To improve quality, organizations must embrace transformational change. This is more than incremental change, wherein an organization makes steady improvement on existing situations. Transformational change involves visionary advances into new realms of achievement and quality improvement. For many organizations, this is unfamiliar territory. Thinking and acting strategically, reaching consensus within the organization to move forward, and making the organization more attractive to customers and investors, pose significant challenges to management and leadership. High performance organizations that stress quality have a broad perspective on what the organization is and does, where it is going and why, and what it values and hopes to preserve. One powerful vehicle for advancing an organization toward significant change and quality improvement is strategic planning. This paper will address how a planning process can be utilized to strategically move an organization toward improved quality and effectiveness. The paper will address strategic planning within the realm of higher education, with a research-based focus on higher education institutions (HEI's) in Portugal, Europe's westernmost country. Public, private, university and non-university HEI's in Portugal were surveyed about their involvement with strategic planning and their perceptions regarding the benefits of the process to enhance and promote quality. Comparative data are also presented across institutional types. Finally, the authors reflect on the findings and offer recommendations for future research.