A strategic plan is the roadmap that guides a business toward its long-term goals. It outlines your organization’s mission and core principles and identifies the steps required to achieve them. Most strategic plans span three to five years and focus on setting measurable objectives that make tracking progress and defining success easier.
In this guide:
How to create a strategic plan.
Let’s look at how you can bring your custom strategic plan to life following the steps highlighted below:
Step 1: Define mission, vision, and values.
At the heart of a solid strategic plan lie three key elements:
- A clear sense of purpose — the mission
- The long-term aspirations — the vision
- The core principles that guide decisions and shape company culture — the values
It’s important to review these foundational steps and ensure they remain relevant to your business goals and aspirations.
Step 2: Conduct a situational analysis.
This step involves a thorough analysis of both the internal and external environment in which your organization operates. Standard tools and techniques used for this include:
- SWOT analysis — strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats
- PESTLE analysis — political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental.
In your analysis, consider emerging trends and forecasts, such as the rapid rise and impact of generative AI and machine learning, the growing demands for sustainability, and potential economic shifts.
Step 3: Set strategic goals and objectives.
Based on the insights gained from situational analysis, the next step is to define clear, measurable, and achievable goals and objectives that align with your organization’s mission and vision. When setting goals, use the SMART goal model to ensure they are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time bound.
It’s increasingly important to ensure that goals are data-driven and reflect analytical insights, all while considering both the short-term wins and long-term impact. And, of course, as with any objectives, they should be flexible, allowing space to adapt and evolve.
Step 4: Develop action plans.
Once your goals and objectives are established, the next phase involves breaking them down into specific initiatives and actionable steps. This includes assigning clear responsibilities to individuals or teams and setting realistic timelines for completion. Given the dynamic marketing shifts from AI adoption highlighted in our annual AI and Digital Trends report, it’s crucial to emphasize the importance of flexibility and the ability to adjust these action plans as circumstances evolve.
Step 5: Allocate resources.
Effective strategic planning requires carefully allocating necessary resources, including financial capital, human talent, and technological infrastructure. Ensuring a fair, balanced workload helps support the implementation of your action plans.
Resource allocation should also consider contingency planning and the ability to reallocate resources quickly.
Step 6: Implement the plan.
This is where you start to put plans into motion, ensuring clear communication and alignment across all relevant teams and departments within your organization. Implementing strategic plans will require continuous tracking over time. Applying proven change management principles and fostering a sense of ownership among those responsible for execution are critical for successful implementation.
Step 7: Monitor and evaluate progress.
To ensure your strategic plan is on track and achieving the desired outcomes, it’s essential to establish key performance indicators (KPIs) and regularly monitor progress against these metrics. Internal priorities may change over time, and KPIs may need to be adjusted. With the technology available today, data analytics and visualization tools can significantly enhance the effectiveness of how monitoring and reporting affect strategic progress.
Step 8: Make adjustments.
Strategic planning in 2025 isn’t just a one-time exercise, but an ongoing process. Your strategic plan should be reviewed and adjusted as needed based on the performance data gathered during the monitoring phase and any significant environmental changes. This emphasizes the need for continuous improvement and a willingness to adapt plans in response to new information and evolving circumstances.
When writing a strategic plan, focus on communicating clearly and concisely using clear, accessible language. The plan should outline actionable steps, assign responsibilities, and define measurable outcomes. A well-written strategic plan is not overly complex but focuses on a few key priorities that will drive the most significant impact. To maintain its focus, it should be regularly referenced and reviewed.
Strategic plan strategies.
Several key strategies for strategic planning are gaining relevance, reflecting the need for greater flexibility, responsiveness, and a broader perspective.
- One approach gaining popularity is agile strategic planning, which moves away from traditional, rigid, long-term plans toward more iterative and adaptive methodologies. This involves breaking down a strategic plan into shorter cycles, often with quarterly or semi-annual reviews and adjustments based on new information and evolving circumstances.
Agile strategic planning emphasizes collaboration, flexibility, and the ability to pivot quickly in response to environmental changes, as opposed to strictly adhering to a pre-defined, long-term roadmap. - Customer experience (CX) is another central pillar currently shaping strategic direction. The experience of customers across all touchpoints can significantly impact engagement, which affects customer retention and business growth.
Moving forward, strategies seem to be increasingly focusing on personalization — tailoring products, services, and interactions to meet customers’ specific needs. There’s also a stronger focus on proactive engagement, anticipating these needs and addressing potential issues before they arise.
Strategic plan vs. project plan.
A strategic plan is the “how” of your project. This is different from a project plan, which focuses on the execution of “what” needs to be done. A project plan includes:
- What is required
- How it is done
- Who does what
- When tactics will be implemented
Your strategic plan, on the other hand, is not a task list. It is a high-level proposal that identifies the tools and resources you’ll use to deliver your project on time, on budget, and meet your goals. Here are some further differences between strategic and project plans:
How generative AI can aid strategic planning.
Generative AI’s ability to process and analyze vast amounts of data, identify complex patterns, and generate insightful predictions offers significant advantages for organizations. In the long term, it can help develop robust and forward-looking strategies. Currently, artificial intelligence can help size potential markets, analyze competitor behavior, and forecast the value of internal strategic campaigns.
Generative AI can enhance data and insight analysis by sifting through diverse sources of information — including market research, competitor data, customer feedback, and internal performance metrics — to uncover hidden trends and emerging opportunities.
Furthermore, generative AI facilitates predictive analytics and forecasting, enabling businesses to accurately anticipate market trends, customer demand, and potential risks. This allows for more proactive decision-making in inventory management, resource allocation, and market entry strategies.
Create strategic plans with Adobe Workfront.
Adobe Workfront empowers organizations to create actionable strategic plans. Its comprehensive suite of features — including robust scenario planning and what-if analysis capabilities, advanced resource management tools for optimal allocation, and powerful reporting and analytics for real-time performance tracking — ensures that strategic initiatives are defined and executed precisely. By centralizing work, fostering cross-functional alignment, and providing data-driven insights, Workfront transforms strategic vision into tangible business results.
Create a strategic plan with Workfront and take advantage of brand-new AI features to help propel your business forward.
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