vii This report... presents an integrated framework for strategic planning.
xi Although the purpose of strategic planning is straightforward - to outline where an organization wants
to go and how it's going to get there - its nature is complex and dynamic. Two techniques, the critical success factors (CSF)
method and future scenario planning, can augment strategic planning efforts by illuminating an organization's present situation
and potential future... Critical success factors are defined as the handful of key areas where an organization
must perform well on a consistent basis to achieve its mission... Future scenarios allow organizations to explore
multiple potential futures and generate robust strategies and early warning signs to understand how the future is unfolding.
p.3 Strategic planning is the process of defining an organization's plans for achieving its mission.
An organizational strategy is a derived approach to achieving that mission... a strategic plan does
not merely endorse the status quo, it directs change of some kind.
p.9 Critical success factors were introduced by John F. Rockart and the MIT Sloan School of Management in
1979 as a way to help senior executives define their information needs for the purpose of managing their organizations [Rockart
1979]. Rockart traced his CSF work to its conceptual antecedent, "success factors," introduced by D. Ronald Daniel in 1961...
Daniel asserted that organizational planning information should focus on "success factors," which he described as... "...key
jobs [that] must be done exceedingly well for a company to be successful"
p.10 Temporal CSFs can also be viewed as indicators of performance gaps, and can then be elevated to goals
p.11 A "performance gap" in a particular operational area may cause a CSF to be elevated into a
fix-oriented goal. Alternately, a goal, once achieved, may migrate to a CSF for sustainment.
p.13 "...[T]he purpose of scenario planning is not to pinpoint future events but to highlight large-scale
forces that push the future in different directions" [Wilkinson, 1995].
p.13-19 The Future Scenario Method... 1. Identify a focal issue or major decision the organization faces...
2. Identify the driving forces in the macro environment that influence the key factors... 3. Identify the critical uncertainties
relevant to the focal issue... 4. Select scenario logics... 5. Flesh out the scenarios... 6. Identify implications and robust
strategies... 7. Identify indicators.
p.28 As stated earlier, a performance gap in a particular operational area may cause a CSF to be elevated
into a fix-oriented goal. Alternatively, a goal, once achieved, may migrate to a CSF for sustainment.
p.35 Critical success factors and future scenarios are useful augmentations to strategic-planning
efforts. They illuminate an organization's present situation and potential future, respectively, and contribute to
a robust strategic planning framework.
p.36 Van der Heijden identified the ultimate purpose of scenario planning as helping an organization
find a good and unique fit with its ever-changing environment [van der Heijden 1996].
p.36 Gregory et al. point out that a foolproof tool for generating winning strategies would lead
to a paradoxical situation where all strategies (even competing ones) would be winners [Gregory 1998].
