‘No great strategy was born without careful thought.’ (Anon)
On the other side of that saying is the truism:
‘there comes a time in every great endeavour that you have to shoot the planners and start!’
Strategic planning is essential.
By doing so, you establish priorities, inform investment decisions, and outline a growth plan. But for many, the strategic planning has become just a thing you have to do and either results in a glorified budget or lots of razzle-dazzle & jazz-hands in the form of analysis, charts, and presentations – but with little that can be translated into action.
The result is that many strategic plans end up on the shelf, posted on the website, or hidden away on a shared drive.
Many of you start a new strategic planning cycle – how do you avoid being a statistic?
Use these four steps to make better use of the work that goes into planning a strategy & achieve something:
- Experiment & test the assumptions
The very essence of the strategic plans is that they are a vision of a future state. And that necessarily requires assumptions that specific outcomes (increased revenue, improved margins, higher ROI’s) will result from a given initiative.
But too often these assumptions are only supported by secondary research, educated guesses, or assumptions rather than field tests.
The result? Managers are uncomfortable and unsure about moving into action, committing resources or preferring to stay with the business they know rather than possibilities that may or may not pan out.
To overcome this inertia, ask managers to include specific, short-term experiments, whose results will show what works and what does not.
- Banish BS Words
Strategic plans are often filled with empty phrases such as “Leverage our World Class Operating Capabilities” or head-scratching statements like “Reshape Our Pricing Strategy to Drive Demand While Maintaining Market Access.”
Unclear language signals that you do not have a clear idea of what is needed to succeed. I have heard of organizations banning words and phrases such as leverage synergy, innovative and robust.
- Banish the template
The template is the standard tool for strategic planning. I think in 13 years as an executive in a large NGO, I have seen at least 15 strategic planning templates – often several in a single year.
Ideally, they force us to consider various topics – SWOT & environmental scans, competitive analysis and the comparison of data from across the organization.
But the rigid use of templates can focus actions on corporate requirements rather than on how to grow the business. When the same templates are used over & over & over, the result can be stale ideas, blah-blah responses, and worse, camouflaging key issues and opportunities that need to be addressed.
Avoiding this may be as simple as eliminating sections that no longer make sense, or even better, throwing it in the garbage and starting over.
- Ask provocative questions.
In theory, strategic planning should foster intense debates and discussions. Still, when the process is rigidly structured and the documents crammed full of data, the dialogue will be stilted or constrained.
To overcome this, it’s crucial to ask tough questions when plans are presented in a way that can lead to unscripted answers that will enrich the thinking and increase everyone’s level of confidence in moving forward. A few examples include:
- “What are the top 2 or 3 things that must go right for this strategy to work?”
- “If we pursue this strategy, what are we deciding not to do?” and
- “What specific capabilities will we need to develop for this plan to succeed?”
Closing Thoughts
Strategic planning is an integral part of an organization’s life cycle.
The challenge is to make sure that it’s more than busy work, or another corporate exercise, or razzle-dazzle jazz hands.