How to Strategize and Plan

Throughout the year most businesses evaluate their plans and objectives, but the strategy piece is usually decided once, at the beginning. I find businesses often refer to that time as strategic planning, which is probably a reason that the lines between strategies and plans are blurred.

Plans and objectives can (and often should) change, but strategy is something that is more of a constant.

Recently, I've had several conversations about the lack of clarity between strategies and plans, and it makes sense that there is confusion because many people don’t use the terms properly. It challenged me to find a way to explain each of them better. So, what is the difference?

What is Strategy?

When I think of creating a strategy, I think of it as the what. Then, the plan becomes the how. I can't know how to do something without knowing what I am doing. Imagine if we were offered Insurance Strategies, instead of Insurance Plans - which isn't to say that there is no strategy to purchasing a plan; just that it's the plan that we buy.

I often hear people say that strategy is the why. During my exploration of how to define a strategy, I've come to believe that (in most cases) the strategy is not the why. The why is the vision; it’s the belief that drives your what, but a belief usually isn’t a strategy.

When I was running BlogPaws our strategy was community. Everything we did kept community at the core. Community was our what. Our vision (our why) was that we believed in the value of bringing together like-minded individuals to drive overall change and to make an impact in the lives of pets. Our vision supported our strategy, and then all the plans we created (our how) supported objectives to successfully fulfill our vision.

What is a Plan then?

The plan is how you bring your vision to life with your strategy in mind. It’s the actual roadmap you build to get you from your starting point to your objective. Objectives are an important part of the whole process. In order for a plan to be actionable, you have to have objectives. You have to know what outcome you want from your plan.

At BlogPaws, we had plans for creating content (that served our community), for using social media (to engage our community), to hold a top-notch annual event (to bring together our community), to create online courses (to educate our community), to work with brands creating influencer marketing campaigns (to utilize our community’s expertise)...see the common thread? For us, community equaled strategy.

Each plan we created had its own objective, but all the plans kept our overall strategy in mind.

Defining Your Objective For Planning Success

Once you know what you are doing and why, the plan becomes easier in terms of staying on track, but not necessarily in terms of the details. The plan, or the how, is really specific; the plan is where the details live and if you don’t have a clear objective, your plan won’t take you anywhere. Well, maybe in circles.

At BlogPaws, our conference plan had both attendance and revenue objectives. It allowed us to build a tracking system to know where we were in terms of our end goals at all times. Without the objectives we would never have known if were on the path to success.

This brings me back to how plans can change. If our attendance was not where we wanted it to be, we could evaluate our marketing plan and make adjustments to try to get us closer to the goal, but we never changed the strategy. The strategy was always to bring the community together in an impactful way.

Bringing Your Plans Together With Your Strategy

You probably have several different plans to support your business goals. Maybe you’ve got a marketing plan, a content plan, a social media plan, and email growth plan. In order to create brand consistency, each of your plans should be supporting your overall strategy.

Plans tend to be easier to address because they are more linear. They usually involve steps. If plans are the roadmap, your strategy is the car you choose to drive (Safe? Fancy? Sustainable?), your vision is the path you take (Scenic? Fast? Adventure filled?), and your destination is your objective. You need all pieces to reach success.

To help you define each piece, answer these questions:

1. Why do I care about what I am doing? This is your vision.
2. What is the foundation that my vision needs? This is your strategy.
3. How do I define my successes? These are your objectives.
4. In what ways can I get to those successes? These are your plans.

The only thing we didn’t cover is the evaluation of your plans. You have to know what to measure and how to measure it to truly evaluate success. That’s a topic that deserves its own post...in the near future.

The bottom line

Vision leads to strategy, which drives objectives that are delivered through plans.

For now, take a step back and answer the questions above to ensure your strategy aligns with your vision, and is what your plans are supporting with specific objectives, and let me know how I can help.

During the rest of this month (May 2018) I'm offering one hour strategy calls for a significantly discounted rate. Let's strategize together.