Strategic Planning

Newspaper organizations are going through a period of great disruption. Traditional profit pools are shifting rapidly, traditional markets are eroding and new markets and opportunities are only beginning to take shape. Relying on the same old strategic plans we've always used will not help our industry navigate in these uncharted waters.

API and its partners have the tools and the knowledge to help you craft a strategic plan for your organization that focuses on the most promising emerging growth areas for both audience and revenue; that identifies the key competencies you'll need in order to capitalize on these new opportunities and to defend against market threats; and that includes a specific implementation template to enable you to put your plan to work.

This one-day engagement will allow your organization's leadership to:

• Identify through consensus what the key determinants are of your future success. Skilled facilitators work to challenge assumptions and draw out agreement among all participants, which helps ensure ongoing support for the plan that will result from this.
• Identify, using a simple but effective weighting tool, key intersections or disjunctions between competencies and market conditions, which in turn will highlight where and how organizational resources need to be redeployed.
• Begin the process of developing detailed plans to address each of the identified strategic priorities, including determining deadlines, success benchmarks, lines of responsibility and resources needed.

(Familiarity with API's Newspaper Next research and terminology will be important in providing a common framework and language for this exercise. If your organization has not been exposed to N2, we urge you to download the reports, which are free. We would also be happy to provide a half-day N2 overview workshop in advance of this engagement.)

Additionally, API and its partners can help you:

• Work within individual departments to determine where resources are not being fully utilized, because of either inefficient processes or over-allocation of resources to low-value activities. Resources liberated during this process can then be made available to help implement your organization's new strategic plan.
• Work with individual departments in greater detail to craft implementation plans for the strategic priorities outlined above.

Because the issues identified vary widely across organizations, API does not offer this as a public workshop. Every organization that engages our services can be assured of a completely tailored final plan, geared to its individual market opportunities and individual capabilities.

And because our pricing is based on the size of the organization and the market, this opportunity is affordable for newspapers of all sizes. If you are interested in more information about having API help you identify strategic growth opportunities, please email Executive Director Drew Davis, or call 703-715-3311.