By Priscilla Luzader Pipho
Strategic planning. Does it conjure up deathly dull meetings that go on for hours with forgettable results? If your experience with strategic planning was uninspired instead of a pathway to cohesion and creativity, read on.
A strategic plan can simply be the agreement within your organization about where you want to go in the coming year or three and can help you develop a clarity of where to assign resources. The power of a strategic plan comes from engaging others in the process and communicating outcomes broadly. It becomes a great tool for rallying around ideas that can lead to transformational change, rather than a financially-driven exercise of where to spend. If you are interested in a new way of approaching your annual planning exercise, here are some basic steps to follow.
First Things First
Start with the right people in the room. Keep your group to a reasonable size – if it’s over five you’ll want a facilitator to keep you on track. Send the agenda in advance so everyone will have the opportunity to mentally prepare for the meeting. You want to keep the day tight so you can claim victory for accomplishments. Start the day with your mission — the core purpose of why you’re there. It may seem obvious, but it’s worth the time to revisit and reinforce your mission. This gives your leadership team the strategic alignment which is essential to success.
SWOT Analysis
The value of the good old fashioned SWOTAnalysis is still very much alive. Strengths and Weaknesses are discussed by your team as you look inward; Opportunities and Threats are external forces to review. Facilitating this discussion keeps your focus and helps avoid getting bogged down in deciding which ideas to include – they’re all good! – and this helps build team cohesion.
Strategic Objectives
We like the term strategic objective that suggests an implementable goal. You may prefer to have both goals and objectives, just decide in advance what terms will be used and what you want this day to accomplish. You will look at what issues to address from the SWOT Analysis and then prioritize them. We like to use three different time-frames. Short or immediate – this year what are we expecting to accomplish? Then move to 1-2 years out and 3-5 years out. You want to have aspirational goals, but the longer out you go, the less sure you can be so keep in mind that five year goals will likely be adjusted in annual revisions of the strategic plan.
Measure and Report
How will you know when you are successful? Systems are essential for reporting and monitoring success. If you have metrics in place, gravitate towards those unless you have the resources to create new systems. Be clear about reporting time frames and encourage dialogue about feasibility of data collection. Be careful to define how deep you will go with metrics in your planning meeting. You’ll want to make sure roles and responsibilities are assigned for implementation and reporting. This can be done in a follow-up meeting, defined in advance by your agenda.
Share the Good News
Equip your leadership team to communicate successes of the day. We encourage our clients to communicate outcomes of strategic planning as broadly and as often as possible, creating a road map for stakeholders. One of the best ways to ensure everyone on staff understands the plan is to have separate meetings with teams to gain input into the process – which of course helps create buy-in and support for the plan. We also like to weave the strategic plan into individual performance objectives to add ownership and which results in engaged employees. It’s part of what we call people systems, which enables everyone to know how they personally contribute to the organization’s success.
Rinse and Repeat
Keep your planning process simple, repeatable and in a perpetual loop. Develop a cadence that fosters progress reporting and course correction as needed. The senior leadership team should meet annually for the continued alignment of leadership. If you do it right, your strategic plan accomplishes employee and customer engagement by virtue of the planning process as well as a leadership team that’s focused on strategic alignment. It can be a simple process that yields a wealth of dynamic and sustainable results. What’s not to love?
Balanced Culture Consulting is happy to engage with you for next strategic planning process. Together, we can help you make your goals a reality.