Taking a Closer Look at Strategic Planning?

In Applied Strategic Planning, Goodstein, Nolan, and Pfeiffer offer the following definition:

“The process by which the guiding members of an organization

envision its future and develop the necessary procedure

and operations to achieve the future.”

A very simple definition might be

“Strategic planning is the management of the future.”

Strategic planning and its Implementation in its broadest sense can be divided into four components, wherein:

1.      Planning is the analysis of the situations

2.      Strategy is the synthesis of the solutions

3.      Setting Goals is the targeting

4.      Implementation is operational and employs tactics.  

The analysis and synthesis of strategic planning yield the strategies that define the goals that describe “what should be done.” Implementation is the operational aspect of action that focuses on “how to get the tasks done.”

Adapting full-scale strategic planning to personal use is both simple and complex. It is simple in that we are dealing largely with just one individual and his life. But it is complex in that the process goes deeper into the mystical values and motivation of the individual and deals with the complexities of his world. The focus and questions of the strategic planning process have to be changed from the third person plural to the second person singular (“you”) and then on to the first person singular (“I” and “me”).

One of the challenges of personal strategic planning is that data collection, analysis, and decision-making are usually more successful when addressed by a small team. To correct this situation, an individual pursuing personal strategic planning can gain support and wisdom by adding professionals or benevolent people to his efforts.

Optimize Your Life! will guide you to look at the parts of “you” in detail—to analyze you and your world—from several vantage points. It will then reassemble you in different ways—to synthesize you and your world—and weave a series of potential tapestries of the new “you.” Based on these steps, observations, and results, you will define and set Goals (targeting) for your “examined” life, followed by their implementation.

This process may be divided into five phases:

1.      Know yourself

2.      Know your world

3.      Make wise choices

4.      Live an examined life

5.      Celebrate your efforts and successes

Optimize Your Life! will use and adapt all of the steps of the author’s time-tested Values-driven Strategic Thinking and Planning format for organizations as follows:

1.      Know yourself: Creating your Values, Mission, and Vision Statements. Addressing your internal Strengths and Weaknesses (the SW in SWOT)

2.      Know your world: Addressing your external Opportunities and Threats (the OT in SWOT)

3.      Make wise choices: Defining Goals, Projects, and Focused Tasks, using the task-based One-page Strategic Planner

4.      Live an examined life: Implementing and using Optimize Your Life! as a lifestyle

5.      Celebrate your efforts and successes: Living the Optimize Your Life! lifestyle successfully

We are reminded of the words of Rudyard Kipling,

“I kept six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew);

Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.”

We can apply these same key words to Optimize Your Life!:

·     Who should plan? All who want to optimize their Lives—especially you.

·     What should you plan? The key aspects of your Life—the most important things first.

·     When should you plan? Daily, weekly, monthly, yearly—continuously update.

·     Where should you plan? Continuously “think it” … “write it” when you can … always “do it.”

·     Why should you plan? Because there are countless rewards and benefits, great and small.

·     How should you plan? Use Optimize Your Life! as a lifestyle.

The Optimize Your Life! book can be used in a variety of ways, including an initial general overview of your life. It can then be adapted and focused on a wide range of challenges or opportunities, such as planning for specific aspects of:

·     Educational opportunities, both short- and long-term, as well as lifelong learning

·     Career choices such as the military, a new job, a sabbatical leave, or an early retirement

·     Personal relationships that are formal, informal, or even
intimate

·     Rearing of super kids

·     Examining and expanding your spiritual life

·     Eliminating “toxic” people and forces

·     Recreation, including sports and travel

·     Health concerns such as weight control, smoking cessation, genetic dispositions to disease

·     Major purchases, sales, or gifts

·     Starting or expanding your own business venture

·     Learning to play a musical instrument or to speak a foreign language

Author’s Suggestions

    As you progress through this process, perhaps using a copy of Optimize Your Life!, reading the text and writing out the worksheets, you have two major choices.

1.   You can move rapidly, addressing only the highlights on the worksheets, filling in the easy parts. In the process, you may focus on very specific challenges or opportunities in your current life. You may wish to define and select short-term goals that deal with:

a.       Impending crises that may escalate

b.      Negative or “toxic” forces in your life

c.       Transient opportunities that may disappear

2.   You can go slowly and deliberately, completing all the worksheets in each chapter before moving on—but move fast enough so you do not lose momentum.

“Thinking well is wise; planning well is wiser;

but doing well is the wisest and best of all.”

—Persian proverb

“You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where

you’re going, because you might not get there.”

—Yogi Berra

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