Strategic Planning Tools

There are many, many strategic planning and process tools which may be applied to the strategic planning process. I am a fan of the LinkedIn group "Corporate Planning & Global Industry Segmentation." Earlier this year there was a discussion about strategic planning tools and once everyone had weighed in, the following list was the result.

I have three observations about the list.

The first is "wow", this is a great resource. Strategic Scenarios has a toolbox of approximately 24 tools we apply to specific problem areas, but this is far more comprehensive.

The second is, "where is scenario planning?" If I were to prioritize strategic planning tools, there are a few that need to fall into the top five tools and these would be SWOT, Metrics, Scenario Planning, Alignment (Individual Action Planning) and resource planning. These are the tools that support the creation and execution of the organization's Mission, vision, values, objectives and strategies (the traditional elements of a strategic plan). Scenario planning adds to strategic planning in several ways:

1) It serves as a way to flesh out the objectives in such a way that the planning team can think more holistically about what strategies to apply.

2) It serves as an advanced risk management tool; by putting risks and opportunities into a story format and developing alternative scenarios in various risk situations.

3) The development of alternative scenarios keeps the organization from thinking that there is a single future reality. In fact, the future is unpredictable and scenario planning provides a way to plan for many alternative futures and be prepared for them.

4) Scenario planning serves as a "test" for the objectives and strategies set by the planning team. By playing out how the objectives and strategies will look in a story format, planners can perform "what-if" scenarios with business outcomes in narrative format, just like they can model financial results on an Excel spreadsheet.

5) Finally, scenarios help teams to break out of "the way we've been doing it in the past" and to challenge themselves with alternative futures that take advantage of opportunities. A good scenario development process will foster creative thinking and innovation within an organization and help them break out of the box of organizational inertia.

The third observation is that strategic planning tools are only as good as the people using them. Just like a carpenter knows which tools to use in which situations, and how to skillfully apply the tool to the construction process, strategic planners need to know which tools to apply and how to effectively apply them to achieve organizational performance. Applying too many or too few tools could result in less effective planning process.

◦ 23 Ps for strategy - see Rex Buckingham
◦ 5 Ps for strategy
◦ Ansoff matrix
◦ Art of Quantum Planning - see Gerald Harris
◦ Art of the Long View see Peter Schwartz (scenario planning)
◦ Art of War - see Sun Tzu
◦ B.C.G. matrix Analysis - see Boston Consulting Group
◦ Balanced Scorecard - see Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton
◦ Barriers and profitability
◦ Blue Ocean Strategy - see Prof W Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne
◦ Chaos theory
◦ Competitive Advantage / Holistic Corporate Planning - see Porter
◦ Charting Your Company's Future by Kim & Mauborgne
◦ Company position / industry attractiveness screen
◦ Contrasting characteristics of upstream / downstream companies
◦ Crafting Strategy - see Henry Mintzberg
◦ Crossing the Chasm - see Geoffrey Moore
◦ Cultural web
◦ Discipline of Market Leaders - see Treacy/Wiersema
◦ Dynamics of paradigm change
◦ Enterprise Process Management
◦ EPISTEL - Environment, Political, Informatic, Social, Technological,
. . Economic and Legal
◦ Five Forces - see Michael Porter
◦ Force Field Analysis
◦ Four organizational cultures
◦ Four routes to strategic advantage
◦ GE-McKinsey matrix
◦ Geo-business model
◦ Integrated Business Planning using mathematical representations
◦ Integrated model of strategic management
◦ Leadership decision making model
◦ Management By Walking Around
◦ Mapping the Market, Segment by Segment
◦ McKinsey 7S Framework - see McKinsey & Company
◦ M-O-S-T
◦ Network analysis, PERT, CPA
◦ Nine Forces (Porter's Five Forces plus STEEP/PEST)
◦ Organic versus mechanistic management styles
◦ Patterns of strategic change
◦ PEST Analysis - Political, Economic, Social & Technolog'l analysis
◦ Porters Diamond
◦ Reengineering - see Michael Hammer and James Champy
◦ Related diversification grid
◦ Resource allocation at corporate level
◦ Spider Web Graphs
◦ STEER - Socio-cultural, Technological, Economic, Ecological &
. .Regulatory factors
◦ Strategic Game Board by McKinsey & Co
◦ Strategic triangle
◦ SWOT - Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats
◦ Third generation balanced scorecard
◦ Three Growth Horizons by Mehrdad Baghai
◦ Total Customer Service profit chain
◦ Total Quality Management (TQM)
◦ Toyota Management System / Production System (Hoshin Kanri)
◦ Value Chain models - see Michael Porter
◦ Winning in Fast Time - see Jack Warden