Vital Characteristics of Good Strategic Plans

“I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable.”

Dwight David Eisenhower

The late President Eisenhower’s laconic remark expresses a cardinal tenant of effective strategy formulation: Effective planning is an unfolding process, and not merely a document or an event.

When conducted earnestly, the process produces a detailed but structured view of the strategic landscape and the forces at work in it. But the true value of the process has less to do with the deliverable (a document or report), than with exploring possible ranges of actions, while also accounting for a wide array of contingencies and alternative scenarios. Note that most of these characteristics have less to do with a plans’ particular format and more to do with its practicality and clarity.

The end-product is more like a map than a report—adaptable, fluid and informative in nature, not a two-dimensional to-do list of dictated initiatives, budgets and timelines.

Eight parameters can help in gauging the viability and thoroughness of strategic plans. These characteristics apply to specific plans such as for marketing, finance, human resources, or research and development as they do to complete business, governmental, or organizational plans. If your planning process reflects these attributes, it’s probably off to a good start.

1. Accountability—responsibility is assigned to specific people or groups for successful completion of initiatives.
2. Balance—the written plans provide guidance not only for financial decision-making but also for operational and human resources management issues.
3. Flexibility—a mechanism for regularly changing and updating the plan is built into the planning process.
4. Manageability—in-process monitoring and metrics are identified to ensure processes are working as intended, critical performance issues are being addressed, required resources have been allocated and methods of status reporting are working.
5. Prioritization—priorities and sequences are established whenever there are multiple interdependent action plans.
6. Realism—the question of what the organization can actually do versus what it would like to do is addressed rationally, even though the tone is optimistic.
7. Specificity—expected results and milestones are clearly defined, along with the specific actions for implementation and the deliverables for each step.
8. Sustainability—the plans cover a timespan sufficiently long to close performance gaps.

To the extent that these factors are in place, a plan is likely to be used and followed. To the extent they are not, the plan is probably destined for that favored hiding place of so many strategic plans the world over—a bottom desk drawer.