Articulation of Strategic Roadmap
Once the strategic options have been assessed, the strategic plan is put up for approval to the decision makers. Some of the key issues that the strategic plan must address are:
o What is our portfolio game-plan over the planning period?
o Businesses and roles of businesses
o Goals
o Roadmap for achieving the goals
o Risks / Returns (financial and non-financial)
o Investments
o What options did we have while choosing a particular game-plan and why did we prefer one over the other?
o What are the key assumptions on which the game-plan is based? What are the exit clauses?
It may involve a couple of rounds of iteration before it is finalized. Here it is important to note that the strategic plan is a roadmap for where the organization aspires to be in a couple of years and what it would look like when compared against the pre-decided decision criteria. A common mistake made is that people start looking at a Strategic Plan as a “to-do” list with loads of activities and timelines and individual names who are responsible for various activities. We are not there yet. First you need to have an agreed upon plan.
Deconstructing the plan into specific activities, timelines, responsibilities etc is part of deployment of strategy.