Strategic planning using a goals based process focuses the organization on its mission and vision, it offers a mechanism to establish goals, and strategies combined with realistic action plans while adhering to the company's values in all decision making.
A focused approach and communication of goals does help organizations move forward, however, one of the biggest values of strategic planning is buy-in and support of that the approach. Strategic planning can be a great team building exercise. It offers the opportunity to let everyone in the organization know that their thoughts and opinions are being considered. It lets everyone know they belong.
Another valuable result that you can achieve from a focused approach is agreement on how to maximize the organization's resources and the in-depth understanding of the factors that affect those resources should conditions and situations change.
How do you start?
Decide who will facilitate the process. It can be done internally, however many companies choose to bring in an outside consultant who can offer expertise and objectivity, which increases the likelihood that the plan will be one resulting from open participation. Regardless of how objective internal experts want to be, they cannot help but see the world through their filtered lenses that are influenced by their intimate experiences and personal motivation for and with the company.
Decide who will participate in the process. Participation can be at different levels through the meetings, outside conversations, questionnaires or contributing research. It can also be less formal gathering of information. Ultimately, you would like each employee to feel they participated in some way. It is incumbent on all levels of management to make that happen through great communication.
The size of the organization influences the time it takes to plan. Meetings should be spaced far enough apart to allow for further information gathering, but close enough to keep the momentum and memory of previous meetings from fading.
A complaint about strategic planning is that it produces a document that takes a large amount of focused effort and then collects dust on a shelf. This is a problem of implementation and most often arises from lack of buy-in from the staff and poor communication of the plan. It also can be related to a lack of skill of the executives, managers and front line supervisors in understanding the power of managing through goal setting and how that ultimately impacts the attainment of goals. Clearly, the involvement and support of top management is crucial. Realistic and specific action plans should be established and adhered to. This is not only true for those at the senior level, but also at each level of the organization. Ultimately each individual should know how what they do every day influences the organization's success. Often this includes regularly scheduled status checks that confirm adherence and progress of the plan at all levels, as well as identification of the obstacles to moving forward and solutions to overcome those obstacles.
An implemented focused plan can greatly improve your business results and assure success.
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