At Golden Alkemi, our strategic outcomes are based on the Drivers Model, which Michael Wilkinson first developed in 2011. The model provides a simple communication tool for helping organizations construct a strategic plan. It is a robust yet simple method for taking a strategic approach to addressing a business situation. The model is fully scalable and applies to Fortune 500 companies, non-profit organizations, government agencies, entire enterprises, single business units, field offices, individual departments, and any work team.

There are four major steps in our standard Drivers Model. What follows is a brief overview of the four steps.

Step 1: Where are we now? (Situation Assessment)

Understanding the current situation is vital to identifying the approaches needed to drive success. A full understanding of the current situation includes an analysis of several areas. The list below shows a sample list of assessment areas and one or two key questions to be answered for each.

• Customers – What are their current and future needs? What are their perceptions of our performance?
• Employees – What are their perceptions of our organization and how can we improve? How can we make them more effective in their roles?
• Industry Trends – What have been recent shifts in the industry? What shifts are anticipated for the future?
• Competitors – How do we compare against our competitors? What are their recent and anticipated initiatives?
• Performance Trends – How are we performing by product, by market, by channel?
• Recent Goals and Initiatives – How are we achieving against our plan? How successful have we been with recent initiatives?
• Organization Profile – What are our strengths and areas for improvement with regard to our organization structure, processes, technology, culture, etc.?

Often, planning teams summarize the current situation information into a SWOT: a summary of the organization's key strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Step 2. Where do we want to be? (Strategic Direction)

The heart of strategic direction setting is this second step. In our Drivers Model, the information from the situation assessment is combined with the understanding of future trends to develop the vision statement and the mission statement.

The strategic direction setting also includes the defining of goals and objectives, each goal has a specific set of objectives.

The objectives establish the bar for the rest of the planning effort. All the strategies, action plans, and investments should be focused on achieving one or more of the plan objectives.

Step 3 – How do we plan to get there? (Implementation Planning)

Once the objectives are established, the next step is to develop the road map for achieving the direction. For the road map to be viable, however, it must focus on three areas in particular.

1. The barriers to achieving the goals and objectives indicate those challenges that the organization must overcome to achieve its strategic direction. Barriers answer the following questions: “Why haven’t we achieved our goals already? What is standing in our way?”
2. While barriers address the challenges, the critical success factors identify those key conditions that must be met to achieve the goals. Critical success factors, typically no fewer than two and no more than seven per goal serve as a guide for determining the strategies to be developed.
3. The strategies that are undertaken (i.e., the road map) must drive the achievement of the strategic direction by controlling the critical success factors and overcoming the barriers.

- An important activity at this stage is prioritizing strategies to determine the items to focus on first. For each priority strategy, an action plan is developed
which details steps, responsibilities, costs, and timetables. The action plans can then be summarized to identify resource requirements and develop a resource plan to meet those requirements.

Step 4 – How will we monitor progress? (Monitoring)

Many organizations benefit simply from going through the process of creating a strategy. At this point, everyone is clear on where we are going, and how we plan to get there. However, the key value to strategy development comes in implementing the plan. Unfortunately, all too often, strategic plans become space fillers on an executive’s bookshelf. To prevent this occurrence, we recommend a structured monitoring process every three-to-six months.