STRATEGIC PLANNING

QUALITY TOOLS
Strategic planning

Description of Strategic planning:

It is a systematic approach to defining long-term business goals and planning the means
of achieving them. Strategic planning is a process by which organizations define their
long-term goals with respect to quality and customers, and integrate them – on an equal
basis – with financial, human resources, marketing, and research and development goals
into one cohesive business plan which is then deployed throughout the entire
organization. Strategic planning has evolved over the past decade to become an integral
part of many organizational change processes, like Six Sigma or Operational Excellence.
This tool helps examine how an organization set strategic directions and how it develops
key action plans. Strategic development and strategic deployment are two key inputs to
strategic planning. Strategic development focuses the organization’s resources on the
activities that are essential to increasing customer satisfaction, lowering costs and
increasing shareholder value. The deployment process includes the day-to-day, month-to-
month activities that link quality improvement activities, re-engineering and quality
planning teams to the organization’s business objectives.

When to use the Strategic planning:

Most organizations have a vision and mission statement. In-order to effectively realize
organizational objectives, they must be integrated and aligned with corresponding
assignable activity to meet these goals. It facilitates deployment of these goals throughout
the organization. It guides organizational leaders to make sound strategic choices and
prioritize the organization’s focus and other changes activities.
Benefits of Strategic planning:
It provides clarification to goals. The planning process forces transparency and eliminates
ambiguity.
It helps make goals achievable.
It creates the framework for organizational breakthrough and competitive advantage.
The monitoring process helps make goals achievable.
Chronic wastes are identified and removed through the improvement process.
It keeps organizations aligned with its customers, mission and vision.

How to use the Strategic planning:

Once a long term goal has been established, strategic planning enables it year by year to
create an annual business plan, which includes the necessary annual goals, resources and
actions needed to move towards the goals. The major goals are supported by lower level
goals, projects, etc. Start with filling out the hoshin planning template. See example of a
completed matrix fig 1 below. It begins at the center with vision and mission statement.
Scenario planning tool could be deployed to assist with vision creation. This particular
matrix flows from center down and clockwise. Improvement goals are aimed at creating a
breakthrough in performance of a product or process by focusing on the shareholder,
customer and supplier. The voice of the customer is incorporated and aligned to the plan.

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Strategic planning model:

Vision Mission Policy Values

D
Define: Key strategies strategic goals
E
P
L
O Annual goals
Y
M
E Implementation
N
T

Review and audit

The systematic or structured approach must include the following:

A provision of rewards: Rewarding the right performances against set goals.

Universal participation: Involvement of every employee at various levels.
A common language: Key terms are precisely communicated across the board.
Training: Company-wide training.

Deployment plan: Turns vision into actions and distributes throughout the organization
with assignment of roles, responsibilities and resources. The vision must be broken apart
and translated into successively smaller and specific units. Here are typical categories.
Vision – Key strategies (3-5yrs) – Strategic goals (2yrs) – Annual goals (1yr) -
Initiatives/Projects (<1yr) etc.

Tips on use of Strategic planning:

Vision: A desired future state of the organization or enterprise. The ultimate goal of the
organization may take 5-10 years to achieve.
Mission: The purpose or reason of the organization’s existence. It usually states what
they do and who they serve.
Activities not aligned with the organization’s strategic goals should be changed or
eliminated.

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Juran (1988) has stated, “You need participation by the people that are going to be
impacted, not just in the execution of the plan but in the planning itself. You have to be
able to go slow, no surprises, use test sites in order to get an understanding of what are
some things that are damaging and correct them.”

Application of Strategic planning:

In the integration of “quality and customer driven” methods with strategic planning,
organizations have chosen different methods for this process. Some use the Japanese term
“Hoshin Kanri” and a variety of modification includes Hoshin planning, policy
deployment, strategic quality planning or strategic planning. Regardless of the tools used,
the main idea is the integration of major change initiatives into the strategic plan. The
tools used to facilitate generation of an effective strategic planning includes: Affinity
diagram, Interrelationship, diagram, prioritization matrices, X/Y matrices. Over the years,
I have found the Hoshin planning tool very useful. Once the spreadsheet is populated see
fig 1. it helps provide a snapshot of organizational goals and objectives required to satisfy
them. It provides a complete flow down throughout the organization and identifying
actionees/resources, completion dates and possibly metrics (KPI) used to measure
effectivess of each flow down. An example of Hoshin planning spreadsheet is identified
below. For a quick reference guide to creating an effective strategic planning in excel,
format please reference Hoshin planning template included with this guide.
Fig.1

References: Juran’s Quality Handbook. Joseph M. Juran and Joseph A. De Feo;

Hoshin Kanri Memory Jogger; Joseph Colletti

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