The Importance of Strategic Planning in Successful Corporate Real Estate

Management
Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/importance-strategic-planning-successful-corporate-real-russell-bruce

As businesses adapt to new ways of working in the post-pandemic world, corporate real estate
management is becoming increasingly complex. As a result, having a clear and strategic plan in place for
managing corporate real estate has never been more important. It's not just about finding the right
space for your company – it's about creating a working environment that fosters productivity,
collaboration, and innovation, and reflects your company's culture and brand.

In order to achieve this, it's essential to have a well thought out strategic plan in place. This plan should
outline your company's long-term goals and objectives, and provide a roadmap for achieving them. It
should also take into account the changing nature of work and the workforce, and be flexible enough to
adapt to future challenges.

One of the most important aspects of strategic planning for corporate real estate management is
ensuring that the leadership team has a clear, articulated vision of what they want to achieve. This
includes setting clear goals and objectives for the use of space, as well as a plan for achieving them. It's
important to involve employees at all levels in this process, through working groups and champions, to
ensure that the vision is shared and understood by everyone.

Another key element of strategic planning is empowering employees to contribute to the longer-term
strategy. This can be achieved by creating working groups and champions, who can provide input on how
the company can best use its space to support its goals and objectives. This not only helps to ensure that
the strategy is relevant and effective, but also helps to build buy-in and engagement among employees.

In addition to providing a roadmap for achieving long-term goals, strategic planning can also help to
ensure that corporate real estate management is aligned with the company's broader business strategy.
This means considering factors such as growth projections, industry trends, and the competitive
landscape, and using this information to inform decisions about space and facilities.
Furthermore, strategic planning can help to ensure that corporate real estate management supports the
company's culture and brand. This involves considering the values and principles that underpin the
company's culture, and designing a working environment that reflects these. For example, a company
that values collaboration may choose to create open plan workspaces that encourage interaction and
teamwork.

Finally, strategic planning can help to ensure that the company is well-positioned to adapt to future
changes in the workplace and the workforce. This involves considering trends such as the shift towards
hybrid working, and designing a working environment that can support this. By taking a proactive and
strategic approach to corporate real estate management, companies can ensure that they are well-
positioned for success in the years to come.

In my view strategic planning is essential for successful corporate real estate management. It provides a
roadmap for achieving long-term goals, ensures that corporate real estate management is aligned with
the company's broader business strategy, supports the company's culture and brand, as well as positions
the company for future success. By taking a holistic and proactive approach to corporate real estate
management, companies can create a working environment that fosters productivity, collaboration, and
innovation while supporting the wellbeing and engagement of their employees.
What is strategic planning?
A 5-step guide
Source: https://asana.com/resources/strategic-planning

Summary

Strategic planning is a process through which business leader’s map out their vision for their
organization’s growth and how they’re going to get there. In this article, we'll guide you through the
strategic planning process, including why it's important, the benefits and best practices, and five steps to
get you from beginning to end.

Strategic planning is a process through which business leader’s map out their vision for their
organization’s growth and how they’re going to get there. The strategic planning process informs your
organization’s decisions, growth, and goals.

Strategic planning helps you clearly define your company’s long-term objectives—and maps how your
short-term goals and work will help you achieve them. This, in turn, gives you a clear sense of where
your organization is going and allows you to ensure your teams are working on projects that make the
most impact. Think of it this way—if your goals and objectives are your destination on a map, your
strategic plan is your navigation system.

In this article, we walk you through the 5-step strategic planning process and show you how to get
started developing your own strategic plan.
What is strategic planning?

Strategic planning is a business process that helps you define and share the direction your company will
take in the next three to five years. During the strategic planning process, stakeholders review and define
the organization’s mission and goals, conduct competitive assessments, and identify company goals and
objectives. The product of the planning cycle is a strategic plan, which is shared throughout the
company.

A strategic plan is the end result of the strategic planning process. At its most basic, it’s a tool used to
define your organization’s goals and what actions you’ll take to achieve them.

Typically, your strategic plan should include:

 Your company’s vision statement

 Your company’s mission statement
 Your organizational goals, including your long-term goals and short-term, yearly objectives
 Any plan of action, tactics, or approaches you plan to take to meet those goals
What are the benefits of strategic planning?

Strategic planning can help with goal setting and decision-making by allowing you to map out how your
company will move toward your organization’s vision and mission statements in the next three to five
years. Let’s circle back to our map metaphor. If you think of your company trajectory as a line on a map,
a strategic plan can help you better quantify how you’ll get from point A (where you are now) to point B
(where you want to be in a few years).

When you create and share a clear strategic plan with your team, you can:

 Build a strong organizational culture by clearly defining and aligning on your organization’s
mission, vision, and goals.
 Align everyone around a shared purpose and ensure all departments and teams are working
toward a common objective.
 Proactively set objectives to help you get where you want to go and achieve desired outcomes.
 Promote a long-term vision for your company rather than focusing primarily on short-term gains.
 Ensure resources are allocated around the most high-impact priorities.
 Define long-term goals and set shorter-term goals to support them.
 Assess your current situation and identify any opportunities—or threats—allowing your
organization to mitigate potential risks.
 Create a proactive business culture that enables your organization to respond more swiftly to
emerging market changes and opportunities.

What are the 5 steps in strategic planning?

The strategic planning process involves a structured methodology that guides the organization from
vision to implementation. The strategic planning process starts with assembling a small, dedicated team
of key strategic planners—typically five to 10 members—who will form the strategic planning, or
management, committee. This team is responsible for gathering crucial information, guiding the
development of the plan, and overseeing strategy execution.

Once you’ve established your management committee, you can get to work on the planning process.

Step 1: Assess your current business strategy and business environment

Before you can define where you’re going, you first need to define where you are. Understanding the
external environment, including market trends and competitive landscape, is crucial in the initial
assessment phase of strategic planning.
To do this, your management committee should collect a variety of information from additional
stakeholders, like employees and customers. In particular, plan to gather:

 Relevant industry and market data to inform any market opportunities, as well as any potential
upcoming threats in the near future.
 Customer insights to understand what your customers want from your company—like product
improvements or additional services.
 Employee feedback that needs to be addressed—whether about the product, business practices,
or the day-to-day company culture.

Consider different types of strategic planning tools and analytical techniques to gather this information,
such as:

 A balanced scorecard to help you evaluate four major elements of a business: learning and
growth, business processes, customer satisfaction, and financial performance.
 A SWOT analysis to help you assess both current and future potential for the business (you’ll
return to this analysis periodically during the strategic planning process).

To fill out each letter in the SWOT acronym, your management committee will answer a series of
questions:

Strengths:

 What does your organization currently do well?

 What separates you from your competitors?
 What are your most valuable internal resources?
 What tangible assets do you have?
 What is your biggest strength?

Weaknesses:

 What does your organization do poorly?

 What do you currently lack (whether that’s a product, resource, or process)?
 What do your competitors do better than you?
 What, if any, limitations are holding your organization back?
 What processes or products need improvement?
Opportunities:

 What opportunities does your organization have?

 How can you leverage your unique company strengths?
 Are there any trends that you can take advantage of?
 How can you capitalize on marketing or press opportunities?
 Is there an emerging need for your product or service?

Threats:

 What emerging competitors should you keep an eye on?

 Are there any weaknesses that expose your organization to risk?
 Have you or could you experience negative press that could reduce market share?
 Is there a chance of changing customer attitudes towards your company?

Step 2: Identify your company’s goals and objectives

To begin strategy development, take into account your current position, which is where you are now.
Then, draw inspiration from your vision, mission, and current position to identify and define your goals—
these are your final destination.

To develop your strategy, you’re essentially pulling out your compass and asking, “Where are we going
next?” “What’s the ideal future state of this company?” This can help you figure out which path you
need to take to get there.

During this phase of the planning process, take inspiration from important company documents, such as:

 Your mission statement, to understand how you can continue moving towards your
organization’s core purpose.
 Your vision statement, to clarify how your strategic plan fits into your long-term vision.
 Your company values, to guide you towards what matters most towards your company.
 Your competitive advantages, to understand what unique benefit you offer to the market.
 Your long-term goals, to track where you want to be in five or 10 years.
 Your financial forecast and projection, to understand where you expect your financials to be in
the next three years, what your expected cash flow is, and what new opportunities you will likely
be able to invest in.
Step 3: Develop your strategic plan and determine performance metrics

Now that you understand where you are and where you want to go, it’s time to put pen to paper. Take
your current business position and strategy into account, as well as your organization’s goals and
objectives, and build out a strategic plan for the next three to five years. Keep in mind that even though
you’re creating a long-term plan, parts of your plan should be created or revisited as the quarters and
years go on.

As you build your strategic plan, you should define:

 Company priorities for the next three to five years, based on your SWOT analysis and strategy.
 Yearly objectives for the first year. You don’t need to define your objectives for every year of the
strategic plan. As the years go on, create new yearly objectives that connect back to your overall
strategic goals.
 Related key results and KPIs. Some of these should be set by the management committee, and
some should be set by specific teams that are closer to the work. Make sure your key results and
KPIs are measurable and actionable. These KPIs will help you track progress and ensure you’re
moving in the right direction.
 Budget for the next year or few years. This should be based on your financial forecast as well as
your direction. Do you need to spend aggressively to develop your product? Build your team?
Make a dent with marketing? Clarify your most important initiatives and how you’ll budget for
those.
 A high-level project roadmap. A project roadmap is a tool in project management that helps you
visualize the timeline of a complex initiative, but you can also create a very high-level project
roadmap for your strategic plan. Outline what you expect to be working on in certain quarters or
years to make the plan more actionable and understandable.

Step 4: Implement and share your plan

Now it’s time to put your plan into action. Strategy implementation involves clear communication across
your entire organization to make sure everyone knows their responsibilities and how to measure the
plan’s success.

Make sure your team (especially senior leadership) has access to the strategic plan, so they can
understand how their work contributes to company priorities and the overall strategy map. We
recommend sharing your plan in the same tool you use to manage and track work, so you can more
easily connect high-level objectives to daily work. If you don’t already, consider using a work
management platform.
A few tips to make sure your plan will be executed without a hitch:

 Communicate clearly to your entire organization throughout the implementation process, to

ensure all team members understand the strategic plan and how to implement it effectively.
 Define what “success” looks like by mapping your strategic plan to key performance indicators.
 Ensure that the actions outlined in the strategic plan are integrated into the daily operations of
the organization, so that every team member's daily activities are aligned with the broader
strategic objectives.
 Utilize tools and software—like a work management platform—that can aid in implementing and
tracking the progress of your plan.
 Regularly monitor and share the progress of the strategic plan with the entire organization, to
keep everyone informed and reinforce the importance of the plan.
 Establish regular check-ins to monitor the progress of your strategic plan and make adjustments
as needed.

Step 5: Revise and restructure as needed

Once you’ve created and implemented your new strategic framework, the final step of the planning
process is to monitor and manage your plan.

Remember, your strategic plan isn’t set in stone. You’ll need to revisit and update the plan if your
company changes directions or makes new investments. As new market opportunities and threats come
up, you’ll likely want to tweak your strategic plan. Make sure to review your plan regularly—meaning
quarterly and annually—to ensure it’s still aligned with your organization’s vision and goals.

Keep in mind that your plan won’t last forever, even if you do update it frequently. A successful strategic
plan evolves with your company’s long-term goals. When you’ve achieved most of your strategic goals,
or if your strategy has evolved significantly since you first made your plan, it might be time to create a
new one.

Build a smarter strategic plan with a work management platform

To turn your company strategy into a plan—and ultimately, impact—make sure you’re proactively
connecting company objectives to daily work. When you can clarify this connection, you’re giving your
team members the context they need to get their best work done.

A work management platform plays a pivotal role in this process. It acts as a central hub for your
strategic plan, ensuring that every task and project is directly tied to your broader company goals. This
alignment is crucial for visibility and coordination, allowing team members to see how their individual
efforts contribute to the company’s success.
By leveraging such a platform, you not only streamline workflow and enhance team productivity but also
align every action with your strategic objectives—allowing teams to drive greater impact and helping
your company move toward goals more effectively.

Strategic planning FAQs

Still have questions about strategic planning? We have answers.

Why do I need a strategic plan?

A strategic plan is one of many tools you can use to plan and hit your goals. It helps map out strategic
objectives and growth metrics that will help your company be successful.

When should I create a strategic plan?

You should aim to create a strategic plan every three to five years, depending on your organization’s
growth speed.

Since the point of a strategic plan is to map out your long-term goals and how you’ll get there, you
should create a strategic plan when you’ve met most or all of them. You should also create a strategic
plan any time you’re going to make a large pivot in your organization’s mission or enter new markets.

What is a strategic planning template?

A strategic planning template is a tool organizations can use to map out their strategic plan and track
progress. Typically, a strategic planning template houses all the components needed to build out a
strategic plan, including your company’s vision and mission statements, information from any
competitive analyses or SWOT assessments, and relevant KPIs.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. business plan?

A business plan can help you document your strategy as you’re getting started so every team member is
on the same page about your core business priorities and goals. This tool can help you document and
share your strategy with key investors or stakeholders as you get your business up and running.

You should create a business plan when you’re:

 Just starting your business

 Significantly restructuring your business
If your business is already established, you should create a strategic plan instead of a business plan. Even
if you’re working at a relatively young company, your strategic plan can build on your business plan to
help you move in the right direction. During the strategic planning process, you’ll draw from a lot of the
fundamental business elements you built early on to establish your strategy for the next three to five
years.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. mission and vision statements?

Your strategic plan, mission statement, and vision statements are all closely connected. In fact, during
the strategic planning process, you will take inspiration from your mission and vision statements in order
to build out your strategic plan.

Simply put:

 A mission statement summarizes your company’s purpose.

 A vision statement broadly explains how you’ll reach your company’s purpose.
 A strategic plan pulls in inspiration from your mission and vision statements and outlines what
actions you’re going to take to move in the right direction.

For example, if your company produces pet safety equipment, here’s how your mission statement, vision
statement, and strategic plan might shake out:

 Mission statement: “To ensure the safety of the world’s animals.”

 Vision statement: “To create pet safety and tracking products that are effortless to use.”
 Your strategic plan would outline the steps you’re going to take in the next few years to bring
your company closer to your mission and vision. For example, you develop a new pet tracking
smart collar or improve the microchipping experience for pet owners.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. company objectives?

Company objectives are broad goals. You should set these on a yearly or quarterly basis (if your
organization moves quickly). These objectives give your team a clear sense of what you intend to
accomplish for a set period of time.

Your strategic plan is more forward-thinking than your company goals, and it should cover more than
one year of work. Think of it this way: your company objectives will move the needle towards your
overall strategy—but your strategic plan should be bigger than company objectives because it spans
multiple years.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. a business case?

A business case is a document to help you pitch a significant investment or initiative for your company.
When you create a business case, you’re outlining why this investment is a good idea, and how this
large-scale project will positively impact the business.

You might end up building business cases for things on your strategic plan’s roadmap—but your strategic
plan should be bigger than that. This tool should encompass multiple years of your roadmap, across your
entire company—not just one initiative.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. a project plan?

A strategic plan is a company-wide, multi-year plan of what you want to accomplish in the next three to
five years and how you plan to accomplish that. A project plan, on the other hand, outlines how you’re
going to accomplish a specific project. This project could be one of many initiatives that contribute to a
specific company objective which, in turn, is one of many objectives that contribute to your strategic
plan.

What’s the difference between strategic management vs. strategic planning?

A strategic plan is a tool to define where your organization wants to go and what actions you need to
take to achieve those goals. Strategic planning is the process of creating a plan in order to hit your
strategic objectives.

Strategic management includes the strategic planning process, but also goes beyond it. In addition to
planning how you will achieve your big-picture goals, strategic management also helps you organize your
resources and figure out the best action plans for success.