State Strategic Benefits. The states, as we have noted, are the level of government that seems most enthusiastic about strategic planning, and perhaps with reason. In a survey of state administrators’ use of strategic planning, it was found that the ability of strategic planning to articulate and prioritize goals was its single most-valued feature, with 90 percent rating its utility in “clarifying agency priorities” and “established management directions” as its most important contribution to their agencies; 82 percent (the next highest) of these administrators cited its greatest importance as a “guide to policy decisions.”82