Strategic Planning Consulting

LRI guides organizations through a collaborative process that brings stakeholders together to create a detailed strategic plan. We:

• Engage important stakeholders to assess your organization’s current position and identify key trends.
• Design planning processes that stimulate thinking about the future.
• Develop and refresh purpose, vision, and core values.
• Facilitate decisions about priorities for change.
• Translate your thinking into a clear, usable strategic plan.
• Help you determine how success will be measured.
• Build organizational support and buy-in for the plan.

Our expert facilitators guide the conversation by defining the desired outcomes, ensuring that everyone’s voice is heard, asking relevant questions, facilitating consensus, and summarizing the conclusions reached.

View our six rings strategic planning model and strategic planning case study.

Example Clients: California State Auditor, California’s Department of Managed Health Care, Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz), University of Southern California, WellSpace Health, Sacramento Tree Foundation. View Examples of Client Experiences

What is involved in strategic planning?

The following chart visualizes the process:

Specifically, here’s what’s involved:

1) Strategic planning involves first looking objectively at your organization’s current performance and assessing where the opportunities are to achieve greater impact.

This is typically where a S.W.O.T. analysis comes in handy, or a trends analysis. These assessments need to be data-driven. You can’t simply rely on opinions and “urban myths” to draw the right conclusions. As issues are identified, you need to keep asking: What data do we have and what does it tell us? How significant is this problem relative to our competitors or peers? What is within our power to control?

2) Strategic planning involves developing recommendations and making decisions about strategic change.

For example, what could we do that would have a long-term impact on our strength as a company or organization? Key questions include what outcomes you’re trying to achieve, how to achieve higher levels of impact, and how you would measure success.

3) Strategic planning involves developing a strategic plan.

The plan should define specific goals and objectives, how to achieve those goals and objectives, how resources will be applied to achieve those goals – and how to measure whether the intended outcomes are being achieved.

4) Strategic planning involves figuring out the ongoing process to implement your plan.

This includes monitoring your measures of success, following up on action steps, and determining whether your plan is achieving the intended results. This is often where a strategic planning process falters – and why the commitment to meet and track the plan on an ongoing basis, and adjust course accordingly, is so important.

There’s obviously a lot more to it than these four steps. But that’s the gist of strategic planning. Done well, it will vastly improve your organization’s sense of direction and provide much-needed direction. Done poorly and it will be an exercise that people are reluctant to do again – much to the long-term detriment of your organization.

How do we get started?

To get the strategic planning process started contact us online, email an RFP to [email protected], or leave a message at (800) 598-7662.

Leading Resources, Inc. contracts with public and private sector clients of various sizes. For the public sector, LRI contracts with the state and local governments as a part of the California Multiple Award Schedules (CMAS).