Strategic Planning Made Simple
by Warwick Powell
Do you have a clear idea of where your business or organization is headed over the next five years, or do you react to events as they happen?
Do you have a plan that guides your day-to-day operations, or are your plans gathering dust on the shelf?
Have you involved the entire organization in goal-setting, or do you send your managers to weekend retreats to do the organization's thinking?
If you are unhappy with the answers to any of these questions, then you could use some simplified strategic planning. We work with organizations every week to do simple and straightforward strategy development. Some of the benefits include:
- Clear direction and a more certain future
- Improved customer service
- A streamlined process that fits the company's daily schedule
- High employee participation, and acceptance at all levels
- Improved internal work processes
- A robust, sustainable and living plan
- A focus on what is working well, and not change for changes sake
Where to begin?
Begin by meeting with your management team to discuss and refine a general plan and to create a smaller working/steering team. Their first tasks are to create a project plan, build a mechanism for getting employee involvement, and develop a communications plan to let everyone know what the planning process entails.
We strongly advocate creating a system for getting input from all employees, such as a survey. The answers to the survey provide a basis for understanding where employees currently think organization is going, and where it wants to be in the future. This is useful for developing the company's mission and vision, if they do not exist, or for comparing the knowledge about them, if they do exist.
Employee input also helps identify the strengths and weaknesses of the organization, and the opportunities and threats it is confronting, for further analysis. (This is known as a SWOT analysis.)
Survey
The survey is issued to staff for completion over the next few days. After collection, the steering team analyzes the survey responses and creates a summary report with draft mission and vision statements and a draft SWOT analysis.
Values
The values of an organization/company determine the way it operates day to day and how it conducts itself. We advocate using a specially structured meeting or event to determine the values that actually operate within the company. These values should reflect the actual culture in place, and not some noble goals to obtain at some future point. The steering committee should produce a draft listing of values from the output of the meeting.
Research
In order to assess the environmental conditions in which the company operates, we advocate doing research on such topics as industry trends, customer demographics and trends, economic trends, political trends, technology trends, etc. The research can be as simple as interviewing knowledgeable people or as complex as performing quantified primary research.
Meetings
At a subsequent management meeting on site, the steering committee should present the draft results so far, including mission, vision and values statements. Also, it should present the SWOT analysis. From the discussions, debate and agreement the steering committee is tasked with finalizing these statements and the SWOT.
At a later management meeting, the steering committee should present the finalized statements for approval.
If possible, we advocate using an external facilitator to run the management/staff meetings, and to define the actions needed in detail, so that they align with the direction already defined in the activities above. The steering committee documents those strategies for final approval.
Communication and Distribution
The steering committee should publish and distribute the final strategy document to promote it and make it operational. This is usually done in connection with a major employee meeting, at which the CEO presents the plan and makes clear how all employees' input was synthesized into the final results. He or she should also indicate how they will measure progress against results, and thank the employees for their work in "creating the vision."
StrategyLINK®
Applying streamlined and time-honored principles to your strategic planning can give you a comprehensive, sustainable, living document in as little as 100 days, without major disruption to busy schedules. From extensive experience with strategic planning, InterLINK has developed a process called StrategyLINK® that carries you through the whole planning activities in a simplified manner, yet garners widespread employee acceptance through high participation. To find out more contact Warwick Powell at 412.247.5292 or wpowell@interlinkbusiness.com
Conclusion
Strategic planning is an essential tool for any business or organization to succeed over the long term. It is a tool that keeps you ahead of your competitors and the challenges that the future will surely bring.
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