which actions and decisions can be assessed.

A values statement should be memorable, actionable and timeless. The format of the values statement depends on the organization; some organizations use one, two or three words to describe their core values while others provide a short phrase.

When drafting a values statement, some questions to consider include:

• What do we stand for?
• What behaviors do we value over all else?
• How will we conduct our activities to achieve our mission and vision?
• How do we treat members of our own organization and community

Learn more about developing core commitments such as values and vision statements here.

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Focus Areas

Focus areas can be defined as key foundational elements of strategy that help fulfill the mission and vision established by the organization. Focus areas support alignment between the organization's core commitments to key objectives, ensuring 100% coverage of objectives across focus areas.

B|G follows a continuous improvement methodology and recommends organizations following balanced scorecard framework which includes these focus areas:

• Finance:  To succeed financially, how should we appear to our stakeholders?
• Customer:  To achieve our vision, how should we appear to our customers?
• Process:  To satisfy our stakeholders, how do we enhance our business processes?
• Learning:  To achieve our vision, how will we sustain our ability to change and improve?

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Organizations may have other areas of their business that may be a crucial foundational element based on their industry and service to customers. Examples of focus areas include Risk, Community Engagement, People, etc. B|G recommends organization have between 3-6 focus areas in which they could include various strategic objectives.

Free Strategic Planning Template:

Key Objectives

An objective can be defined as a measurable result that an organization seeks to achieve within a specific timeframe. Objectives should be aligned to the mission and vision of the organization and serve as a way to create plans and evaluate performance.

Strategic objectives should be timeless goals that an organization aspires in order to fulfill its vision and mission.  To evaluate success, objectives are informed by leading and lagging metrics that serve to evaluate performance.  Organizations then set specific and time-bound targets (e.g., monthly, quarterly, yearly. etc.). Finally, objectives should have designated individual owners, who are responsible and/or accountable for collecting data and monitoring progress. Bâton believes strong objectives Include the following elements:

• Action: Provide actionable direction for team members.
• Aligned to Purpose:  Aligns to your organization’s vision, mission, and values statements (if you would like to further refine your organization’s purpose, checkout 75 of the top mission, vision, and value statements).
• Simply Stated: Simple and easily understood by members throughout your organization.
• Attainable, yet Aspirational: Attainable with the organization’s current resources, but also aspirational in order to create a collective desire for positive change.
• Measurable: Can be easily collected and are relevant to the purpose of the objective.

Learn more about creating objectives across focus areas here.

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Projects

Projects (also considered high-level initiatives) describe the actions an organization takes to achieve agreed-upon objectives. These projects should be considered "transformational" in the ability to reach the vision established by the organization and hit key measures of success.

Organizations can find it challenging to translate the vision into tangible actions take by departments and teams. Successful strategic plans include projects with clear project owners team members, measures of success, timeline, budget, what's in scope, and the expected ROI (return on investment).

KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)

KPIs provide evidence of the degree to which an objective is being attained over a specific period of time. Each KPI should describe something that can actually be counted and relate back to the strategic objective. They can measure raw numbers (e.g. # of customers), progress (e.g. % complete) or change (e.g. % increase or decrease). They can also be lagging or leading, meaning they can indicate past success (e.g. profits, revenue, expenses) or predict future success (e.g. employee engagement rate). The success of using each KPI will be dependent on how effective it is at contributing to a better understanding of what drives success at the organization.

When brainstorming potential KPIs to measure each objective, be sure to ask these critical questions:

• What measure best reflects progress toward an objective?
• Is the measure quantifiable?
• Is the measure something that is captured today? If not, what needs to be done to get the data in a regularly measurable format?
• Is the measure attainable? Can realistic targets be set?
• Does the measure tie to a specific timeline?

Learn more about KPIs and download a full list of measures here.

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Putting it All Together

Bâton has found that organizations tend to manage to ito build a strategic plan which successfully outlines how they will reach the organization's desired future state. The incredibly important, and challenging, ingredient of strategy is the ability of organizations to show lasting passion and perseverance during strategy execution. Check out 7 Tips to Execute an Effective Strategy to ensure your plans generate impact and create high performance.

Learn how Bâton Global guides clients to build a winning strategy and boost execution efficiency here.

Free Strategic Planning Template: