Book excerpt: This unique guide takes strategic planning to a new and more powerful level. It is the only book that integrates the planning process with team decision making and the facilitation skills needed to make them effective. Whether you're getting started or fine-tuning efforts in progress, this comprehensive toolkit-in-a-book will help you make your vision work. It shows how to bend, shape, and modify the conventional strategic planning process to meet your organizations goals. And it delineates the techniques and methods you need to succeed. Examples from actual companies illustrate each step of the process. There are also extensive views of several real-world planning efforts as they evolved over three to five years; these eye-opening cases reveal in depth what worked and what didn't. Moreover, Team-Based Strategic Planning is designed for active use at every stage. You'll find dozens of hands-on tools that will help you as your strategy evolves, including a proven strategic change process model that forecasts expected changes and results over a five-year period; cue cards and flow charts that plot the process and make it easier to master; self-contained facilitator guides for setting priorities, guiding the team to consensus, and using twelve classic techniques to help the team reach its objectives; and troubleshooting advice on problem intervention for CEOs, planning leaders, and facilitators. Team-based strategic planning is intricate and complex. Don't attempt it without an expert guide. From initial concept to final implementation, this is the practical and dynamic resource that you'll consult day after day, year after year.