STRATEGIC & BUSINESS PLANNING
Effective strategic planning is essential to sustainable success. Strategic planning is the blueprint which establishes the long-term direction for an organization. It defines an organization’s purpose, direction, priorities and metrics (goals or objectives) for measuring success. Strategic planning mobilizes an organization in the pursuit of clear, time and resource based strategies and action plans.
Capstan’s approach to strategic planning is Setting Strategic Direction or SSD. SSD is a conference-based approach to strategic planning that emphasizes a high degree of interaction, through a series of planning conferences, between a client’s organization and the consulting team. In a typical assignment, the SSD process involves three strategy conferences: mission and objectives, identifying and prioritizing strategic issues and selecting and prioritizing strategic options. Each conference typically lasts 1-2 days, is facilitated by senior consultants, typically involves an organization’s senior decision-makers, focuses on collaborative discussions and evaluations and is based on a series of fact-based conference working papers prepared by the consultants. The objective of each conference is to sequentially reach decisions on the organization’s mission and objectives, prioritized strategic issues and strategic options which collectively drive the development of the strategic plan. The SSD process also includes extensive outreach to customers, stakeholders and community groups.
In the Capstan Team’s experience, SSD provides a number of benefits to an organization and its strategic planning process.
These benefits include:
- Proactively engages the organization and its decision-makers in the planning process
- Provides a foundation (mission and objectives) for developing a strategically focused plan, i.e. an organization’s mission and objectives drive the process and the plan
- Ensures the organization focuses on critical (i.e. strategic) issues
- Enhances an organization’s ability to implement its strategy by building commitment and transferring knowledge through the conference-based planning process
Capstan professionals have completed strategic planning engagements for shipping lines, port authorities and terminal operators. These engagements have addressed a broad range of industries and issues including:
- Industries: container, breakbulk and bulk shipping; port, terminal, freight forwarding and rail
- Issues
- Customer portfolios and commercial strategies
- Market positioning
- Sustainable competitive advantage
- Capacity and operational efficiency
- Capital investment
- Financial performance
- Emerging markets
Setting Strategic Direction Stages
1. Develop, revise or confirm mission, vision and objectives
2. Identify, analyze and prioritize strategic issues. The hallmarks of a strategic issue are:
- An opportunity or threat
- Fundamentally affects the ability of an organization to achieve its mission and objectives
- Affects the ability of an organization to achieve sustainable competitive advantages
- Involves major uncertainties and risks
- Requires senior management resources to successfully address
3. Define, analyze and prioritize strategic options for addressing each strategic issue
4. Develop strategies
5. Implement the plan