Is Your Strategic Plan Holding Your Back?

A well thought-out strategic plan can be one of the most important things you develop for your company.?

If done properly, it becomes your company's North Star that guides you forward. It provides a sense of purpose and becomes a tool that serves to align your organization around a handful of clearly defined goals.?

Sounds like something every company should work on (and look forward to) implementing, doesn't it??

Yet, all too often, it's an activity that the management team dreads. Why is that?

A lot of times, strategic planning starts and ends with the planning phase.

Let me paint a picture for you: a team goes on a company offsite retreat with a consultant to help them generate great ideas. Weeks later, the consultant returns with a thick binder filled with supposed best and next steps. The planning team leaves the meeting with great intentions, and the binder gets placed on the nearest shelf often to never be seen again until the next year when it's strategic planning time again.?

Doing this year after year can result in a demoralized team that'll do anything they can to either avoid the process or make it go away as quickly as possible.

However, like many things in business, simple is often better.?

The best strategic plans actually don't require volumes of information but rather, they are simple plans guided by a company's purpose, current capabilities and the ability to identify any new capabilities needed to reach potential strategic goals.?

So, what does good strategic planning look like? I've broken it down into 6 clear phases.?

Phase 1: Embrace the core values of your company.

Think about the handful of rules that your team operates by. These are the guiding principles and ethical standards that make up your company's DNA.?

When it comes to values, there's no wiggle room. They must be clear and easily understood. Similarly, there must be consequences for violating them.?

Ask yourself: are these values real, or are they marketing fodder??

One of the best group activities you can do is to ask your strategic planning team to reflect on each of the company's core values by telling a story of how they saw that value lived out within your organization over the past few days or weeks.?

Phase 2: Get clear about where you're going to do business.

You need to understand your company's sandbox. Where are you playing? Geography, customer segments and product definition are all part of this understanding.

Phase 3: Identify your goals.?

Get clear on the long-term outcomes that your team is striving towards. Good to Great author Jim Collins coined the phrase BHAG - Big Hairy Audacious Goal.?

Looking out into the future to the next 10-15 years, and identifying a BHAG, makes it certain that your team won't settle for less by thinking too small. The BHAG can serve to light a fire under your team to get the work done that ensures you'll reach that future goal.

Phase 4: Set benchmark goals.?

Now that you've developed your BHAG, it's time to set benchmarks along the way. These are often smaller goals that get broken down into annual and quarterly goals that must be completed in support along the way to the larger BHAG.?

I've seen too many companies set 5-year goals and to be honest, it's usually a waste of time.

Here's why: simplicity is key.

You might be asking yourself what makes my description of strategic planning different? It's my focus on simplicity.?

In my perspective, strategic planning involves the deep soul searching work and the act of simplifying the findings into a one-page document that will bring life into your organization.

Phase 5: Make your simple one-page strategy.?

Verne Harnish brought this concept to life in his book Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, and his more recently updated version titled Scaling Up - How a Few Companies Make it...and Why the Rest Don't.?

Capturing your plan in a one-page document keeps it alive and in front of your team. For example, my team's plan is hanging right next to my desk where I can see it daily to remind me of where we're going.?

Phase 6: Make the strategy part of the daily life blood of your organization.

The strategy needs to be front and center, and updated regularly vs. pulled off the shelf once a year.?

By using a simple one-page plan and making it part of a regular meeting rhythm, it'll quickly become top of mind and can truly function as a source of alignment for the organization.?

In summary, I've learned firsthand that strategic planning is often misunderstood and largely useless in many organizations.

Your competitive advantage lies in your organization's ability to put away the emotional need to create a 50 page document and instead, replace it with a simple and actionable process that allows for flawless execution of a few select initiatives each quarter. Over time, this will truly drive you forward faster.

You may also find great value in hiring a coach and/or implementer from an organization like scalingup.com or eosworldwide.com

What do you think? Please share your experiences and thoughts on strategic planning? so that we can learn together.

Soar, Don't Settle!?