8 Key Steps for Corporate Strategic Planning

Corporate strategy is the over-reaching direction and approach of achieving a greater objective at the broadest level, applying to all parts of the firm, while also incorporating the longest time horizon. It gives direction to corporate values, corporate culture, corporate goals, and corporate missions.

There are several crucial steps on the way to a successful corporate strategy development, and they can serve as a useful guide for any corporate project.

Here are 8 Keys Steps in corporate strategic planning that would help in achieving your goals.

1. The CEO needs to lead the strategy work: The starting point for corporate branding must be the board room, which is also serving as the most important check-point during the project. The CEO must be passionate and fully buy into the idea, with a strong support and backing of the board of directors.

2. Build your own model as not every model suits all: All companies have their own specific requirements, own sets of business values and a unique way of doing things. Therefore, even the best and most comprehensive strategy models have to be tailored to these needs and requirements. Building a strategic model to emulate market responses and in-turn financial impact on the income statement and balance sheet is a very diverse subject and I will discuss it in an other post.

3. Involve your stakeholders including the customers: This is common sense, but many companies forget this simple and extremely important step. Incubating the stakeholders can and does yield high results. It reduces resistance and chances of internal sabotage. The most critical stakeholder in the whole strategy is the customers. To incorporate the view (or at least the perspective) of the actual consumer of the product to be produced as the result of the strategy exercise is of extreme importance.

4. Advance the corporate vision: The corporate strategy is an excellent channel for advancing the corporate vision throughout the company. It allows the management to involve, educate and align everyone around the corporate objectives, values and future pathway. It is the culmination of belief into practice or action. If your belief is “Quality comes first” and the corporate strategy is to find ways the product cost no matter what the effect on performance then you have a dilemma.

5. Exploit new technology: The modern technology should play a part of a critical variable in corporate strategy exercises. The technology helps to gain effectiveness and improve the competitive edge of the corporation, and hence must always be a factor when revising or creating a new strategy.

6. Create the right delivery system: This is a tricky one and differs from situation-to-situation. If the corporate strategy is to motivate people by recognizing the top performance – yet you make them dress-up as a pink bunny (the official company mascot) while other employees reach into his front pocket to get candy, I think you will miss the objectives dramatically. Yes this is an actual happening.

7. Communicate: Bring the corporate strategy to life through a range of well-planned, well-executed internal marketing activities, and make sure the overall messages are consistent, clear and relevant to the target audiences

8. Adjust relentlessly and be ready to raise your own bar all the times: The business landscape is changing almost every day in every industry. While the basic parts of the corporate strategy like vision, identity, personality and values may not change, but be ready to modify amend, and update based on the feedback from the market. The more effective you are in the course correction, the better the result of your strategy.