FastTrack™ Strategic Planning System
Build your strategic plan step by step
Use Best-Practices Planning and Execution to Achieve Your Vision
The FastTrack™ Strategic Planning System guides you through the steps to develop a strategic vision, set goals and strategies, and execute well. Take every step or pick your path: The key is to create your vision, chart your course, and make ongoing progress.
Getting Started
To lead your organization to a better future, you need more than goals—you need a compelling vision of great success and powerful strategies to make it real.
But vision and strategy aren’t enough on their own. The real challenge is follow-through.
That’s where the FastTrack™ Strategic Planning System comes in. It recognizes that planning is not an event—it’s an ongoing process. An agile planning system developed based on 35+ years of real-world experience working with organizations to create and implement strategy, FastTrack™ gives you the structure, tools, and rhythm to bridge the gap between strategy and execution—so you can stay focused, aligned, and consistently make progress.
From Vision to Reality—One Step at a Time
If you work through all the steps in the FastTrack™ Strategic Planning System, you will:
- Set the time span and strategy areas that your plan will address
- Conduct a business assessment and an environmental scan
- Consider your business model and the basis on which you will compete
- Learn from stakeholders and assess the competition
- Put it all together in a comprehensive SWOT analysis
- Use your SWOT to develop an inspiring vision of great future success
- Identify the gaps between today and your vision
- Develop strategic goals and strategies to close the gaps
- Establish your objectives and Key Performance Indicators
- Develop 12-month action steps to assure that you get down the road
- Create your program to drive implementation and measure your progress
Tools That Keep You Moving Forward
FastTrack™ is more than a planning model—it’s a discipline for driving results. It equips you with:
- Practical tools like KPIs, a dashboard, and monthly, quarterly, and annual processes for assessment, adjustment, and re-planning
- Built-in accountability to help you and your team stay engaged, on track, and aligned
- A step-by-step system that simplifies the complex and makes strategy part of your everyday leadership
For Leaders Who Want to Leverage Strategy for Great Success
Whether you're a business, nonprofit, association, or government entity, FastTrack™ helps you set a great vision, execute consistently, and achieve what matters most for great success.
How it works:
- Use the navigation buttons above to explore the FastTrack™ system step-by-step—or jump into the sections in whatever order makes sense. Every element is designed to contribute to creating and executing a strategic business plan that will help you live your vision of great success.
- As you progress through the planning steps, you will see your plan outlined in the sidebar to the left.
- Be sure you use the buttons on the upper left to save, export, and print your plan. You can also reload a plan you have saved and restart the process.
- For knowledge, ideas, editing help, examples, options, best practices, and more, click the floating button on the lower left to get help from Kai, our AI planning assistant.
Let’s begin.
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Prepare to Plan
Initial Information
Enter information about your organization and the plan you are creating.
The planning period is the time span which your plan will address. It's generally better for your plan to cover four or five years or even longer to encourage development of strategies that will drive big change rather than incremental improvement.
Strategy Areas Selection
Your strategy for attaining your Vision should address the four Balanced Scorecard perspectives: Financial, Customer, Internal Processes, and People/Organizational Capacity. These perspectives are often called Strategy Areas or Pillars.
Each template below adapts the Balanced Scorecard perspectives to different organization types. Choose a template that best fits your organization type. Then you can customize the Strategy Area names to match your organization's specific needs.
Business Template
Strategy Areas:- Financial
- Organizational/People
- Customers/Marketing
- Operations, Processes, and Procedures
Non-Profit Template
Strategy Areas:- Revenue to Drive the Vision
- A Robust Team, Supported and Engaged
- Visible, Growing Impact
- Meeting Community Needs
Healthcare Template
Strategy Areas:- Financial Sustainability
- Healthcare Team Excellence
- Patient Care & Experience
- Clinical Operations
Education Template
Strategy Areas:- Sustainable Resources
- Faculty & Staff Excellence
- Student Success
- Academic Innovation
Business Assessment
Rate your business on key aspects to identify areas to build on or needing attention to inform your strategic planning.
How to use your ratings:
- Good areas represent your strengths - build on these in your strategy
- So-So areas need improvement - consider enhancements in your planning
- Not Good areas are critical weaknesses - prioritize these for remediation
Assessment Summary
Good
So-So
Not Good
Business Model
Describe the core of how your organization creates, delivers, and captures value. What is your revenue model? Who are your customers and beneficiaries?
Basis for Competition
Explain your organization's unique value proposition and competitive advantage. What sets you apart in your market or sector?
Environment Scan
Identify key trends and forecasts in each category that are important to the future of your organization.
Beyond web searches and consulting experts, a great tool for identifying trends and forecasts is AI. Use one of the leading AI models (such as ChatGPT 4.0, Gemini 2.0 Flash,or Claude 3.7 Sonnet) or interact with Kai right on this page
Consider identify trends and forecasts for both defensive purposes (e.g., threats to mitigate) and offensive purposes (e.g., opportunities to leverage).
You can tag important factors as Opportunities or Threats to include in your SWOT analysis.
Stakeholder Input
Consider gathering input from key stakeholders when creating your strategic plan.
Key stakeholder groups include:
- Employees
- Clients
- Board members
- Partners and Suppliers
- Investors and Donors (for non-profits)
Stakeholder insights can:
- Provide a reality-based overview of your organization's current state
- Uncover potential blind spots
- Identify key priorities for action
- Help shape strategic options and opportunities
Use surveys, focus groups, or interviews to gather insights about:
- Organizational strengths and weaknesses
- Opportunities for improvement
- Potential threats
- Future vision and goals
Here are suggested survey questions:
- What do you think the organization's greatest strengths are?
- What do you think the organization's greatest weaknesses are?
- What do you see as important opportunities for the organization to be more effective or efficient; provide better products, services and/or programs; innovate; be in a better financial position, or otherwise be more successful over the next five years?
- What do you see as the greatest threats to the organization's financial integrity, products/services/programs, and overall success over the next five years?
- What do you think are the most important things for the organizations to begin doing now for greater success in the future?
- Envision the organization five years from now. What do you think are the most important things for the organization to achieve by then?
Competitive Analysis
Analyze your key competitors to understand your competitive positioning. You can analyze up to five key competitors or competitor types.
For each competitor, evaluate their characteristics and identify their advantages and vulnerabilities relative to your organization.
You can use the insights you gain about the competition and how you measure up to craft strategies designed to differentiate your organization, defend its position, and/or foster growth.
💡 Competition exists in all sectors - businesses compete for customers, non-profits compete for donors and attention, and government agencies compete for resources and talent.
Competitor 1
SWOT Analysis
The Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) Analysis is a critical tool in strategic planning. It's the basis for creating strategies that will move you down the road to your vision.
Enter the most important factors that will shape your strategic decisions.
Strengths & Weaknesses are internal to your organization.
- Use insights from your Business Assessment and Stakeholder Input to identify them.
Opportunities & Threats are external factors that impact your organization.
- Use insights from the Environmental Scan and Competitive Analysis to identify them.
Note that the buttons below allow you to add the items in your Business Assessment to the listing of Strengths and Weaknesses and the items you tagged in your Environmental Scan to the listing of Opportunities and Threats.
When you have completed your lists f SWOT items, you can rearrange then to prioritize them by importance for planning purposes. The strategies you will develop should build on your main strengths, remedy or mitigate important weaknesses, capitalize on big opportunities, and defend against significant threats.
Strengths
Ranking of Importance
Weaknesses
Ranking of Importance
Opportunities
Ranking of Importance
Threats
Ranking of Importance
Create Your Plan
Mission & Values
Your mission statement (sometimes called a purpose statement) defines your organization's purpose and how you serve your stakeholders today. The role of the mission statement is to focus and inspire the organization.
A good mission statement is clear, concise, outcome-oriented, and timeless. It should address what you do, who you serve, and the value you provide. (Note: While it is essential to know your organization's mission, having a well-crafted mission statement is not necessary for creating your strategic plan.)
Mission Statement Guidance
Consider these questions to help you define your organization's mission:
- Purpose: What do we do? What is our core activity?
- Customer/Audience: Who do we serve? Who benefits from our work?
- Value: What value do we provide? What need do we fulfill? What problem do we solve?
- Approach: How do we do it? What are our core competencies?
A good mission statement often follows this format: To [action verb] for [target audience] by [means] to [achieve this outcome].
Core values are the enduring principles that guide how your organization behaves and makes decisions. These are values you’ll never compromise, even under pressure.
- What behaviors reflect your organization at its best?
- What’s truly non-negotiable for your team?
- What values are essential to achieving your mission?
List up to 7 core values and define how each is lived out in behavior:
Vision
Your strategic plan should be aimed at bringing your vision of future success to life. Your vision statement describes what your organization aspires to become and achieve in the future.
A compelling vision statement is aspirational, inspiring, clear, memorable, and aligned with your values. It should paint a picture of the future you want to create. Write it from the perspective of the future—how you want the organization’s success described.
Examples of Effective Vision StatementsCreate and Test Draft Vision Statements
Here are questions to prompt thinking about how the organization would appear and would be doing if it were extraordinarily successful in achieving its mission over the planning period (the duration of this plan). With your answers in hand, then you will be ready to draft and evaluate compelling visions of great success to find the vision that's just right.
Use your answers to the questions above to draft up to five possible vision statements. Then rate these draft vision statements using the VisionLens™ Vision Evaluator below. When you find the vision statement that's just right, click the "Use This Vision" button below it and it will appear in the Vision Statement box above.
Hint: You and/or team members can draft multiple vision statements to test. Kai can help you process your responses to the vision creation questions into several draft vision statements. Look for gems, commonalities, and areas of agreement among the statements. Mash up the statements to create a great vision statement.
VisionLens™ Vision Evaluator
Assess your vision's power and feasibility across three key dimensions. For each criterion, enter a score within the specified range and document your reasoning.
Total possible points:
- Vision Power (45 points) – Evaluates future orientation, transformative potential, and stakeholder appeal
- Strategic Feasibility (30 points) – Assesses change management, strategic gap, and resource availability
- Implementation Readiness (25 points) – Measures organizational readiness and realism of the timeline
Draft Vision Being Evaluated:
Vision Power (45 points)
Strategic Feasibility (30 points)
Implementation Readiness (25 points)
Strategic Gaps & Remedies
Identifying Strategic Gaps
Strategic gaps are the major variances between the future described in your strategic vision and the likely future your organization will experience without intervention.
Use what you've already uncovered:
- What was rated "so-so" or "poor" in your Business Assessment?
- What are your weaknesses and threats in the SWOT?
- What must be overcome or corrected to reach your vision?
Enter up to 10 gaps and the remedies for each:
Strategic Goals by Strategy Area
Setting Strategic Goals by Strategy Area
For each of your strategy areas, define 1-3 strategic goals that will move your organization toward your vision of great success. These goals should address the gaps between your current state and desired future.
Effective strategic goals:
- Are aligned with your vision and values
- Address critical gaps identified in your SWOT analysis
- Provide clear direction for strategy development
- Are ambitious but achievable within your planning period
Example: For a Financial strategy area, a goal might be: "Achieve financial sustainability through diversified revenue streams by the end of the planning period."
Set your goals! The following process will help you draft, rate, and adopt strategic goals for each strategy area.
Strategic Goals
Strategies by Strategy Area
Developing Strategies by Area
For each strategy area, develop specific strategies that will help you achieve your strategic goals. Effective strategies are major planned actions that will move your organization from its current state toward your vision of success.
Winning strategies should meet these benchmarks:
- Contribution: They contribute directly to vision achievement
- Intentionality: They focus the organization on a clear plan of action
- Importance: They address significant organizational needs
- Impact: They achieve meaningful results
- Challenge: They push the organization to perform better
- Specificity: They are well articulated and easily understood
- Time: They fit within an appropriate time frame
- Measurability: Their results can be monitored and assessed
- Realism: They can be achieved within your time frame
- Limitation: They focus resources on high-impact activities
Remember: "Go wide, go narrow, then decide." First brainstorm many options, then filter them down to the most powerful strategies. It's better to have one or a few strategies for each strategy area than to be trying to pursue many strategies.
Develop your strategies! The following process will help you draft, rate, and adopt strategies for each strategy area.
Strategies
Objectives
Information to come.
Key Performance Indicators
Information to come.
12-Month Action Steps
Information to come.
Implement Your Plan
Implementation Plan
Information to come.
Implementation Dashboard
Information to come.
Monthly Check-In
Information to come.
Quarterly Progress Assessment
Information to come.
Annual Assessment and Replanning
Information to come.
Kai, our AI planning assistant, is here to help. Click the floating button below to ask Kai for knowledge, ideas, editing help, examples, options, best practices, and more. To restart the conversation with Kai, click the 🔄 icon.