No Free Lunch: A Condensed Strategic Planning Process

These folks claim to have developed a strategic plan by spending only five hours with their stakeholders, who claim to have 'enjoyed' the process:

Mention “strategic planning” and watch people’s eyes glaze. Most picture endless meetings spent doing SWOT analyses, crafting vision and mission statements, and developing goals and action plans. Few look forward to the experience or reflect back on it with pleasure.

So, what’s the solution? Higher education IT organizations need strategic plans to function efficiently. Can the process be condensed into a few hours? Can that condensed process produce an effective, flexible document? Can the participants actually enjoy the process? Yes, yes, and yes!

At Penn State University–Berks during the spring 2008 semester we developed a new five-year Information Technology Services (ITS@Berks) strategic plan, and we did it in less than five hours of meetings with stakeholders. Participants even said they enjoyed the experience. Here’s what we did.