In this instructional video, Dr. Walter V. Murray introduces and explains his Five Functional Phases strategic planning framework, which he details in his book Strategic Planning: From Ideation to Implementation. The framework breaks strategic planning into five sequential, functional phases: (1) Ideation – establishing values, vision, and mission; (2) Position Analysis – a data‑driven assessment of the organization’s current state relative to its vision; (3) Gap Strategy Development – designing, modeling, and financially validating strategies that close the gap between current position and desired future; (4) Implementation – executing the chosen strategies; and (5) Ongoing Evaluation – continuously monitoring results and adapting the plan. Dr. Murray emphasizes that many organizations get stuck in the ideation phase or fall into “dreaming activities” that lack strategic rigor. He offers five broad categories of strategic‑planning actions aligned with the five phases and provides a set of seven diagnostic questions to evaluate whether any given activity is truly strategic. The video also notes that Strategic Business Analysts, LLC has applied this methodology with hundreds of business owners and executives, underscoring its practical applicability.
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The only question is, how effective is your strategic planning, and do you get sidetracked? Do you get stuck? Do you become dysfunctional in the strategic planning process? And that's what this class is going to do, right? This class is going to show you how to get past that first step where it's most likely to get stuck, what I call the ideation phase. Again, let's talk about our definition. A well-researched, coordinated set of steps to get from point A to point B. Simple definition. Now we approach strategic planning using what is called the 5 functional phases approach. The Five Functional Phases Approach.
Dr. Murray has developed a strategic planning framework known as the Five Functional Phases Framework. The five phases in this strategic planning framework are: Phase 1 is Ideation. This phase focuses on values, vision, and mission. Phase 2 is Position Analysis. This phase is a comprehensive assessment of where the organization or department currently is right now. In terms of ideation. Next, Phase 3 is Gap Strategy Development. There will be a gap between your ideation vision and your position. This is the gap between where you want to be versus where you are right now. This gap strategy phase is where you develop and model strategies that will close the gap between where you are and where you want to be between your vision and your position. Each strategy option must be supported with rigorous research, quantitative data, case studies, and financial modeling. This is where your budget gets fully developed. Next, you get to Phase 4, which is implementation. This is your strategy execution phase. Finally, Phase 5 is the ongoing evaluation. Here you will adapt and modify your strategic plan based on real-time results.
This is an approach that we developed, and I write about in my book, Strategic Planning: From Ideation to Implementation. Here's an excerpt from one of my training programs that gives you an overview of the strategic planning 5 functional phases approach.
At Strategic Business Analysts, LLC, we have used our 5 functional phases strategic planning methodology to help hundreds of business owners, business executives, and managers develop and deploy sustainable strategic plans.
You know, all these actions that you just listed, for example, why are they not getting you closer to your goals and objectives for your department or your organization? That's because they are dreaming activities primarily rather than strategic planning. So that's the challenge, right? How do you tell the difference and engage in strategic activities? I'm going to give you 5 keys, which are broad categories of strategic planning action, right? So these 5 categories, and so as you look at the actions that you are taking and leading as a leader or manager in your department or your organization, as you look at those actions, that action list you just did, see if or how they fit into one of these 5 categories. Then I'm going to give you 7 questions to ask on each one of those actions to determine whether or not it is strategic planning. You know, there are various schools of thought, various strategic planning models, right? In fact, dozens. You just do a quick Google search and, or do some research on strategic planning, there's all kinds of models. There's the, uh, the alignment model, the scenario planning model, um, tons and tons of different models, right? Um, and they all have different phases or broad categories. But functionally, if you distill it down or drill down on what that phase is, there really are only 5 functional phases of strategic planning, 5 functional phases. And so what we've done here at Strategic Planning Advisors is we've identified those 5 phases in terms of functionality or operationalizing, right? So 5 operational or functional phases. So the first phase is the category of vision, mission and direction setting actions, right? Any action that sets vision, sets mission, or sets direction for your organization or your department is a strategic planning action. That's phase number 1 or broad category number 1. Category number 2 is what we call position analysis actions. Position analysis actions. The, the key here is you're analyzing your position, your organization's position, as it relates to the vision, mission, and direction. Position analysis is how does my organization, my department, stack up in terms of achieving that vision? What's the gap between where we want to be, and where we are. That's position analysis. And you— and some of the action steps in this phase would include things like resource inventory. What resources do we have? In this phase, there's going to be a lot of data collection, a lot of research, so that you could have a data-driven position analysis as to where are we positioned in terms of reaching our vision and our mission. Right, so that's Phase 2. The third phase, broad category, is what we call gap strategies development. So basically, 1 and 2 is where you develop, where you identify the gap, where we want to be, where we are, and the middle right there, that's the gap. The third category of activity or action in the strategic planning process is gap strategies. This is pretty intuitive, right? Gap strategies is nothing more than brainstorming, testing, feasibility analysis on strategies that can close the gap. The implementing of the strategy is what a lot of times we focus on, but implementing the strategy without the stages 1, 2, 3 which is vision, position analysis, and gap strategy. Without doing those three, that implementation by default is going to be a dreaming activity, which will not get you closer to your strategic goals and objectives. I spent a lot of time on this because this is the crux of the matter.
So what Now, hop on over to the Phase 1 Ideation Masterclass. Join Dr. Muret as he explains Phase 1 Ideation of the strategic planning process. See you there!
