Perhaps you have heard the old saw “Failing to plan is planning to fail.” Strategic planning requires effort; it involves thinking ahead about the specific, desired outcomes one wishes to accomplish and how best to achieve those goals. To say that a company’s plan is “strategic” means that the plan is linked to a targeted outcome that is simultaneously broad, long term, and core to the central mission of the organization. Strategic plans are the kind set by leaders. (In fact, the Greek root, strategein, means the general of an army. It is no coincidence that the world’s oldest guide to strategic planning, by the Chinese philosopher Sun-Tzu, is titled The Art of War.

A strategic plan for a company will typically be led by the board and senior management—individuals with a high degree of responsibility for the enterprise’s overall strategy—and then used as a road map to guide the direction of countless individual decisions by the broader organization.

Of course, a company does not have to be large and complex to engage in strategy. Consider the smallest entity in the public company domain– the public company shell formed for the purpose of pursuing a future acquisition, known as a blank check company or a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). Such companies, which first arose in the 1990s, experienced a boom in the early 2020s—along with legal challenges. The board of a SPAC engages in strategic planning as it decides what company or companies to buy.

Most strategic plans (again harkening to the word’s root meaning) are based on the idea of competition, showing awareness of an opposing force such as a competitor who wants the same thing the planner does—for example, more customers. A plan may aim to upend a rival firm, by lowering production costs, developing a better product or service, and/or delivering the product or service in a competitively superior way—as noted by Michael Porter of Harvard University in his classic book Competitive Strategy.

Outline for a Typical Strategic Plan:

Our Strategy

• Our goals
• Our plans for achieving them*

Our Market

Our Competitors

SWOT Analysis

• Strengths
• Weaknesses
• Opportunities
• Threats

Timetable

Milestones

Contingencies/Scenarios

*May include growth through M&A.