Reimagining the Strategic Plan: Best Practices to Improve Agility

In most organizations, the ritual continues year after year. Leaders retreat to draft a plan meant to chart the next 12 months. The process produces slick decks and lofty objectives. Then the plan sits while the world shifts. Market trends accelerate, customer needs evolve, and the organization moves forward on autopilot, guided mostly by habit instead of strategy.

APQC’s global survey of 550 business leaders across multiple industries and sectors shows that 30% of organizations now revisit their strategies more than once a year, building in regular checkpoints to adjust course. Some are moving beyond the fixation on internal inputs, folding external trends and signals more meaningfully into their plans. More than a third have adopted shared planning models in which executives and business units develop goals simultaneously, refining them together to create an integrated roadmap. 

These organizations are learning that improving agility – a key determinant of modern business success – requires a shared understanding of the big picture and the capacity to act on opportunities before competitors do.