How frequently does your organization reassess and renew its strategic plan?

Our reader poll today asks: How frequently does your organization reassess and renew its strategic plan?

• More than once a year 15.45%
• Once per year 40.16%
• Once every 2-3 years 17.37%
• Once every 4+ years 13.51%
• What’s a strategic plan? 13.51%

What’s the right frequency? The majority of you (55%) review your strategic plans at least once a year. A fair number of you (30%) do so less frequently. And an alarming portion (14%) report that you don’t really even have a plan or review it. The question is, what’s the right frequency. From my experience across many industries, the answer lies in how rapidly your industry and your company change. In volatile, fast-moving industries, reviewing and reassessing the plan at least once a year is appropriate. For more stable industries and markets, every 2-3 years can be reasonable. But when you approach 4+ years, I’d submit you’re missing opportunities to shift focus and reallocate resources because markets do have many shifts occur within that timeframe. For those who don’t even have a plan, creating one should be a top priority. Without a plan, it’s impossible to make broad decisions about products, services, resource allocation, talent acquisition, and investments. You’re flying in the dark without guidance. Inevitably, that will lead to a crash.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

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These results were originally a SmartPulse poll in SmartBrief on Leadership which tracks feedback from more than 240,000 business leaders. Get smarter on leadership and sign up for the SmartBrief on Leadership e-newsletter.