Get to your core strategy quicker
Use this brainstorming template to analyze six core elements in your strategy. The strategy blueprint allows you to address your challenges by exploring your options, trying alternatives, developing ideas and reaching a desired outcome.
The strategy blueprint template helps you:
- Get a holistic view of your strategy
- Brainstorm with your team to establish success metrics and strategic goals
- Get broad alignment and buy-in with stakeholders
How to use the strategy blueprint template
To use Mural’s strategy blueprint template, follow the steps outlined below with your team. The template has a helpful framework to keep your brainstorming focused.
1. Gather a diverse group of stakeholders
The first step is to bring together a diverse array of stakeholders — this will help ensure that your brainstorming session takes multiple perspectives into account and avoids any potential blind spots.
2. Brainstorm with your team across 6 key categories
The next step, which can be completed in real-time or asynchronously, is to brainstorm with your team across the following categories tied to your strategy:
- Challenges: What are the main challenges facing your organization? What big problems are you trying to solve?
- Aspirations: What are you trying to achieve as a company? What does success look like?
- Focus areas: What are the problems you can focus on that will have the most impact? What problems are less important to your strategic goals?
- Guiding principles: What are the core values and principles that inform your decision-making?
- Activities: What actions can you take to help bring your team closer to achieving your goals and aspirations?
- Outcomes: What metrics will you use to determine if you’re successful or not? How can you be sure that those metrics reflect success?
Tips for running a strategy blueprint template exercise
To get the most out of the Mural strategy blueprint template, you should:
- Ensure that you invite stakeholders with broad experience, so that you avoid blind spots and your brainstorming is more impactful
- Make use of features like private mode to avoid groupthink even when working together in real-time, and anonymous voting to determine next steps democratically
- Look for themes across your feedback and use them to help inform your strategy overall
Mural makes it easy to collaborate and brainstorm together, in real-time or asynchronously
Sticky notes & text
Add ideas, action items, and more as a sticky note or text box — then change the colors and cluster to identify patterns and new solutions.
Asynchronous collaboration
Innovate and collaborate effectively together without booking time on calendars.
Real-time collaboration
Add more productivity and engagement to meetings and calls with features to guide collaboration.
Private mode
Avoid groupthink and get authentic feedback by allowing collaborators to add content privately.
Anonymous voting
Gain consensus and reach alignment quickly, either in real time or asynchronously.
Tags on sticky notes
Customizable labels make it easy to find, organize, and categorize your work in a mural.
What is a strategy blueprint?
What are the elements of a strategic plan?
Why should I use a business strategy template?
What are some other examples of a business strategy template?
Jim is MURAL's Chief Evangelist. A noted author, speaker, and instructor in customer experience, experience design, digital transformation, and strategy, Jim’s book, The Jobs To Be Done Playbook, offers techniques organizations can follow to turn market insight into action.
Mural is the only platform that offers both a shared workspace and training on the LUMA System™, a practical way to collaborate that anyone can learn and apply.
