Page 75 - Today’s Business Communication; A How-to Guide for the Modern Professional

64 TODAY’S BUSINESS COMMUNICATION

planning focuses on mission, goals, and objectives. Let’s take a look at the
outline that follows.

Executive Summary

Please see the advice from our outline above. Your executive summary
should include the following:

• business or organization’s name;
• business or organization’s location;
• purpose of the strategic plan;
• organization’s mission and how this strategic plan supports
the mission;
• important points, such as projected sales or organizational changes;
• graphical elements to help your reader “see” what you
propose; bar charts, line graphs, and other similar elements
can be extremely effective here;
• evaluation times/activities/methods (remember, you must be
able to measure/quantify your results, which are sometimes
called “outcomes”);
• cost of implementing the plan and projected outcomes.

Research
No matter what kind of strategic planning activity you’re involved in,
research will be at the core of it. Depending on what you’re doing,
different research methods can be used at various times. Research meth-
ods are categorized into two groups.

Primary
This is finding out the information you want first hand: questionnaires,
one-to-one interviews, telephone interviews, focus groups, blogs, and so
forth. Your plan will outline a proposed original research activity.

Secondary
This involves gathering information from sources other than your own,
original research. Examples include books, academic and other journals,