Think of strategic planning not as a burning headache, but as a map to your organization's success over time.  Set aside some time to confer with colleagues, stakeholders, and advisors and engage in the exercise of imagining your idea or your business or your school one, three, five and ten years from now.   Ask yourself the obvious questions: How many people/students/customers will I be serving? How will I know if I am serving them well? How am I paying the bills? What do I still need to make everything work better? What happens if I have to step down as the head of the organization?....  and some not so obvious questions: What time do we open? What color are the walls? How do people get here? Can we have our mascot in the building? ... and chart it all out.  Once you know where you want to be, the strategic part of the planning helps create the steps to achieve those goals.

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And the best part? The result is a living document; not one that needs to have an extra shelf or two built to store it.  A good strategic plan guides your work and serves as a map to  your future.