How leaders can improve their 2025 strategic planning process

Author Sam Reese, CEO of Vistage

As 2025 rapidly approaches, many business leaders are starting their strategic planning process. Setting a strategy is the most difficult and important part of a CEO’s job.

While there are many different ways to create an annual strategic plan, effective plans include a few common elements. They reflect what worked and did not work well in the previous year and the opportunities for the following year.

They are actionable, measurable, and concise enough that the team can frequently review them to ensure they’re aligned. Strategic plans are not meant to just sit on the shelf until they get dusted off the following year during the next strategic planning process.

Annual strategic planning provides the opportunity to identify the end goal, define the metrics that will measure success, and outline the actions required to achieve these objectives. The end result provides a plan that unifies the team around the goals and drives results.

Successful strategic plans usually answer the following questions:

Identifying the end goal: What are we trying to accomplish?

The most comprehensive strategic planning processes include a deep review of the previous year. This involves listening to the team about what specifically worked and did not work. Hearing from employees at all levels allows a leader to understand challenges and opportunities from those who are closest to customers, with the benefit of various perspectives.

Amid a busy year, incorporating these deep reviews provides a crucial opportunity to press pause and analyse what needs to change for the following year to be more successful.

Encouraging and implementing an open and collaborative process helps identify precise and relevant goals. After seeking input across the organisation, CEOs gain the necessary perspective to set the direction. Great leaders balance their team’s feedback with their own judgment to ensure the goals for the following year are challenging yet achievable.

While setting goals is an important first step, just writing them down will not bring them to life. To ensure that goals are being followed through with execution, each team aligns their individual plans to the company goals once they are established.

Effective CEOs dedicate time and effort to ensuring different departmental goals don’t unintentionally conflict with one another. To set the company up for success, a critical step in any strategic plan is ensuring that appropriate resources are invested toward realising the goals.

Key Performance Indicators: What will we measure?

A well-designed strategic plan focuses on 3 to 5 key performance indicators (KPIs) that have the most significant impact on the business. These metrics are priorities that require continuous tracking to ensure accountability and keep the strategy on course.

Tracking metrics with the team regularly creates complete transparency. Having a real-time pulse on performance also allows the team to make timely and proactive changes.

When teams lack measurable metrics for success — or utilise metrics with inconsistent definitions across departments — performance can be compromised. Transparency encourages accountability, helps set precise and actionable objectives for the future, and ensures continuous improvement within the organisation.

Setting the strategy: How will we execute?

An effective strategic plan spells out the specific actions needed to achieve the goals. Organisations all too often create strategic plans that are overly complex, making them difficult to manage. This complexity can lead to the plan being neglected or abandoned midyear, ultimately leaving the goals unfulfilled.

On the other hand, a concise strategic plan can easily be reiterated throughout the year, ensuring it’s consistently top of mind for employees as they approach their daily work. This helps employees focus on what’s most important year round — not just for the first weeks after the strategy is set. Great strategic plans are also flexible by design and allow companies to adapt as unexpected challenges or opportunities arise.

When leaders feel like they have a good strategy, but aren’t hitting their goals, it can be helpful to seek out diverse perspectives. Hearing from CEO peers who can poke holes or offer new insights helps to refine the strategy, ensuring it remains dynamic and effective. Those outside the company can offer a fresh, unbiased perspective and share candid feedback that isn’t always possible from internal stakeholders.

Each company’s mission, vision, and purpose offer its long-term strategic plan, helping leaders decide what path to take when critical questions arise.

A thoughtful annual strategic plan offers leaders a near-term, practical way to cascade that strategy through every level of their organisation. Focusing on goals, metrics, and execution provides clarity across teams and strengthens an organisation’s ability to turn long-term goals into tangible results. When preparing for 2025 and all the unknowns the future inevitably holds, a thorough strategic plan is critical to driving meaningful outcomes for any business.

This story first appeared in Entrepreneur and features in the Vistage Resource Centre