Strategic planning is “a deliberate, disciplined approach to producing fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization or collaborative is, what it does, and why.”[1] It is the systematic process of bringing key people together to envision a desired future and develop goals, procedures, and sequential actions to realize that future.[2] The strategic planning process helps states and territories examine existing practices; test assumptions; gather, analyze, and synthesize information to frame strategic choices; and anticipate the environment in which the organization, network, or collaborative will be working in the future. Strategic planning helps establish the direction of future work by identifying “desirable, feasible, defensible, and acceptable” missions, goals, and strategies as well as establishing measurable outcomes.[3]

Strategic planning offers the following benefits to states and territories:

• Promotion of strategic thinking, acting, and learning through strategic conversations and deliberation among key actors[4]
• Enhanced organizational decision making—studies have found that almost half of all strategic decisions fail due to poor organizational decision making processes[5]
• Enhanced organizational effectiveness and resilience through better management
• Enhanced organizational legitimacy
• Enhanced effectiveness of broader systems

All these organizational benefits are essential to inform thoughtful, deliberate systems building efforts. They also help sustain energy, focus, and public value on the ongoing planning and continuous improvement needed to keep systems relevant and responsive.

A strategic plan is different from an operational plan or action plan. The strategic plan builds a high-level roadmap of where you are going and how you are going to get there. It explains what the organization does and why it does it. It is visionary and forward-thinking. An operational plan or action plan can support the strategic plan; organizations use operational or action plans to break down long-term goals into short-term tasks that support the strategic objectives. Some key differences include:

Get into a strategic mindset before you start your strategic planning process. A strategic mindset means being willing to reflect on and analyze your thought processes—to think about your thinking. You can call it strategic thinking or being strategic. Before you jump into problem-solving or drafting a strategic plan, do the pre-work of dissecting your problem-solving methods so that you are clear about the thought processes that will ultimately underlie your strategic choices.

A key step for getting into a strategic mindset is to move from “either/or” thinking to a “both/and” mentality. Before making your powerful strategic choices, ensure your thought processes allow for holding two opposing ideas in your mind at the same time. That means you can envision your future differently while simultaneously understanding what the world is really like right now. Avoid oversimplifications and thinking in trade-offs initially. When you allow yourself to work with opposing ideas at the same time, it can lead to more creative, innovative solutions.[6] This approach is helpful when working in groups or with multiple partners. The goal should be to help yourself and others move away from an either/or way of thinking to move toward a both/ and approach. An either/or mindset—choosing one truth over another—can be futile when you don’t consider the many opposing ideas inherent in early childhood systems building. The ability to think in terms of both/and is valuable because you can learn about what is happening around you as well as what is emerging—it opens up your vision to a complex and multi-faceted world that thinking exclusively in either/or terms does not. This way of thinking allows you to improve how you see the problems you are trying to solve through strategic planning.[7] Without panicking or simply settling for one alternative or the other, you’re able to produce a synthesis of the ideas that will most likely improve upon either opposing idea. In his book The Opposable Mind, Roger Martin calls the both/and approach “integrative thinking” or “the discipline of consideration and synthesis.”[8]