Free facilitation resource
Strategic Planning Agenda Template
A two-day agenda for leadership teams that need to turn evidence into a small set of strategic choices, measurable outcomes, and an owned operating rhythm.
The short answer
A strategic planning agenda should spend less time wordsmithing and more time making connected choices: where to play, how to win, what capabilities and systems those choices require, what will stop, and how the organization will learn whether the choices are working.
Is this the right template?
Use it when
- The leadership group has authority to make or recommend meaningful strategic choices.
- Customer, stakeholder, financial, operational, and market evidence can be assembled before the session.
- Participants are prepared to name trade-offs and stop-doing decisions.
- The organization can connect the strategy to an execution and review rhythm.
Do not use it unchanged when
- The request is only to rewrite a vision statement without changing choices or resource allocation.
- The executive sponsor has not defined who decides or what is in scope.
- Material evidence is unavailable and the room would be forced to substitute confidence for facts.
- The process is being used to avoid urgent financial, governance, safety, legal, or people decisions.
Preparation checklist
- 1
Define the planning horizon, decision mandate, governing constraints, and approval path.
- 2
Assemble a concise evidence pack: current performance, customer and stakeholder evidence, financials, capacity, competition, and material external change.
- 3
Interview or survey people who hold critical evidence but will not be in the room.
- 4
Write the current strategy as choices, not slogans, so it can be tested honestly.
- 5
List active initiatives, material commitments, constraints, and current resource allocation.
- 6
Agree the decision method and the criteria that will be used to compare options.
- 7
Prepare templates for choices, capabilities, stop-doing decisions, outcomes, assumptions, and owners.
- 8
Schedule post-session synthesis and the first strategy review before the workshop begins.
Copy and adapt
Facilitation agenda
Times are a design starting point, not a promise that every group needs the same process.
Decision record
Capture these before people leave:
- Planning horizon and strategic question
- Where-to-play choices and explicit exclusions
- How-to-win choice and critical assumptions
- Required capabilities and management systems
- Start, continue, change, and stop decisions
- Outcomes, owners, evidence, and review cadence
Follow-through
Turn the session into operating behaviour:
- Publish a concise strategy-on-a-page plus the decision record.
- Validate the narrative with affected teams without reopening every settled choice.
- Fund or stop work so resource allocation matches the strategy.
- Review assumptions and outcomes in a monthly or quarterly strategy rhythm.
- Adapt choices when evidence changes; do not silently replace the strategy with a project list.
Turn the Agenda Into a Decision Process
FUSE can design and facilitate the complete process or help you determine whether an internal lead can use this template safely and effectively.
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