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Strategic Planning Must Include a Strategic Action Plan Filled with WAY SMART Goals

Written by: Leanne Hoagland-Smith

Article Overview: Strategic planning is a given for many organizations. Yet, executing or implementing a strategic business plan continues to be a challenge for many small business owners to corporate 1000 CEO’s. Possibly the answer is about creating a strategic action plan.

Strategic Planning Must Include a Strategic Action Plan Filled with WAY SMART Goals

Strategic planning is all about who does what by when. Even though this is a solid small business strategy to high level business strategy, implementing a strategic plan is a constant and consistent business issue. The reason is usually two-fold:

1. There is not a strategic action plan.
2. The SMART goal criteria are lacking.

A strategic action plan is part of the strategic plan. This simple working document contains:

1. Foundational statements of the organization – vision, values and mission
2. Critical goal categories and respective goals for each category
3. Key Performance indicators or what some call a dashboard that are monitored on pre-determined basis

An additional benefit of a strategic action plan is it helps to further build the motivation in strategic planning. When individuals can begin to see immediate results and

Many individuals in business know about the basic criteria for consistent goal achievement:

Smart
Measurable
Achievable
Realistically set hit (stretch)
Target date, time driven

These criteria have been around for many years. However with all the changes in today’s business world, workplace and workforce, the SMART criteria needs to expand to include three additional criterion.

1. All goals should be WRITTEN. By having a strategic action plan that includes all written goals helps to keep focus on the desired end results. Even repetitive goals as making 20 phone calls per day need to be written someplace within the strategic action plan.

2. All goals should be ALIGNED to the strategic plan. This is part of the planning process. Additionally, the goals need to be aligned to each employee’s personal action plan.

3. All goals need to be YOURS. Even though the strategic action plan contains organizational goals, each employee needs to own these goals. The What’s In It for Me (WIIFM) leads to the What’s In It For Us (WIFFU). Today’s workforce is far different than 50 years ago. Assembly line mentality no longer drives today’s workforce. Knowledge workers demand to know that their efforts are important.

WAY SMART goals within the strategic action plan will help in the implementation of the strategic plan. Just give it a try for 30 to 90 days and experience the results.

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