What Is So Attractive About Unsexy Strategic Planning

Some crucial words have become ho-hum in business operations, often even void of any practical meaning – vision, mission, strategy, action plans are a few that?come to mind. Even transformation has lost its pizazz. In 15 years of researching organizational transformation, McKinsey Global Survey confirms a constant: "The more transformational actions a company takes, the greater its chances for success." But what determines whether such familiar phrases are merely letters put together, or the keys that unlock outstanding success?

A True Story

Like many CEOs, Greg is both brilliant and bold in his approach. Also, like many CEOs, he's a long-view strategic risk taker. As a 40-year-old industry leader in commercial real estate development, he quickly identified opportunities in the post-covid world of hybrid work and the residential housing boom. He decided to maximize on that trend and develop a new vertical of his organization - residential home development. Greg’s energetic VP, Allyson, invited me to a conversation with them to explore strategic planning facilitation for this new vertical. She was stoked to structure and strategize the possibilities that would launch this new vertical impactfully.

From the start, our conversation surged with Greg outlining how his master’s in strategic management had enabled him to formulate homerun strategies for this new division. Finger by finger, he counted off strategies for new processes, materials, markets and customers. Curiously, he never mentioned his own people.

As the conversation deepened, clarifying questions unearthed gaps in the strategies he'd formulated, including that the firm's people power that had been neither integrated, nor addressed. When the human factor was suggested as a possible, maybe even essential part of the strategies in building out this new vertical, Greg bristled. His plan would get them to where he wanted his organization to go. He was clear, and I respectfully deferred to his stance. We parted amicably.

Relationships. Companies, governments, families, nature - life - are built from them. Without attention to the human factor, a company can survive, even be profitable. Yet, in the long run, if people are not put first, the organization will not succeed to its maximum. McKinsey’s research confirms that organizational success depends largely on “the importance of linking business and talent priorities?by having a clear view of where value is generated in the company, and who in the organization has the experience and skills to deliver that value.”

Greg made a decision often preferred by driven and competent CEO's, to focus first on the product and end result, rather than on the people who create the content and generate the motion. He relied heavily on his strategic expertise, and the lens it offered, as a guide. As a result, he had not given serious consideration to how his people could infuse strategies with insights and tactics. He dismissed the idea that strategies designed through an externally facilitated strategic planning process could create the new vertical more thoroughly and effectively, nor how it could positively impact the company's overall growth.

Proven Facts of Good Planning

In a landmark study of 1,145 successful companies, Jim Collins, former staff of Stanford Business School, identified seven key factors that took 11 of those companies to be outstandingly successful. Now known as “Good to Great ,”the researchers identified the first two key factors “Level 5 Leadership,” and “First Who… Then What.” These differentiating factors were crystalized from bottom line results of the country’s most successful companies.

In short: people matter most.

Decades of guiding multi-national corporations, small businesses and even entrepreneurs through the complex and impactful dynamic of the strategic planning process has made one thing crystal clear: what most leaders expect from in-house led strategic planning stands in stark contrast to what they actually get.

The pattern is fairly common. When a leader is the managing facilitator of the planning process, they are often unable to see the forest for the trees. Critical issues remain addressed from a familiar lens, and creative options can go unidentified or untapped. An essential element, the team process, is often absent from an in-house planning processes, because the leader is not participating with the team. And their participation is essential.

How Facilitated Planning Differs

An out-of-house facilitated planning process, on the other hand, delivers in spades the vision, structure, strategies and swift momentum for both building a foundation as well as addressing the growth of the organization or project. Not the product of the process, but the people's process as they deliver that product is what is dynamically irreplaceable in such a planning event. As McKensey identified “success remains elusive and reliant on a holistic approach."

Harvard Business Review noted that a strategic planning system that expertly guides a process defines bedrock elements of purpose, people, products and profit for startups, new initiatives, and established corporations. They use the format to (re)establish their values, vision, and mission - distilled to the essence of what they are about. They identify and prioritize critical issues facing them. They design and implement strategies and action plans that deliver concrete and robust results.

Why Go Out-of-House

So why can an organization not achieve those same outcomes as effectively without external facilitation? Some core reasons are a guided process, an external witnessing perspective, and exploiting the hard truth. Let’s take a look at them.

#1. A Guided Process

Utilizing a streamlined, structured planning process guides participants, representatives from a cross section of the organization, through the nuts and bolts of who they are, what they do, how they do it, where they want to go, and why they want to get there is, in itself, a foundational growth factor. Identifying specifically how they can achieve their objectives in the most efficient, impactful, and (absolutely) the most enjoyable way further undergirds the Good to Great trajectory.

The enjoyable part comes from leaning into a proven process where the team feels secure, allowing them an in-depth and thorough exploration and illumination of all aspects of the organization’s nooks and crannies. The trust in that experience generates the creativity and tactical scrutiny needed for a detailed actionable plan.

#2. An External Perspective

Being witnessed can often bring with it illumination. With leadership participating in, rather than leading the process, the entire team is able to access and maximize on their collective genius. Through guided exercises, they are asked to assess history and current dynamics not usually addressed, to analyze data that may initially seem tangential, to brainstorm and create alternate options from a place of freedom and curiosity. This detachment from logistics allows teams to design roadmaps and operational processes otherwise not delegated from above, that can be responsive to what emerges as a result of the guided process. For leaders to step into the participant role, and for employees to feel responsible to contribute to the future of the company allows all participants to see the internal workings from not only an external perspective, but often from viewpoints previously unavailable to them.?

3. Exploiting the Hard Truth

When everything is laid on the table, the external perspective of a facilitator can provide an objective take, otherwise often not accessible. Targeted questions are asked, general and specific observations offered, an invitation to the team to identify lurking issues and formulate uncommon solutions. A facilitator serves as both cheerleader and drill sergeant in helping to funnel the massive amount of data, history, perspectives and goals into a structured, streamlined, and logistically wholistic plan. The dynamics and creativity of the team are directed to optimal collaboration. The resulting roadmap outlines a smartly limited number of strategies, accurately identified critical issues to address, and detailed action plans that will deliver concrete results. The efficacy of this system can literally catapult the organization forward.

A Successful Ending

Three months after our first conversation, Greg asked for another. He was intent on making their new residential construction vertical the best in the business. So, we explored how the Applied Strategic Planning process would allow his team to design, and launch, their initiative most effectively and swiftly. We set a date for the planning event. ?

In three full days of focused work, together their board, leadership team, finance and marketing teams, and key players in architecture, land acquisition, construction, and sales produced an on point, specific and far-reaching plan. Moreover, the teams were energized in designing the new vertical, and super excited to start actively driving it toward success.

In the closing round, Greg owned his sharp skepticism, and he has a fantastic company to show for his acumen. He also admitted that he was totally won over by the process. He was inspired by the vision that had emerged, the pin-pointed strategies and, above all, the palpable enthusiasm that the experience with his team had generated.

CEO’s are brilliant at the helm of an organization. And when they can to step away from being in the leadership role to see the individual trees, as well as to zoom out far and understand the whole forest in a refreshingly new way, the results are powerful. So, maybe strategic planning is not sexy. Yet the detailed outcomes that drive profitable change - tactical and tailored for the entire organization- are definitely stunning!

Leezá Carlone Steindorf energizes teams to uplevel quality and profit thru collective well-being as an Executive Coach for Forbes Coaches Council, Integrated Leadership Specialist, Strategic Business Consultant, Organizational Culture Trainer, Mediator and Speaker at Core Success. You can reach Leezá@CoreSuccess.com

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