Guidelines for strategic planning

Abstract

Strategic planning needs to be done as one of the integral steps in fulfilling our overall Departmental mission. The role of strategic planning is to assure that the longer term destinations, goals, and objectives which the programs and activities of the Department are striving towards are the best we can envision today so that our courses can then be set to move in those directions. Strategic planning will assist the Secretary, Deputy Secretary, and Under Secretary in setting the long-term directions and policies for the Department and in making final decisions on near-term priorities and resource allocations. It will assist program developers and implementors by providing the necessary guidance for multi-year program plans and budgets. It is one of the essential steps in the secretary's Strategic Planning Initiative. The operational planning most of us are so familiar with deals with how to get things done and with the resources needed (people, money, facilities, time) to carry out tasks. Operating plans like budgets, capital line item projects, R D budgets, project proposals, etc., are vital to the mission of the Department. They deal, however, with how to carry out programs to achieve some objective or budget assumption. Strategic planning deals with the prior question of what it is that should be attempted. It deals with what objectives the many programs and activities of the Department of Department should be striving toward. The purpose of this document is to provide guidance to those organizations and personnel starting the process for the first time as well as those who have prepared strategic plans in the past and now wish to review and update them. This guideline should not be constructed as a rigid, restrictive or confining rulebook. Each organization is encouraged to develop such enhancements as they think may be useful in their planning. The steps outlined in this document represent a very simplified approach to strategic planning. 9 refs.