Strategic planning training is key in ensuring the short-term and long-term success of your company through an organized effort. A strategic plan typically involves a comprehensive five-year plan and may extend beyond a decade. Because strategic planning involves integrating goals, resources and organizational structure, training helps business leaders to plan systematically.

Strategic planning courses for both business leaders and lower level employees will help the entire company better work together towards strategy, planning and implementation of shared vision and goals. Most strategic planning education and training programs cover the same basic elements of assessing external and internal factors to direct the company forward.

Get to know the strategic planning education and training basics, including the following:

1. Investigate the topics covered by short workshops and seminars.
2. Learn about strategic planning certification and coursework possibilities.
3. Cut to the essential elements of strategic planning training with mission statements and SWOT analysis.

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Look into the strategic planning training offered at corporate workshops

A great deal of strategic planning education, especially for company leadership who may not have time to enroll in a full course, comes in the form of weekend workshops and seminars. Seminar topics are usually outcome-focused, and are intended to help mobilize your business to increase productivity and efficiency by using a strategic business plan.

I recommend: Find out more about what you will learn at strategic planning two-day seminars at Center for Simplified Strategic Planning. The McCarl Group offers half-day strategic planning training seminars for family businesses, nonprofits and contractors, and lists the specific topics covered during the courses.

Get more intense training with strategic planning certification or coursework

Strategic planning coursework is a larger time commitment, and usually focuses on a specific aspect of strategic planning such as creating business goals or managing conflict within an organization. Strategic planning certification is also offered by many business schools and training facilities, and typically requires the completion of five or more courses in strategic planning and related topics.

I recommend: Learn details about course content and objectives at Flexstudy.com and the Haines Centre for Strategic Management, which both offer specific online courses in strategic planning topics. You can also enroll in the American Management Association's strategic planning certification program, which mails complete courses in book format.

Learn strategic planning education and training basics on your own

Most strategic planning education includes two main elements: developing a company mission statement and conducting a SWOT analysis of the strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats for achieving business goals. You can learn how to do these basic elements of strategic planning on your own, and educate all of your employees through basic training and sensitization.

I recommend: The One Page Business Plan offers concise tips on how to write a mission statement, suggesting the statement answer questions about why the company exists and what it provides its customers. Learn more about how to conduct a SWOT analysis with detailed explanations and diagrams at Management for the Rest of Us.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Offer all employees a simplified version of strategic planning training so that your entire company has a unified idea of the goals and future direction of your business. Basic training in strategic planning can also help employees at all levels understand their work as contributing to a larger purpose.

All companies should use strategic planning to map out their company's goals over the next 3-5 years. By receiving a strategic planning certificate or simply attending strategic planning courses, you prime yourself for success within your career.

Those who have strategic planning education and training become the leaders of a company. They are responsible for anticipating market directions and positioning the company for success in an unknown marketplace. They are also responsible for allocating resources in order to ensure that the company reaches its goals.

Strategic planning training is often a part of a broader business education. A good strategic planner should:

1. Have the ability to spot and predict trends in their field.
2. Have management experience, or business training.
3. Have a desire to continuously learn new things and keep up to date with strategic planning education and business trends.
4. Have the ability to work with people and motivate people to make changes that they may resist.
5. Have the desire to work in an unstructured environment.
   

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Receive a degree in business

A successful strategic planner has an understanding of many aspects of how to run a business. You can get this knowledge by working towards a degree in business. Obviously, the higher your degree, the more opportunities will open up for you.

I recommend: CollegeSurfing.com helps you to find local colleges in your area that offer business degrees. You can also choose to receive your education online. eLearners.com offers a list of several colleges that offer degrees in business.

Receive strategic planning certification

Many strategic planning courses offer a certification program. This strategic planning certification proves that you have the training necessary to plan for a business' success.

I recommend: Villanova University offers certificates in project management that focus on strategic planning education and training. Flexstudy.com also offers a certification in strategic leadership.

Attend strategic planning training seminars

Periodically attending seminars helps you to keep your strategic planning education up to date. Plan to take at least one course every year.

I recommend: The Center for Simplified Strategic Planning offers many seminars throughout the country. Flexstudy.com offers online strategic planning courses that are available at any time.

Ensure that all employees receive strategic planning training

Many companies find that they are more successful when all employees receive the same strategic planning training. When they do this, they can be sure that everyone is on the same page.

I recommend: The Center for Simplified Strategic Planning will design a strategic planning workshop specifically designed for your company. The Haines Center for Strategic Management offers webinars that can help your employees.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Your company may have a budget to pay for your strategic planning courses. Check with them to see if they will reimburse the cost.
• •  Have your resume professionally written to include your strategic planning training.
• •  Attending local strategic planning courses allows you to network with other business planners. This could help your business succeed.

Proper strategic planning education and strategic planning training can help ensure the adage "poor strategic planning is worse than no strategic planning" is never applied to you. With a few strategic planning courses or a strategic planning certification under your belt, you will be better equipped to help your business head in the right direction.

Strategic planning education and training can make sure you are involved in determining where an organization is going, how it will arrive to that point, and how you will know when goals have been achieved. This expertise usually has a price in the form of paid seminars, workshops, courses, etc. For those who want to budget to advance their education accordingly consider the following information about strategic planning education and training pricing and costs:

1. Strategic planning classes offered as part of university executive or continuing education classes are extremely educational but cost the most.

2. Strategic planning seminars are great places to learn and network with industry peers and usually cost less than executive education coursework.

3. Advance your strategic planning education for free by reading online newsletters and blogs.

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Pursue executive education with strategic planning courses offered by top U.S. universities

Strategic planning programs offered by top universities within their business school executive or continuing education programs are second to none. They are usually taught by subject matter experts who are well known in their field or leaders across corporate America who have led and executed strategic plans successfully.

I recommend: The University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Business School Executive Education program offers a course entitled "Implementing Strategy: Leading Effective Execution." This five-day course teaches students how to execute a strategic plan and costs less than $5,000. The University of California Berkeley's Haas School of Business Product Management program devotes an entire unit to strategic planning. The unit can be taken by itself or in conjunction with two others, with the strategic planning unit costing $3,000.

Register for strategic planning training courses or seminars

Strategic planning workshops courses are often attended by business peers. As such, they offer a wonderful opportunity to network as well as to learn more about the strategic planning process.

I recommend: The Center for Simplified Strategic Planning (CSSP) offers a two-day seminar on strategic planning. The course costs $1,895 per person, and can be attended at one of various locations nationwide. The American Management Association (AMA) offers a Fundamentals of Strategic Planning seminar that can be taken at AMA locations in select U.S. cities. This two-day course costs a little more than $2,000 for non-members, but is less for AMA members.

Subscribe to newsletters or blogs to further your strategic planning education for free

A major benefit to subscribing to online newsletters and industry blogs that focus on strategic planning is that they are frequently updated, providing you with the latest industry trends or case studies of how strategic planning is being executed in the business world. A second benefit is that these online offerings are sure to fit into anyone's budget because they are free.

I recommend: 60 Minute Strategic Plan, a planning and problem-solving system developed in 1997, offers a variety of ways to learn about its process, including a newsletter that can be subscribed to online. The Strategic Planning Thoughts Blog is frequently updated and focuses solely on strategic planning.

Any company that wants to succeed to the best of its abilities and capabilities should develop and continually update a strategic plan. Effective strategic planning helps a company identify if it’s on track and is staying focused on the path it has determined will lead to success.

If you're getting ready to develop your company's strategic plan, make your first step understanding strategic planning terminology. This guide begins with a basic definition for strategic planning and then moves on to needs assessment, benchmarking, mission statement, goals and performance measure.

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Strategic planning

Strategic planning is a continually evolving process within a company that involves decision making about its intended future outcomes, how they'll be achieved, how the company will identify the point at which it achieves intended outcomes and how it will evaluate those outcomes or performance.

I recommend: Read the in-depth article on strategic planning at the Free Management Library to learn about the process of strategic planning and how to conduct it.

Needs assessment

A needs assessment is a process identifying discrepancies between what should be and what are the current conditions..The resulting gap between the two represents what the company and its employees still need. A needs assessment is a valuable tool within the strategic planning process that helps focus a company and prevent waste of valuable company resources like people, time and money.

I recommend: For examples and more information on the significance of, barriers to and how to build and execute a needs assessment, read the community guide for needs assessments and strategic planning put out by Ohio State University.

Benchmarking

Benchmarking is a process used to compare specific performance measures of one company's organizational performance against other company's performance. The purpose of using benchmarking is to improve performance through the implementation of best practices identified in the benchmarking process.

I recommend: Learn more about the steps required for effective benchmarking from the American Society for Quality website. You can also click on the links above the text for a brief overview of benchmarking and links to more benchmarking resources.

Mission statement

In strategic planning, a mission statement is a brief but concise statement describing a company's intentions, its philosophy and its basic purpose.

I recommend: Read more about the importance of and how to craft an effective mission statement in the Chief Learning Officer online magazine article.

Goals

A significant portion of the strategic planning process calls for documented goals, measurable statements of specific organizational performance achievements that, if reached, would indicate success for the organization. Another common term for goals is targets.

I recommend: Learn more about effective goal setting by reading Energy Star's approach to goal setting. Click on the three links within the text for even more information.

Performance measure

Think of strategic planning as macro and performance measures as micro. Performance measures are the baby steps that get a company to its goals; they're yardsticks, or standards, a company uses for measuring progress toward its goals and objectives. Performance measures are also strategic performance measures, output measures, tactical performance measures and outcome measures.

I recommend: Read more about performance measurement on the University of North Texas website.