The best laid schemes of mice and men, leave us nought but grief and pain. Assessment is the process of characterizing the current state of the organization in terms of financial performance, leadership style, process adherence, community service and other key organizational dimensions. The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and the ISO 9000 certification are examples of standard assessment instruments. The planning process typically produces several types of planning documents.
Strategic plans help identify and communicate the mission of the organization.
There is usually at least one strategic plan in each planning document hierarchy. They deal with a fairly broad groups of organizational stakeholders including employees, customers, shareholders and the community. Goals may be only nominally defined. Operational Plans tell more specifically how to accomplish the goals set forth broadly in the strategic plan. There are typically several operational plans in the planning document hierarchy.