The authors provide an account of the strategic planning process that the American Association for Counseling and Development (AACD; now the American Counseling Association [ACA]) used beginning in 1988 in developing the association's first 3‐year strategic plan. It includes a description of the strategic planning process itself and a historical account of how AACD embarked on strategic planning, as well as documentation of the informal and formal data‐gathering processes through which a values statement, an identity statement, mission statement, and goals were establis