This document provides an overview of strategic planning for PA education programs. It defines strategic planning and describes its benefits, including promoting proactivity, stakeholder involvement, and preparing programs to adapt to changes. The key steps in strategic planning are outlined, including performing situational analyses, identifying strategic issues through SWOT and PO analyses, designing the strategic plan, implementing and measuring success of the plan. Strategic planning is presented as an ongoing process that can help programs better fulfill their missions and remain competitive.

1. 2017 PAEA Workshops
STRATEGIC PLANNING
Ruth Ballweg
John Burns
Program Directors 101 Pando ™ Workshop

2. Objectives
• Define strategic planning and strategic management
• Describe the benefits of strategic planning
• List and describe the steps of effective strategic planning
• Perform a SWOT and PO analysis for your organization

3. What are your experiences with strategic
planning?

4. “Have a core principle, everything else is just tactics.”
- Nelson Mandela

5. Definition
• A strategic plan is a tool that provides guidance in fulfilling a
mission with maximum efficiency and impact.

6. Why Plan?
“If you don’t know where you’re going, it doesn't
matter which way you go”
Cheshire Cat ; Lewis Carroll
“If you don’t have a plan, your budget is your plan”
Putnam; NEU
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7. A strategic plan should…
• Articulate specific goals
• Describe specific action steps
• Be reviewed every 3-5 years

8. Other Types of Plans (Planning)
• Operating Plan
• A set of tasks for carrying out the goals delineated in the strategic plan.
• Business Plan
• A plan focused on the actions and investment necessary to generate
income from a program or service.

9. Strategic Planning vs. Long Range
Planning
Strategic Planning
• More consideration of the
external environment
• Relies on input from internal
and external stakeholders
• Focused on change and
adapting to actual or
perceived changes
• Vision of the future is
essential
Long Range Planning
• Looks inwardly at what we
want/where we want to be
• Often fiscal/budget driven
• Minimal involvement form
external stakeholders
• Focused on maintaining the
status quo

10. Important Terms
• Vision (Statement)
• Mission (Statement)
• Strategy
• Tactics
• Goals
• Objectives

11. Strategic Planning and your Mission
• Your mission is what your program is there to do. It should be the
cornerstone of your planning process.
• You should not have goals, objectives, tactics, or a strategy that do
not align with your mission.

12. Perspective on Strategic Planning
“..few tools are better suited to help address the staggering array
of challenges brought about by a changing environment.”
Richard A. Mittenthal

13. How is the PA education environment
changing?

14. Benefits of Strategic Planning
• Promotes proactivity
• Involves internal and external stakeholders in the process
• Involvement of external stakeholders creates advocacy for the
program
• Promotes stability over time
• Assists with planning for assessment, resource allocation, and
accreditation
• Better prepare the program to evolve with changes

15. Why Do Strategic Planning?
• Keeps organization
competitive in a dynamic and
often unpredictable
environment
• Promotes a clearly defined
direction
• Promotes buy-in, ownership,
and commitment
• Prevents disenfranchised
employees
• Sets priorities for resource
allocation
• Leads to positive action and
change
• Helps in changing direction
• Can accelerate growth
• Promotes innovation and
creativity
• Promotes communication &
teambuilding
• Expands data and intuition
• Brings external factors to light
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16. Risks and Pitfalls of Strategic Planning
• Not planning to plan
• Not knowing or having a planning process
• Not allotting enough time to plan
• Strategic planning costs money
• The risk of switching directions

17. When Not to Do Strategic Planning
•No time
•No resources
•No commitment from
leadership
•In an acute crisis or
transition
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18. Results of a poor planning process
• Disillusioned stakeholders
• Poor use of resources
• Fiscal
• Physical
• Human
• Failed accreditation reviews

19. General Principles
• There is no one absolute process
• There are specific principles and required steps
• Should be treated as an ongoing process
• Must evolve and change as the “market” (environment) changes
• Must reflect the vision, mission, and values of the organization

20. Steps to a Comprehensive Strategic
Planning Process
1. Situational assessment and analysis
2. External competitive analysis
3. Identify strategic or critical issues
SWOT and PO analysis
4. Design the strategic plan
5. Write up the plan
6. Implement the plan
7. Measure success of the plan

21. SITUATIONAL ASSESSMENT & ANALYSIS
• Determine distinct competencies:
• What makes us unique? What words come to mind when you think about us?
• Marketing evaluation
• The four Ps (Product, Price, Place & Promotion)
• Make that seven Ps for PA education
• For higher education, Hayes adds
• Physical Evidence
• Processes
• People
• Estimation of product/service life
• Cycle: Emergence-Growth-Maturity-Decline
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22. SITUATIONAL ASSESSMENT & ANALYSIS
• External: Client or customer’s perceptions
• Methods
• Surveys, focus groups, interviews, observation research
• In PA education who are our clients?
• Students
• Preceptors/employers and “the” healthcare system
• Patients
• Others?
• Expectations, satisfaction & future needs
• What do they value?
• How do they think we are doing?
• How are their needs changing/evolving?
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23. EXTERNAL COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
• Scanning
• Benchmarking
• Survey, interviews, focus groups & observational research
• Who else is providing the service?
• Are we spreading ourselves to thin?
• How is our “product” performing in the marketplace?
• Is our service and product congruent with our vision, mission, and goals?
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24. IDENTIFY STRATEGIC OR
CRITICAL ISSUES
Definition: An issue (problem or opportunity) that can potentially
have a large impact on the organization. Something that should
not be ignored….
Brainstorm (post-it notes)
Rank priorities
List- Five to ten
Balloting (secret)
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25. SWOT and PO Analysis
• SWOT
• Successes (internal)
• Weaknesses (internal)
• Opportunities (external)
• Threats (external)
• Using your OT, consider the PO
• Possibilities (Any Opportunities that you have influence over, move to
Possibilities)
• Obstacles (Any Threats that you can have influence over, move to
Obstacles)

26. Designing Your Strategic Plan
• A strategy should provide clear and concise answers
to the following
• Where do we compete?
• What unique value do we bring to those markets?
• What resources and capabilities do we utilize to deliver that
value?
• How do we sustain our unique value?
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27. Designing Your Strategic Plan
• In addition to the answering the four questions, a
strategy should
• Be flexible
• Intended, emergent, and realized strategy
• Address critical issues
• Address issues that are within your control
• Be in line with vision, mission and goals
• Misalignment, mission creep or strategic drift
• Be modeled around best practices
• Encourage innovation and creativity
• Be appropriately timed

28. SURVIVE AND THRIVE
•“I skate to where I think the puck will be, not where it has been”-
Wayne Gretzky
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29. Writing up your plan
• Use only one or two people as writers for a consistent voice
• Circulate draft broadly for review and comment
• Establish a firm deadline for feedback
• Seek feedback from stakeholders and leadership
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30. IMPLEMENTATION
• Communicate the strategic plan
• Influence achievement of needed changes as quickly as
possible; “quick wins”
• Keep strategic priorities up front
• Build & maintain a sense of high urgency
• Show your enthusiasm for the plan
• Sell the benefits
• Maintain a constant two-way information exchange
• Widely and frequently praise significant
accomplishments and those responsible for them
• Own up to your failures, focusing on lessons learned
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31. IMPLEMENTATION FAILURE
• Lack of participation
• Lack of communication
• Poorly thought-out strategy
• Failure to hold people accountable
• Picking the wrong people for the
tasks
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32. EXECUTION
“Vision without execution is hallucination.”
-Thomas Edison
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33. References and Resources
• Hinton, K; Society for College and University Planning. A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning in Higher
Education.
http://oira.cortland.edu/webpage/planningandassessmentresources/planningresources/SocietyforCollegeUniver
sityPlanning.pdf. Published 2012. Accessed June 24, 2016.
• Paris, K; Office of Quality Improvement University of Wisconsin-Madison. Strategic Planning in the University.
http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/u-planning-office/documents/other-strategic-planning/paris-2003_strat-plan-in-u.pdf.
Published November 2003. Accessed June 24, 2016.
• Business Development Index Ltd. and the Ohio State University. The Process of Strategic Planning.
http://fisher.osu.edu/supplements/10/1470/All_Articles.pdf. Accessed June 24, 2016
• Mittenthal, R; TCC Group. Ten Keys to Strategic Planning for Nonprofit and Foundation Leaders.
http://www.tccgrp.com/pdfs/per_brief_tenkeys.pdf. Published 2002. Accessed June 24, 2016
• Dynamic Business Plan. SWOT Analysis and PO. http://www.dynamicbusinessplan.com/swot-analysis .
Accessed June 27, 2016
• Kryscynski, D; BYU Marriott School of Management and the Center for Teaching and Learning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD7WSLeQtVw Published 2012. Accessed June 27, 2016
• Panet, K. Team-based Strategic Planning: A facilitator’s guide.
http://www.kevinpanet.com/documents/samples/Strategic_Planning_Guide.pdf Published 2011. Accessed
June 27, 2016