What Are Strategic Initiatives and How to Devise a Stellar Strategic Initiative Plan?

Strategic initiatives are projects or actions that aim to achieve your project objectives. The success of your strategy depends on deciding what you want to accomplish and what winning means to you. To achieve the desired outcomes, it is also essential to determine which maneuvers or actions will be required.

Strategic initiatives are the fundamental core of any organization's strategy. They are the most critical aspect of an organization's success. Without strategic initiatives, an organization would not be able to achieve its goals, long-term objectives, and vision.

Executive Leadership requires proactive planning and preparation before competitors, rivals, or adversaries take action. Additionally, activities and specific goals or targets need to be mapped to each strategic initiative. To track progress, these goals should be accompanied by specific measures of success. There must be a plan of action for every strategic initiative that outlines the specific tasks, steps, and completion date.

What Are the Common Types of Strategic Initiatives?

Various kinds of strategic initiatives, actions, and undertakings exist. The following is a list of the types of initiatives that businesses, departments, or individuals may consider.

1. Build-and-Create Initiatives

2. Defensive Initiatives

3. Offensive Initiatives

4. Fix-and-Prune Initiatives

5. Time-Based Initiatives

1. Build-and-Create Initiatives

The "build-and-create" initiative is more advanced and innovative, designed to change what you do and how you do it. If you want to expand your services or markets, you might decide to launch a major expansion, expand capacity or geographical reach. There is a high likelihood that these initiatives will be large or resource-intensive.

2. Defensive Initiatives

In contrast to creating new competitive advantages, the defensive strategy focuses more on preserving your position in the marketplace or maintaining your existing competitive advantages.

3. Offensive Initiatives

There are types of strategic initiatives that are "offensive" in nature: insightful, progressive, proactive, and innovative. You may come up with game-changing solutions, completely new offerings, or disruptive, breakthrough ideas that will give your enterprise a competitive edge and benefit your customers.

4. Fix-and-Prune Initiatives

The fix-and-prune strategic initiatives address an important problem or obstacle that must be addressed or removed before moving on to more ambitious or innovative actions. Short-term initiatives that need to be implemented now often fall into the "fix-and-prune" category.

5. Time-Based Initiatives

Another type of strategic initiative is a long-term initiative. Typically, they are much more involved, transformational, or intensive. In order to complete these long-term changes, we will need significantly more talent, budget, and resources. The strategic goals that need to be accomplished are often referred to as "moon shots" (transformational).

What Are the Steps to Develop a Strategic Initiative Plan?

There are five steps to take in order to develop a good strategic initiative plan.

1. Set a Goal. In order to get started, you must know what you are doing. Your strategic initiative will likely be waged across dozens of fronts. 

2. Set Objectives. Objectives are long-term goals that are specific, measurable, and realistic. Setting up strategic initiatives is the time to define them. As milestones, they indicate the beginning of a new phase after the end of an earlier one. Some widely recognized tools for setting goals include OKR or SMART goals.

3. Set the Strategy. The next step is to determine how you'll accomplish your goals. You might monitor program metrics to determine where efficiencies can be created or train your team or sales force to produce a better product or service and reach out to more customers.

4. Set up a Plan. Regardless of whether or not an initiative is strategic, plans remain the same. To accomplish your objectives, you should start with a larger deliverable and then break it down into smaller and smaller tasks that are given duration and a schedule. Your project plan should be transparent in the sense that it is visible to your entire team, allowing everyone to work together efficiently. To ensure the success of the strategic initiative, they need to understand their project roles and responsibilities.

5. Enlist your team. When you have a strategy and a plan, you must enlist your team. Once they buy in, the whole thing becomes a reality. They are responsible for carrying it out. Ensure they are on track and receive feedback by providing them with direction, monitoring their progress, and meeting with them regularly.

What Are the Elements of Strategic Initiatives?

The elements of strategic initiatives are strategic goals, strategic objectives, and strategic vision.

1. Strategic Goals

The strategic planning process includes strategic goals. Using strategic tools such as OKRs or a Balanced scorecard, companies can set a strategic goal to identify what they want to accomplish. It's a more general endpoint that speaks to the needs of the company.

2. Strategic Objectives

Strategic objectives are more specific than strategic goals. They are set on the long term, but they break down the broader vision into specific plans and projects. Measured and realistic objectives are benchmarks for success. They translate the mission statement into practical terms.

3. Strategic Vision

Strategic vision and strategic initiative might seem similar, but there are differences between them as well. An organization's strategic vision is more of an overview of where it wants to be in the years to come. In addition to supporting the strategy, it presents an ideal scenario that is still attainable. Strategic initiatives, on the other hand, contain a scope statement, budget, and even a start and end date.

What Are Examples of Strategic Initiatives?

As examples of strategic initiatives, a wide range of organization types, functions, markets, and people can be used. This is an example list of strategic initiatives.

• Create a social media campaign to increase brand awareness.
• Merge or acquire a critical raw material supplier.
• Reduce outsourcing by launching a strategy.
• Increase the number of retail outlets that serve customers.
• Increase online product and service offerings.
• Actively pursue low-cost production as a top strategic priority.
• Reduce labor costs or improve quality by implementing an automated production system.
• Develop leadership talent aggressively to support expansion plans.
• Develop the next generation of products set out on a research effort.