153

How to develop a strategic plan

1. Viewpoint

Alvin Toffler in The Adaptive Corporation.

"A corporation without a strategy is like an airplane weaving through stormy skies, hurled up and down, slammed by the wind, lost in the thunder-heads. If lightning or crushing winds don’t destroy it, it will simply run out of gas."

2. Quotable quote

Timothy Nolan et al in Plan or Die!

"The acid test for any strategic planning process is the degree to which it affects the ongoing behaviour of the organisation. The strategic plan needs to become the template on which organisational decisions are based… The real test of the strategic plan is the degree to which managers and other members of the organisation use it in their everyday decisions on the job. Ideally the manager will pause to consider whether a proposed solution to a problem is congruent with the organisation’s strategic plan."

3. Read further

Michael Porter, 'What is strategy', Harvard Business Review, November-December 1996, p. 62

The Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness: www.isc.hbs.edu …