Strategic planning is a systematic process that helps organizations define their long-term goals and strategies. It ensures that everyone is working towards common objectives and that resources are allocated effectively. Our strategic planning approach focuses on three key steps: listening to your team and community, aligning your team on what matters most, and executing with transparency and accountability using OKRs (Objectives and Key Results).

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At StratSimple we think of Strategic Planning as having three key steps:
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Step 1: Listen to Your Team and Community

• Engage Stakeholders: Involve employees, volunteers, board members, and the community to gather diverse perspectives.
• Gather Feedback: Use surveys, focus groups, and meetings to understand the needs, concerns, and ideas of all stakeholders.
• Assess the Environment: Conduct situational analyses like SWOT and PESTLE to understand internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as external opportunities and threats.

Step 2: Align Your Team on What Matters Most

• Build consensus for a shared view of your reality - we have to agree on where we're at before we decide on what needs to change.
• Set Strategic Goals: Define clear, long-term objectives that align with your organization’s mission and vision.
• Prioritize Initiatives: Identify and prioritize the initiatives and projects that will help achieve your strategic goals.
• Develop Strategies: Create strategies that leverage your organization’s strengths and address weaknesses, while capitalizing on opportunities and mitigating threats.

Step 3: Execute with Transparency and Accountability Using OKRs

• Define OKRs: Set specific, measurable Objectives and Key Results that align with your strategic goals.
  • Objective: A clear, ambitious goal you want to achieve.
  • Key Results: Specific, measurable outcomes that indicate progress towards the objective.
• Monitor Progress: Regularly track and review OKRs to ensure progress and make necessary adjustments.
• Ensure Transparency: Share OKR progress with all stakeholders to foster accountability and collaboration.
• Adapt and Improve: Use the insights gained from OKR reviews to refine strategies and improve future performance.

Example of Strategic Planning using StratSimple:

1. Step 1: Listen to Your Team and Community
   • Conduct AI-interviewed surveys of clients, team members, funders and other stakeholders
   • Use StratSImple's AI powered analysis to derive themes and insights from all of the survey data
2. Step 2: Align Your Team on What Matters Most
   • Build a consensus SWOT analysis - Get's everyone on the same page about the current state
   • Diagnosis the core challenge/opportunity - what matters most to move the organization forward?
   • Identity a guiding policy to address the core challenge - how are we going to tackle this?
   • Build an action plan of key steps and measurable results in the OKR format
3. Step 3: Execute with Transparency and Accountability Using OKRs
   • Objective: Improve reading skills among elementary school students.
     • Key Result 1: Launch 5 new reading programs within the first year.
     • Key Result 2: Achieve a 15% improvement in reading assessment scores within one year.
     • Key Result 3: Train 50 volunteers to support the reading programs.
   • Regularly track progress through quarterly reports and share updates with the community.

By following these three steps—listening to your team and community, aligning on what matters most, and executing with transparency and accountability using OKRs—organizations can effectively plan and achieve their long-term goals.

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