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Strategic Planning Framework Elements
1. The purpose of the organisation
2. Contextual analysis
3. Capability analysis
4. Setting goals
5. Programs and activities
6. Organisational infrastructure
7. Measurement of progress
8. Risk management
9. Iteration
1. The purpose of the organisation
Many different names are given to this element of the plan, including ‘dream’ and ‘mission’. It’s important that your purpose is:
Short and memorable
A very long-term aspiration. It’s OK that you may never actually achieve it
Distinctive
A description of what you want to achieve, not what you do
Exciting and inspiring
Some organisations have a ‘dream’ (of a fairer Australia, or no poverty) and a more specific ‘mission’ that outlines what the organisation is specifically setting out to achieve (‘…every Australian immigrant from a war zone finds a way to support themselves’).
It is helpful to record such important considerations as your values and principles within this part of your plan.
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2. Contextual analysis
There are many tools and frameworks that can help in analysing the context. Probably the most well known is the SWOT framework. Here the external context is summarised under the headings of opportunities and threats.
The key questions are:
Who else is working in your area and what are they doing?
What is the appetite of funders, both government and private, for the work that you are doing?
How are the specific communities within which you work responding to what you do?
How are your clients’ needs changing?
What is happening to the availability of human resources including staff, board members and possibly volunteers?
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3. Capability analysis
You also need to understand the capabilities of your organisation, in particular its strengths, so that you can build on them. If you are using the SWOT framework for doing this, it is useful to summarise your strengths and weaknesses alongside your opportunities and threats on a single page.
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4. Setting goals
On the basis of the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) analysis you need to set a clear destination for your organisation over the next three or five years or in other words, a limited number of goals. Goals are observable and concrete statements of what your organisation will achieve during the period of the plan. They are sometimes specified as SMART: Specific, Measurable (or observable), Achievable, Realistic and Timely.
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5. Programs and activities
In general, the clearer you are about your goals the easier it will be to identify and describe your programs and activities. Remember that each goal will not necessarily have its own independent set of activities to deliver it. Most organisations do a range of projects and programs which between them and together jointly or separately deliver the entire set of goals.
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6. Organisational infrastructure
If your organisation is made up of more than a single program, some thinking needs to go into the overarching organisational needs to deliver your goals including:
Staff and personnel systems
Board roles and responsibilities
Systems and processes (including IT)
Fundraising and financial sustainability
Networks and marketing
Performance management
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7. Measurement of progress
At every level of the plan you need to measure progress and keep track of whether everything is going as planned.
The risk is that you try to track too many things (every manager will potentially have their own performance indicators).
We suggest concentrating on those indicators that demonstrate progress (or lack of progress) towards the goals. Put these performance indicators in your strategic plan, with clear targets for each period of the plan (typically, every year). If goals are SMART then the indicator will generally be easy to identify.
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8. Risk management
The risk management section identifies the risks to the achievement of the plan, not the risks that the organisation faces in general. The risk management plan should cover the uncertainties in the plan and each risk should be assessed against two criteria.
1. The likelihood of the risk eventuating
2. The size of the impact on the plan if the risk does eventuate.
You will then need to create a brief plan outlining how you will address the significant risks if they happen.
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9. Iteration
The strategic planning process should not be thought of as a linear process. Strategic planning is iterative. You describe your destination and the goals and then test these against the environment. Is what you have set out in your plan logical, realistic, consistent and achievable? Usually as you discuss and test your strategic plan within the organisation, and outside it, you find that changes need to be made.
If you see the process in this way, then you can structure it to allow for this process of review and reiteration. This is even more important if the context is rapidly changing or is uncertain. For this reason more than any other, a short plan is a good plan: the bigger the document the more likely it is that people will be scared to revisit it, and the more likely that it will become outpaced by change.
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To find out more about SVA Organisational Tools contact Lisa Hagan on (02) 8004 6722.  Click here to learn more about SVA Workshops or SVA Consulting.
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