The best strategic planning processes focus on insight, preparedness, and agility—not bureaucracy. BCG helps companies adopt this approach to create lasting value across the entire organization.
Most organizations see their strategic planning approaches as too rigid and reactive; many believe in the common misconception that the purpose of strategic planning is creating annual budgets and five-year plans. Such approaches can work in stable and relatively predictable industries, but stability is less and less the norm.
We help clients not only develop winning corporate and business strategies, but also design, build, and operate world-class strategic planning processes that yield sharp insights and drive results.
The most effective approaches emulate four strategic planning best practices and deliver strategies with four essential characteristics.
A major Asian financial institution rethought its strategy development approach in the context of the organization’s broader agile transformation. The new, always-on, agile planning process not only drove strategy capabilities and alignment deeper into the organization, but also significantly enhanced transparency and senior management and board alignment with the target strategy. At the same time, it enabled more rapid review of new strategic initiatives, leading to superior value growth.
A major global brewer, frustrated with its existing planning process, shifted from a financial budgeting focus to a more strategic approach. Together, we developed a new, more flexible approach that fostered real strategic dialogue among center, regions, and business units—and was more tightly linked to execution. In a postimplementation survey of important stakeholders, nearly 90% said they were highly satisfied with the new approach.
Strategic environments are increasingly diverse. And different environments call for different styles of strategy.
The Center tracks 90+ known and emerging megatrends that can provide critical tailwinds to accelerate strategic moves.
The Center helps clients implement strategic planning best practices.
The Center helps clients find tomorrow’s best opportunities by mining vast, unstructured data sets for insight.
In this pandemic year, leaders who embrace bold vision-setting, backstopped by robust analysis, can create a once-in-a-career opportunity to change the trajectory of their organizations.
Traditional strategy processes are incompatible with agile ways of working. How can organizations balance autonomy with alignment?
