We know strategic planning is a lot less fun than the excitement of managing by the seat of your pants. Solid strategic planning requires time and extensive experience. MCC Workplace Solutions can help with any or all of your strategic planning steps.

• We have extensive experience in the private and not for profit sectors.
• We have developed tools and templates that walk you through each step of the process. Some steps may be as simple as filling in the blanks. Some need structured workshops to explore conflicting viewpoints and move the team towards innovative solutions.
• We ask the questions that start you thinking in strategic ways.
• We're skilled at compiling your ideas and research into concise charts, graphs and documents. We can do the tedious bits so you can concentrate on ideas.

• Where is the organization now in its life cycle?
• If no changes are made, where will the organization be in three, five, ten years?
• If changes are made, what would those changes be and what are the expected returns?

The answers to these questions may be simple, but it takes a lot of hard work to get there. Strategic planning typically involves four stages:

• Environmental scanning;
• Development of strategies, goals, objectives, and measurements;
• Aligning policies, procedures and budgets; and
• Evaluation and control.

• starting up,
• growing in complexity,
• established, or
• in need of revitalization.

• what general societal, economic, demographic, political, technological factors affect you and your sector; and
• what specific community, competitor, client or customer, employee, government, stakeholder, special interest group factors and trends affect you.

The third step in environmental scanning looks at your organization: its organizational culture, design and infrastructure, human resources management, product and services development and delivery processes, internal communications, financial control, revenue development, and information systems. This analysis examines your internal strengths and weakness.

Finally, we guide your strategic planning team in finding a strategic fit between your external opportunities and your internal strengths-and show you useful approaches that will minimize external threats and internal weaknesses.

Development of Strategies Goals, Objectives, and Measurements
How do your organization's values, vision, and mission relate to the results of your environmental scan? Will your guiding principles support your desired future? If you need to, now is the time to align your core vision and values with your mission.

Development of strategies, goals, objectives and measurements come next. Strategies fall into three main categories: retrenchment, stability, and growth. Good strategies consider the stage of the organization's life cycle and make the best use of your organization's distinctive competencies. They might include:

• diversifying products or services,
• dropping unsuccessful products or services,
• forming strategic alliances,
• outsourcing non-core functions,
• finding new markets, or
• making a significant investment in technology.

To move your whole organization forward, MCC Workplace Solutions will help you develop specific, measurable, goals and objectives aligned directly with your strategies, and complete with target dates. We'll work with you to establish methods for data collection and progress measurement (remember, goals and objectives need to be measurable!).

Aligning Policies, Procedures and Budgets
To ensure success of the strategic direction, we'll assist you in reviewing and revising your policies, procedures, and budgets so they contribute directly to achieving your new goals and objectives. Implementation also includes project initiation and management, staffing appropriately for any changes, and effective communication throughout the organization, and, possibly, beyond it.

Evaluation and Control
The final step in the strategic planning process is to measure your progress in order to take corrective action to ensure you realize your strategic plans. Evaluation occurs at three levels:

• strategic-at the organizational level,
• tactical-at the divisional level, and
• operational-at the day-to-day functional level