General Strategy & Business Planning

Question 1

What is a strategy?

What is it based on? (2)

Answer 1

A strategy is a set of high-level decisions that set priorities and purpose.

These decisions are based on:
a) what you believe are the best ways of achieving your mission
b) where you believe your organisation is best placed to make a difference.

Question 2

Developing a strategy involves making decisions about? (2)

Answer 2

• your organisation’s purpose and direction
• how you’ll direct your resources to deliver it.

Question 3

The main parts of a strategy are? (4)

What else can be added?

Answer 3

• A vision
• A mission
• Values
• A set of goals

What else:
- A summary of how the world around you is changing
- information on how you will understand the difference you’re making.

Question 4

What’s a vision?

Answer 4

A clear, inspirational and memorable statement about what the world will look like if your organisation achieves its aspirations

Question 5

What’s a mission? (3)

Answer 5

• A brief statement of long-term overall intent and purpose:
• why the organisations exists and what it is doing to achieve its vision.
• It is what sets your organisation apart from others.

Question 6

What are values?

Answer 6

The shared beliefs within the organisation which:
a) create its culture
b) guide how people behave and make decisions.

Question 7

What are goals?

Answer 7

What you will do to bring about your strategy

Question 8

How does having a strategy help your organisation? (6)

Answer 8

Make better decisions
When deciding what actions to take, or how to spend your money and time, a strategy provides a basis for making good decisions.

Adapt to change
By understanding what’s changing around you and how you need to respond, you can make sure your organisation’s set up well to respond to change.

Focus on what you’re best at
By identifying your strengths, you can deliver more impact.

Collaborate
By identifying organisations to work with, you can achieve more together.

Inspire and motivate
A strategy can inspire your staff, volunteers, supporters and partners, helping them to move towards a shared aim.

Demonstrate your impact
A strategy provides a starting point to understand and communicate the change you’re making.

Question 9

What are strategic aims? (3)

Answer 9

A number of quantifiable activities to be completed which will help to achieve the mission and ultimately the vision.

They are statements of the key priorities for the organisation in the immediate to medium-term future.

Everything the organisation does should be related to a strategic aim.

Question 10

Operational objectives:

Answer 10

Detailed, costed and timed plans of what the organisation will do under each strategic aim. They set out a work plan for the organisation.

Question 11

Outputs

Answer 11

What the organisation produces or delivers, such as 500 rights guides produced or 44 people trained.

Question 12

Outcomes (3)

Answer 12

The difference that you make.

Some outcomes are about creating a change; others are about preventing something negative from happening.

There are short-term outcomes, such as ‘people know their rights’ and ‘jobs created’. These can then lead to an organisation’s long-term outcomes, i.e. the vision: ‘a world without discrimination’ and ‘all people with equal opportunities’.

Question 13

Strategic thinking and planning
are about? (5)

Answer 13

How the organisation can best meet its vision;

Learning and involve evaluating current activities, analysing the issues that your organisation
is facing and identifying external trends and developments

Developing ideas about how the organisation should
develop, what its priorities are and what roles it should play in the future

Goals and outcomes: what do you want to change, create or prevent?

Getting focused and making sure that your goals are clear.

Question 14

Business Planning is about (6)

Answer 14

Putting the analysis and agreed direction into a formal
planning format that can be used to guide the
organisation

Allocating resources to strategic priorities;

Showing/persuading others that the organisation has (or
can get) the resources to deliver the strategy: that the
plan is credible, achievable and worth backing;

How the organisation will manage and use its resources
to achieve the strategy;

Setting out the outputs that need to be delivered to create the desired outcomes;

Showing that the organisation has the capacity, resources and management ability to achieve the strategy.

Question 15

Strategic Management is about (3)

Answer 15

The process of creating the strategy and making it happen

Ensuring that the business plan is implemented

Monitoring progress and managing change

Question 16

What is a business plan? (3)

Answer 16

A more detailed description of how you’ll achieve your aims, the market in which you’re operating and the resources you’ll need.

It will probably include an operational plan that describes your main activities or outputs, and important milestones, timescales and performance indicators.

If the strategy is a picture of the house you want to build, the business plan shows the full blueprint – the wiring, the plumbing, the foundations and the workers.

Question 17

What is the goal of the business planning process?

How should it be conducted? (3)

Where does the plan itself fit in? (2)

Answer 17

It’s a chance for you and your colleagues to use your experience and passion to work out how you’re going to achieve your mission.

• Business planning should be exciting, and can even be fun.
• It shouldn’t be about one person sitting in a room on their own, writing a long document.
• It should be a process of discussion, collaboration, learning and problem solving.

– The business plan itself is not really the most important part of this process – it’s the business planning that makes the difference.

-The plan is simply the end result of this process – and the beginning of the next stage.

Question 18

What are the different ways of defining a business plan? (6)

Answer 18

A business plan is:

• a live document that you refer to regularly and which can be changed and updated
• a tool to help guide your actions and steer you towards your aims
• a great way to showcase your organisation, passion and creativity
• an opportunity to work out your finances and demonstrate your financial sustainability
• a way of showing how you achieve social impact
• a statement of where you are now and where you want to be.

Question 19

Why is strategy important?

Answer 19

In a rapidly changing world, organisations without funding certainty, direction, and future vision become predictable, paralysed, and stagnant.

Static organisations will still reach a point where future decisions must be made, facing external events that will divert it from its original goals.

Instead of being influenced by the past or external factors. Organisational leaders must take control, setting a direction and agree a plan to achieve it. They must clarify organisations aims to decide on priorities given limited resources.

Effective management involves balancing day-to-day operations while staying focused on future needs and directions for the organisation.