Module Two
Lesson Five: Strategic Planning
1. Everything in life involves some type of system or methodology. We may not be aware of it but most things follow some type of specific order. As an example, everyday someone somewhere gets up, gets ready, and goes to school. If that person lives in the United States their participation in K-1 through K-12 educational programs is based on mandated laws and of course the yearly paperwork filled out by the parent(s) or guardian. The individual may feel as if they’re just attending school while totally unaware of the processes in place that allowed them to be there, but those processes do exist. What we want you to understand is that at some point you can no longer afford to be “unaware” of how certain things work; especially, those things that have a direct impact on your quality of life.
2. As we said before in our earlier lessons, it’s in your best interest to always have a plan, that’s what this lesson is about, learning to build plans, set goals, and map out different procedures that will get you where you want to be. The first step though, is being “aware” or realizing that you must plan for things in order to access and take advantage of those systems and methodologies we talked about in Paragraph One.
3. Let’s say for the sake of this discussion that you’re a sophomore in high school and you’ve decided that you want to be an “Operational Mobility Facilitator” (OMF) –we’re using an obviously fictional career field in order to preclude offending anyone by not choosing their particular field of endeavor. You know, or have been told, this field makes reasonably good money, works inside, and gets to travel to foreign countries. Your school also had an assembly which featured a guest speaker who was a certified “Operational Mobility Facilitator.” You were really impressed by their speaking skills as well as what they said about working in that field. So from that point on you were hooked and knew what you wanted to do. BUT, you have no idea how to pursue your goals. This is where a little thing called Strategic Planning comes in.
4. Answers.com defines strategic planning as “an organization’s process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy, including its capital and people.” Are you a business? For our purposes we’ll say no. Are you an organization? No. But you are a person who wants something and does not know how to get it…That means you need to do something really, really, simple. And that is devise a well thought out and researched plan to get from where you are right now to where you want to be at some point in the future. As we said, you do this by carefully researching your options and then setting goals (things you need to achieve and complete), along with ways to get them accomplished. When you’ve successfully completed all of the “steps” you’ve outlined as goals then the “strategy” (the mental or written outline of what you want to do and how you expect to get there) will have been completed and you will have obtained whatever it is you set out to do. We just over simplified the idea of strategic planning but that’s really all it is.
5. Let’s get to it and build a plan that will lead us into the Operational Mobility Facilitator career path. The first thing we need to acknowledge for this exercise is that there are some assumptions. Those assumptions are: these techniques can be applied to anything, different methodologies may be used to arrive at the same results, and you can do this. The first thing you want to do is Research, or find out all you can about Operational Mobility Facilitator’s. You can do this by talking to someone in the field, completing an internet search on the subject and reading all you can, to include any links and follow-up sites, or you can visit the local library and research all the documented information about Operational Mobility Facilitator’s membership societies and professional associations. You can also visit the United States Department of Labor website at http://www.dol.gov/ and research the site to find out just about anything concerning employment in the United States.
6. If you’ve done your research correctly you now know exactly what skillsets are necessary to become an OMF, this means you know you need a four-year degree in (fill in the blank) which means you must attend college. That means you have to maintain at least a 3.0 or better while in high school and that you must ensure your class schedule includes math, science, english, and any freshmen college classes you may be eligible for or allowed to take. This means no fluffy stuff and quite possibly the assistance of your parents and or school representatives to ensure you get the right classes at just the right time. This also means that even though your plans are still a few years off, you’re also exploring possible colleges, their entry requirements, scholarships, financial aid and how your parents are going to assist and support you in your endeavor.
7. Once you’ve completed your research it’s time to Evaluate all of the information you’ve discovered. The last part of the preceeding paragraph contains some of the information you need to think about and digest. But the bottom line is this, what you’re doing during the evaluation phase is discovering or crafting answers that involve these guys: who, what, when, where, why, and how. You already know the “who” that’s you, so there is one question that already has an answer. But things like: “What do I want to do? What (skills, supplies, funds, etc) do I need to do it? When must “it” be done? Where am I going to do this? What am I trying to accomplish, and how will I do it?” There really are more things which need to be answered but you get the picture. Once you have logical and rational answers to these questions it’s time to move on to the next phase. Remember, it’s very important that you involve your parents in this process as well. If you do not have a reliable parental figure that you can discuss these types of things with, make an appointment with your school counselor and see what assistance they can provide.
8. After you’ve conducted an honest and thorough evaluation it’s time to begin Goal Setting. All this means is that it’s time to break everything down into manageable prioritized chunks of things to be completed. These are all the individual things that must be finished in order to achieve the end result that you want. As an example your goals may look something this:
Now:
a. Discuss career options with parents
b. Research OMF career field on Deparment of Labor website
c. Review grade point average and adjust class schedule as necessary
d. Review colleges and explore entrance requirements
Junior Year of High School:
a. Take applicable placement tests
b. Continue with adjusted class schedule as well as attending college level classes
c. Etc, etc, etc
Senior Year of High School:
a. Develop plan for post-graduation and college transistion
b. Take applicable college placement tests
c. Register for college
d. Etc, etc, etc
Skip to Junior Year of College:
a. Submit internship paperwork for job at “Extremely Big Corporation” for OMF experience
b. Monitor grade point average and continue working towards goal
Senior Year of College:
a. Graduate with 4-year degree in (fill in the blank) with a minor in (fill in the blank)
b. Interview with Extremely Big Corporation for job as OMF
c. Etc, etc, etc
9. For the sake of brevity and space we’ve once again, over simplified a process, but we think you’ll understand where we’re going with our sample goal building exercise. You may modify your goals by filling in start and completion dates as you feel they are applicable. Adding and monitering completion dates is always a good thing because once something is accomplished it really gives you a profound sense of satisfaction. You may also choose to add in options, options are things which (at the time) may not be apparent to you, but as life progresses and things change your plan or goals may also be forced to change. But you plan for them as best you can. As an example, the OMF career field may fall out of favor with you before you finish college. But since you’ve explored all of your options way back in the research phase, you also know that your college credits and classes count towards a career in (fill in the blank) so upon graduation you apply for and get accepted for a position in the Department of Justice as a forensic (fill in the blank). By adding room for options all you’ve done is prepare yourself for life’s little surprises. Note: Due to unforeseen circumstances some goals may be completed before others and therefore be out of order. That’s okay; the idea is to get your goals completed.
10. The next step is Pursuit. This is putting your plan into motion and getting started with everything that needs to be done to get things done. This means no procrastination, this means staying motivated, and this also means committing to something that is not readily apparent but must be done if you want to move on with your life. This last part is hard, especially if you’re a sophmore in high school. But rest assured people do it everyday and so can you. This type of planning is not for everyone, because there are those that still have not decided what they want to do with themselves. That’s not a terrible thing but again, what we hope to provide is a very basic tool to help you with getting things done whenever you’re ready.
11. The last step is to Review. This means continually staying on top of your goals and adjusting or re-adjusting them as necessary. Life changes, things change, and you will change. All of that is just a fact of life, but the idea is to keep moving down that path to success by continually modifying your goals to meet your needs and completing them in a timely and efficient manner. There are many different terms for what we just did but we decided to use the word Strategic Planning because as you go through life you will hear that word many, many times, and we want you to get familiar with it now. You’ll hear business acronyms like SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunites, and Threats) and PEST analysis (Political, Economic, Social, and Technological) and many other things attributable to strategic planning. However, the bottom line is they are all planning methodologies which achieve a desired end state. Each of them is designed to answer or address three things: What does an entity do or need to do, for whom do they do it, and how does that entity excel? So, if any of those things interest you, or you are curious about how to accomplish them…now you know how to develop a plan that addresses them.
Conclusion: So, that’s it. Research, Evaluate, Goal Setting, Pursuit, and Review. Try applying this methodology to your next project or using it in your life and see how it works for you. As always we walk a fine line between providing content that someone may find useful and boring you to tears. Let us know how we’re doing by leaving a comment.
