How much does a strategic planning process cost?
Strategic planning consultant fees vary widely. If you search online, you’ll find strategic planning consultant fees ranging from $5,000 up to $80,000 or more!
This is why it’s important to understand your needs and budget upfront. Consider creating a budget range and sharing that with consultants during your initial conversation. If you speak to several consultants, and most can’t work within your budget, you may need to reassess your budget and expectations.
Several factors can affect cost.
A consultant’s experience and size of firm. Smaller consulting firms may have lower fees, while you can expect large and well-established firms to cost more. Note the size of the firm isn’t necessarily an indicator of the quality of the process.
A bare-bones, cookie-cutter service vs a comprehensive, tailored process. While a bare-bones process may be tempting, keep in mind that your leadership will be doing more of the work (vs the strategy).
The size and complexity of your organization. A large organization with multiple affiliates in multiple cities, and a history of past mergers, will require a more complex and time-intensive strategic planning process than a smaller organization with a singular mission.
Consultants may also include additional fees for add-on services like:
- Travel and supplies
- Extensive stakeholder interviews or custom surveys
- Implementation planning services
- Department-level planning services
- Follow-up support and ongoing services (quarterly reviews, annual reviews, etc.)
Strategic planning is usually a significant investment for an organization—both in cost and in outcome. After spending valuable time and money, you don’t want to end up with a strategic plan that doesn’t work for your organization. This is why making sure you find the right consultant, rather than just the cheapest, is so important.
10 questions to ask a strategic planning consulting firm
As you review proposals from strategic planning consultants or hold follow-up conversations, you’ll want to ask a standard set of questions that probe below the surface. For example:
How will you tailor the strategic planning process for our organization?
How many organizations in my sector (and/or size, growth stage, etc.) have you worked with before? What are some of the lessons you’ve learned from that work and the best practices you’ve created?
How would you describe your facilitation style?
How do you approach building consensus?
How do you help clients navigate conflicts?
What do we, as organizational leaders, need to do to be successful in our strategic planning process?
What are the most common challenges you’ve seen organizations struggle with during the strategic planning process?
If you encounter strategic issues outside of your expertise, how will you handle that?
Once the strategic plan is ready, what support will be available for implementation? If needed, do you provide add-on services for the implementation process?
How often do you recommend that we consult our strategic plan? Under what conditions should it be updated or revised?
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Working With a Strategic Planning Consultant
Now that you’ve vetted and selected your strategic planning consultant, it’s time to get to work!
What are the steps in a strategic planning process?
Generally, a strategic planning process includes at least three steps:
1) Preparation. This includes creating a work plan and timeline, setting roles and expectations, gathering and analyzing stakeholder input, conducting an organizational assessment to identify internal and external challenges and opportunities, and ensuring that the organization’s vision and mission are clear.
2) Strategic planning sessions or retreat. Your strategic planning consultant will facilitate one or more intensive strategy sessions with your board and staff leadership, and any other stakeholders you’ve agreed to include. This is where the hard work of building consensus and alignment truly happens.
3) Strategic plan creation. The final stage of your strategic planning process is preparing and finalizing your written strategic plan. Your plan could take different forms, such as a written report and a detailed slide deck. This is the part of the process where ensuring internal awareness, alignment, and buy-in across your organization is especially important. Make sure you work with your consultant on a thoughtful roll out strategy.
You will likely see several variations of this process among consultants. But be sure that at least these three basic elements are included.
While implementation can make or break a strategic plan, it’s generally not considered part of a strategic planning consulting scope or cost.
When to lead and when to follow
Sometimes we see organizational leaders start a strategic planning process thinking they already know the ultimate outcome. If you’re a CEO, of course, you should have a clear vision of where your organization is going. But it’s just as important to be open to new insights through the process of strategic planning.
We encourage organizational leaders to see themselves as participants in, rather than drivers of, the strategic planning process.
You’ve invested a lot of time, effort and resources in choosing your strategic planning consultant. Now it’s time to trust them. Bring your best ideas and be ready to listen to others. The magic of strategic planning is the opportunity to make unexpected connections, find creative new insights, and have plenty of “ah-ha” moments with your team.
If your strategic planning consulting firm is a bad fit
However, there is one moment where a CEO or Executive Director should step back into the driver’s seat: if your strategic planning consultant simply isn’t a good fit.
This does happen occasionally, and it can be challenging to navigate. Perhaps the consultant’s style is a mismatch. Maybe the consultant doesn’t know as much about your sector or challenges as expected. Regardless of the cause, organizational leaders owe it to themselves, their organizations, and their strategic planning consultant to call a pause.
Take a step back and have a conversation with your strategic planning consultant. Make sure your consultant’s primary point of contact is also included in this conversation. Frequently changing points of contact can create an impossible-to-navigate situation for consultants.
During your step-back conversation, share specific feedback, including concrete examples, about what isn’t working. Be open to discussing ways to get the engagement back on track. If it’s truly a wrong fit, your contract should spell out terms, conditions, and fees for ending the engagement.
Congratulations, you have completed your strategic planning process! You’ve worked with a skilled consultant to prepare a concise written strategic plan that you’re certain will position your organization for success.
Now it’s time to implement your strategic plan. Which means the work has only just begun…
How to roll out a strategic plan
If your organization has more than 20 employees, it’s likely some may know little about the strategic planning process your leadership team has gone through. Let’s be honest, even if you’ve briefed all-staff meetings, given managers talking points, and shared updates over email, many people probably haven’t paid attention. This is absolutely normal.
Which is why developing a thoughtful rollout strategy for your strategic plan is so important.
When talking to staff, board, volunteers, donors, and other stakeholders about your strategic plan:
Break out the toplines in easy-to-digest formats. For example, you could take your three-year goals and create a graphic, a slide deck, and a brief email.
Show your own authentic enthusiasm. If you’re a CEO or Executive Director and you’re not excited about your strategic plan, how can you expect your team to be? Ideally, you should wrap up the strategic planning process energized, engaged, and eager for the future. Make sure your staff, board, and stakeholders see that enthusiasm!
Be upfront about how the plan will affect different stakeholder groups. Staff may be especially concerned about how their jobs will be affected. For example, if you’re restructuring a program unit—or adding a new one—how will current staff positions change?
Create space for questions and answers. Depending on the size of your organization, this could take place in one-on-one check-ins, department meetings, all-staff meetings or—ideally—all of these.
Prepare for hard questions. Your strategic planning consultant should have guided you in doing the work to bring your entire team along and build buy-in. But even so, you may still encounter hard questions. Be ready by preparing FAQs or even sending a survey to gather insights on what people are most worried about and most excited about.
Operationalizing a strategic plan
Finally, it’s time to move from strategy to action. Operationalizing a strategic plan isn’t a one and done activity. Implementation lasts the life of the plan. Consider:
How will each department or program unit be affected? What goals is each department responsible for? If this adds work to a department, will other activities be deprioritized, or will capacity be added?
How many new hires will you be making? Do you have internal recruitment and HR capacity, or will you need to work with a recruiting firm? How will onboarding be handled?
How will you pay for new costs? If you’re a nonprofit, this means honing your fundraising strategy.
How will implementation decisions be made? Leaders will face constant small decisions throughout the implementation process. Is your leadership team committed to using your strategic plan as a starting point for strategic decision-making?
These questions are only the beginning.
Operationalizing a strategic plan is a major undertaking. It’s also not included in a general strategic planning scope. So you may want to consider finding a strategic planning consultant who can also help create implementation plans.
How often should a company revise its strategic plan?
Organizations should be using their strategic plan like a roadmap. That means every time you get in the car, you look at your map to make sure you know where you are and where you’re going.
Organizationally, we recommend that board and staff leadership review progress toward strategic plan goals and benchmarks on a quarterly basis (at minimum twice per year). This gives you the chance to keep your strategic vision front and center for everyone. It also enables you to learn, evaluate, and course-correct in real time.
Many strategic plans generally cover 3-5 years. So you should start thinking about the next strategic planning process during the budgeting time frame before your current plan expires. Realistically, for a new strategic planning process, most organizations take 9-12 months to explore budget options, establish scope, and secure consultants.
In some cases, you may find that your implementation has veered wildly from your original plan. If that’s the case, you probably want to invest in a revision process. At the point where your strategic plan no longer makes sense for your organization, it’s time to get a new one.