How can you create a flexible strategic plan to adapt to change?

2 Define your desired outcomes

Once you have a clear picture of your current state, you need to define your desired outcomes. These are the specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals that you want to achieve in the short, medium, and long term. Your desired outcomes should reflect your vision, mission, and values, as well as the needs and expectations of your stakeholders. They should also be flexible enough to accommodate changes in the external environment.

3 Develop multiple scenarios

The future is unpredictable, so you need to prepare for different possibilities. This means developing multiple scenarios that describe how the external environment might affect your desired outcomes. You can use tools such as PESTEL analysis (political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal factors) or scenario planning to create plausible and divergent scenarios. For each scenario, you should identify the key drivers, assumptions, implications, and challenges that you might face.

5 Monitor and evaluate your progress

The final step in creating a flexible strategic plan is to monitor and evaluate your progress. This means tracking and measuring your performance against your desired outcomes, and adjusting your strategies and actions accordingly. You should also monitor the external environment for any changes that might affect your scenarios, and update them as needed. You should use tools such as dashboards, feedback, surveys, or reviews to collect and analyze data, and communicate your results and learning to your stakeholders.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?