This book is a simple, user-friendly, and practical guide to strategic planning. Chapter 1 gives an introduction to and overview of strategic planning. Chapters 2 through 4 review strategic-planning theory, the current nature of planning theory, its emergence as organizational practice, organizational structure schemes, and the limitations of current theoretical frameworks. Chapter 5 demonstrates a cross-institutional, cross-functional design that allows an organization to complete its strategic-planning process for the institution, department, and each employee in less than 1 year. Chapters 6 through 8 express how to use this planning process to generate a culture of empowerment, how to facilitate the use of teams, and how planning can become the means and method of continuous improvement for the organization. Chapter 9 provides a "how-to" approach to data development, to the situational analysis, and toward the constructive facilitation of the planning process across all three levels. Chapters 10 through 12 offer a series of three step-by-step workbooks for strategic planning. Chapter 13 demonstrates key leadership principles needed to implement the process as written. Chapter 14 discusses the need for cross-institutional, cross-functional reward systems, and a comprehensive system of employee appraisal that is integrated into the planning model. Finally, in chapter 15, the goals of the planning system are summarized, implementation caveats are provided, and an argument for emergent "heterarchical" inspirational leadership is provided. (Contains 358 references.) (RT)