Most strategic plans fail before they’re even written, because they forget the essentials.
How many times have we heard: “We didn’t achieve our plan this year.”
The goal of this article is simple:
To revisit the fundamentals of strategic planning, the why behind the exercise:
clarity, alignment, decision‑making, and the ability to mobilize teams.
The term strategic plan often brings to mind a mountain of processes, templates, presentations, and KPIs.
And the larger the organization becomes, the heavier, more technical, and sometimes unreadable this exercise gets.
Yet every year, we mobilize our teams, invest time and energy, run workshops, and hold countless meetings.
This moment should be a highlight of the year, a moment that creates momentum.
But one fundamental element is often missing, or not used to its full value:
Why are we doing this?
- Not to complete the exercise.
- Not to prepare for next year.
- Not to update KPIs.
What’s missing is the single overarching objective, the one that gives meaning to everything else.
If you’re investing in strategic planning, it’s because you want to reach a destination.
Your 40 KPIs measure progress, but progress toward what?
What’s missing is direction : the vision.
👉 The real question is simple: Why do you want your teams to get up every morning and move your organization forward?
Without a clear vision:
- how do you set a direction?
- how do you choose between competing initiatives?
- how do you build a coherent roadmap?
The Travel Analogy
When you take a long road trip, you start by choosing your destination.
Then you plan your stops:
- where you’ll rest,
- where you’ll refuel,
- and the steps that actually move you closer to your goal.
You have a direction, a rhythm, and a horizon.
A strategic plan requires exactly the same logic.
Strategy or Just Operational Routine?
The first conversation you need to have is straightforward:
Is our strategic direction still the right one?
Is our target still the same?
Do we have the information we need to decide?
Without these questions, if you simply update last year’s results and set next year’s targets, you’re doing operational management, not strategy.
And that’s perfectly fine if your ambition is to maintain a stable, local, sustainable business.
In that case, your strategy is implicit: maintain, optimize, secure.
But if your environment is dynamic, competitive, or shifting, you need to think about what will make you win in the next 3 to 5 years.
Depending on your vision, this may require more or less transformation, innovation, or exploration.
Don’t Compare Your Company to a Giant
A company with 100 to 1,000 employees doesn’t need a massive, monolithic strategic plan.
It needs a clear, coherent, mobilizing framework, one that fits in a few pages and guides everyday decisions.
The goal isn’t to produce a perfect document.
The goal is to create an alignment tool.
Finding the Right Balance
It’s not about choosing between:
- a rational approach (market analysis, financial discipline),
- or an ambitious vision (inspiration, differentiation).
You need both.
A strategy without execution is guaranteed failure.
Execution without vision is just routine.
A Simple, Robust Structure
To move from ideas to action, use a logical cascade inspired by OKRs:
- Vision: the ultimate destination (the Why).
- Mission: how the vision translates into concrete action (the What).
- Objectives: the major pillars to achieve (the How).
- Key Results: measurable indicators (the proof of success).
It’s simple, powerful, and immediately actionable for your managers.
The Financial Plan: Making the Strategy Credible
Once this structure is in place, one essential step remains:
👉 Build the financial plan that supports the entire strategy.
This financial plan is not an accounting exercise.
It is a strategic tool that allows you to:
- validate the real feasibility of your ambitions,
- sequence investments in the right order,
- mobilize the leadership team around clear trade‑offs,
- engage finance teams as true business partners,
- ensure strict coherence between your vision and your available resources.
And this work starts with your customers:
quantifying your market, your business model, and your ability to generate value.
The more complex your model, the more precise your marketing strategy must be.
Don’t hesitate to test variations of your assumptions, this reveals the robustness of your plan.
If one parameter dramatically changes your financial outcomes, you know exactly where to focus your attention.
Then each department builds its plan to achieve short‑ and mid‑term objectives.
The resulting financial plan allows you to validate the viability of your trajectory:
Will you have the cash flow, margins, and capital required to execute your strategy?
If your vision is to double your customer base in three years, your financial plan must show how you will fund acquisition, operational capacity, and the necessary working capital.
For technical managers,
this requires discipline:
being clear on costs, and distinguishing what is certain from what is contingency.
You can find a few tips in this article: Building Your Budget: The Essential Guide for Young Managers
A strategic plan without a financial plan is just an intention.
A strategic plan backed by a financial plan becomes a trajectory.
Start by clarifying your vision. Everything else flows from it.
To go further:
- How to break down different time horizons: From Annual Planning to Weekly Wins: Mastering Time Management
- How to combine OKRs and KPIs effectively: Guiding and gauging the synergy of OKR and KPI
Coaching or Mentoring: Your Choice, Your Growth
I’m Franck Dervault, drawing on years of professional experience and now advancing toward certification as a coach. I offer two distinct paths:
- Coaching to help you unlock your own potential through reflection, presence, and guided discovery.
- Mentoring to share lessons, strategies, and insights from my career so you can navigate challenges with confidence.
Whichever path you choose, my goal is the same: to help you realize that you are wiser than you think, with immense potential waiting to be unlocked.
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