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Business Strategy & Action Planner
Find opportunities | Set priorities | Build your plan.
Find new ways to grow your organization while protecting it from emerging risks. Explore key trends in customer needs, competition, technology, and more to see what could help or hinder your growth. Match opportunities with what your organization does best to build a strong plan for growth. Identify weaknesses that could leave you exposed to threats. Our tool helps you decide what matters most and guides you through building an action plan with clear steps, assigned responsibilities, and target dates. Save your plan, update it as things change, and share it when you’re ready.
We use ideas from SWOT and PESTLE to help you understand your organization and the world around it, identify what matters most, decide what actions to take next, and create detailed reports you can share.
What This Tool Helps You Do
Business Strategy & Action Planner helps you look at your organization and decide what to do next. You can use it for a business, nonprofit, public agency, school, team, program, or one product or service.You will look at outside changes that could help or hurt you. Then you will look at what your organization does well and where it has important gaps. You will choose what matters most and write clear steps to take.
This is more than a list of good and bad points. You can explain what supports each answer, what you still need to learn, how you will measure results, and why you chose each action. The report brings that information together so you and other readers can understand the plan.
The scores help you compare items. They do not make the choices for you. You decide which items need attention, their order, and which matches are worth acting on. You do not need an action for everything you record.
Your Work Stays Private
- You do not need an account to use this tool.
- ConsultaPedia does not keep a database of your answers, business information, or saved plans.
- Your entries are used temporarily during your session to build your results. Print, download, or copy anything you want to keep before you leave.
- To reopen your editable plan later, save each form. Then click ‘Save My Progress’ and copy or download the code it gives you. You keep the code, not ConsultaPedia.
- Keep your code private. Anyone who has it may be able to open your plan.
Before You Begin
- Work through the screens in order the first time. Each one builds on work you saved earlier.
- Open ‘How To Use This Page’ on any screen for step-by-step help with its fields, save buttons, and next steps.
- Your work is temporary. Save each form as you go, and use ‘Save My Progress’ if you want to return later.
Step 1: Describe Your Organization
Click ‘Start a New Plan’. Enter the organization or part of it you want to analyze, the work it does, and the people it serves. Explain what you want this plan to help you do, how far ahead you want to plan, and any locations that matter.Your planning objective gives you a starting focus. It does not mean you must ignore other important changes, Strengths, or Weaknesses that affect the organization.
Check the temporary-work notice and its checkbox. Then click ‘Begin External Review’ to save your answers and move forward. If something is missing, fill it in and click the button again.
Step 2: Look at Outside Changes
Review the 16 External Review Areas. These cover things such as customers, competitors, prices, laws, technology, suppliers, and changes in the places where you work. You may not control these conditions, but you can choose how to respond.- Open an area and read its description. Use ‘Ideas to Consider’ if examples would help. The ideas are prompts, not answers you must use, and they do not add a factor automatically.
- Click ‘Add an External Factor’ when you find something worth recording. A factor is one outside change, trend, or condition that could affect your organization.
- Choose ‘Opportunity’ if it could benefit your organization, ‘Threat’ if it could hinder or harm it, or ‘Both’ if it could help in one way and hurt in another. Explain each effect.
- Give facts or examples that support your answer. Explain what you still do not know, when the change may matter, and what signs you will watch for.
- Save the factors you want to keep. Then find ‘Finish Reviewing This Area’ below ‘Add an External Factor’. Choose whether something matters, nothing important stands out, or you need more time to decide. Use its save-and-navigation buttons to finish the area and move on or go back.
Reviewing all 16 areas gives you a wider view. If you choose to leave some areas unreviewed, use the confirmation checkbox and ‘Continue Without Full Review’. You must still complete at least three definite area decisions. You can return to the remaining areas later.
Step 3: Choose Which Opportunities and Threats Need Attention
Click an item’s title to expand its section. Check its evidence, what remains uncertain, when it may matter, and what you will watch for. If a factor is marked ‘Both’, review its Opportunity and Threat sections separately.- Choose ‘Include as a Priority’ if you want to use the item in the next planning steps. A priority is something you choose to give attention to.
- Choose ‘Monitor Instead’ if you want to keep watching it without choosing it for action now. It stays saved.
- Rate how much it could help or hurt, how likely it is, and how well it fits your organization or leaves you exposed to harm. The page help explains each rating.
- Click ‘Save My External Review’ after making changes, or use ‘Save All External Review Changes’ near the bottom. Complete any missing information before expecting an item to appear in the priority list.
Step 4: Record Strengths and Weaknesses
Start with Strengths: things your organization does exceptionally well. Then record Weaknesses: significant gaps, limits, or things you rely on that could cause trouble. Explain how you know each item matters. Be specific rather than using broad labels such as ‘Great staff’ or ‘Not enough money’.For each item, give supporting facts or examples and explain what they do not prove. Choose a way to measure the result, explain what a higher or lower result means, record where you are now, set a target, and choose when to check again.
Rate each item and choose ‘Include as a Priority’ or ‘Monitor Instead’. Use ‘Save Unfinished Strength’ or ‘Save Unfinished Weakness’ if you need to finish later. Use ‘Save Completed Strength’ or ‘Save Completed Weakness’ when the required answers and ratings are ready. Check the saved item before moving on.
On Weaknesses, decide whether a gap could become a ‘Potential fatal flaw’. This means a particular outside Threat could expose it and cause very serious harm to your organization. Do not mark every Weakness this way. A gap can matter without threatening your ability to keep operating.
After saving at least one Strength, click ‘Continue to Internal Weaknesses’. After saving at least one Weakness, click ‘Continue to Set Priorities’. Save an open form before using a return or continuation link.
Step 5: Put Your Priorities in Order
Review the separate lists of Opportunities, Threats, Strengths, and Weaknesses. Think about what matters most to the organization, what may happen soon, and what you can realistically act on. Your chosen order—not the score alone—shows what comes first.Use ‘Move Up’, ‘Move Down’, or ‘Move to Position’. Check the order after each move. If an item is missing, return to its screen, finish the needed information, choose ‘Include as a Priority’, save, and return here.
This screen orders your findings; it does not create matches or actions. You need at least one completed priority Strength and one completed priority Opportunity before clicking ‘Continue to Action Plan’.
Step 6: Match Items and Build Your Action Plan
You make matches on the Action Plan screen, not on the Strengths, Weaknesses, or Priorities screens. You choose the useful matches; the tool does not decide which ones are right for you.- Under each completed priority Strength, read the available priority Opportunities. Ask: ‘Do any of these Opportunities match this Strength?’ Check a useful match and write a Growth Action that explains what you will do with it.
- Under each completed priority Weakness marked as a potential fatal flaw, read the available priority Threats. Ask: ‘Which Threats could seriously hurt us because of this Weakness?’ Write a Risk Mitigation action—a step to make harm less likely, reduce its effect, or prepare a backup plan.
- One Strength can match several Opportunities, and one Weakness can match several Threats. Each chosen match has its own action form. Save each form separately.
- For each action, explain why it matters, list the smaller steps, name the person in charge, and add helpers, a target date, and needed time, money, tools, or other support.
- Click ‘Save Growth Action’ or ‘Save Risk Mitigation Action’ for a new action. Click ‘Save Changes’ after editing a saved action. Use ‘Update Status’ to save a change in progress status.
A saved Risk Mitigation action is active only while its Weakness is completed, included as a priority, and marked as a potential fatal flaw, and its matched Threat is a complete priority. If those choices change, the action leaves the active plan and report. Its saved details are kept and return when the linked items qualify again. Growth Actions also depend on their Strength and Opportunity remaining ready priorities.
Near the bottom, arrange your saved actions in the separate Growth and Risk Mitigation Action Priority lists. Use ‘Move Up’, ‘Move Down’, or a position number and ‘Move’. This action order is separate from the order of the findings you ranked earlier. Use ‘Open saved action’ to return to its matching card.
Save every form you changed. After saving at least one active action, click ‘Continue to Your Report’. That link opens the report; it does not save unfinished action forms.
Step 7: Check Your Report
Read your organization details, the four priority lists, and the Growth and Risk Mitigation actions. Check that each action is linked to the intended items and appears in the action order you chose. Read the facts, measures, and open questions behind it, then check ‘Items to Revisit’ for work that may need attention.A Weakness can still appear in the general Weakness priority list even when its earlier Risk Mitigation actions are inactive. The Weakness list and the action list serve different purposes.
To change an answer, return to the screen where you entered it. To change action details or action order, return to ‘Action Plan’. Save your changes there, then reopen ‘Report’.
Go Back or Work on Another Screen
Use the return buttons, the links at the top, or ‘Jump to’ near the bottom to revisit a screen. The tool may ask you to finish earlier work before opening a later step. Follow the message rather than starting a new plan to get around it.Save the form you are editing before following a navigation link. A link that opens another screen does not save unfinished answers. You can review your choices and change the plan as your organization’s needs change.
Save Work You Can Reopen Later
- First, save each form you are working on. Then click ‘Save My Progress’ to create a code holding the work saved so far, including earlier actions that are currently inactive.
- On the save screen, click ‘Copy Save Code’ and paste the whole code somewhere private, or click ‘Download Save Code’ to keep it as a text file. Opening the save screen does not copy or download the code for you.
- Keep the code private. Anyone with it may be able to open your plan. Use a file name that helps you recognize the plan and the date.
- After making more changes, save the forms and create a new code. An older code remains an older copy; it does not update itself.
Open Saved Work and Keep Going
On a later visit, click ‘Resume a Saved Plan’. Paste your code or choose the saved text file, then click ‘Restore My Plan’. Check the organization name and a few earlier answers to make sure you opened the version you intended.You can then add, edit, or remove items and actions. Save the forms you change and use ‘Save My Progress’ to keep a new code before leaving. If another plan is already open, keep its code before restoring a different one.
Download, Print, or Share Your Report
From the Report, click ‘Generate PDF’ for a copy with a fixed page layout, ‘Download RTF’ for a copy you can edit in a word-processing program, or ‘PRINT’ for a printed copy.Check the result before sharing it, especially if it includes private information about your organization, customers, staff, or future plans. Share only what the intended reader should see.
PDF and RTF files and printed reports are for reading and sharing. They cannot reopen the editable plan in this tool. Keep your ‘Save My Progress’ code if you want to return and make changes later.
Your current work is temporary in this browser. Use Save My Progress before leaving if you want to return later.