Overwhelmed by strategic planning? The strategic planning
process requires effective communication and clear thinking; it is an involved
and multi-step process that requires a lot of forethought.
Gathering and analyzing data from inside and outside of an organization - and subsequently turning those data into information - requires clear and concise communication between all of the involved parties. Likewise, taking the acquired information and developing an understanding of it such that appropriate strategies can be developed and actions taken requires extreme clarity of thought. Before you start, your company needs to appoint leaders of
the strategic planning effort and what the process will look like. Often it is
beneficial to get an outsider’s perspective, so you may consider hiring an
external consultant to act as your strategic planning facilitator. The team
should include all members of upper management, some key middle managers, and
your facilitator. Additionally, to limit endless conversations it is important
to set a timeframe and deadlines to keep during the strategic planning process.
Once you have your team and timeline, you are ready to go.
Step 1: Propose a Mission
In order to collectively steer an organization in the proper
direction, its employee “navigators” must understand the destination in which
the organization is heading. That understanding begins by establishing and
clearly communicating the company’s mission in conjunction with the goals and
objectives. In most cases, the mission of a company has been long established.
However, sometimes it becomes apparent that the mission is not being clearly
communicated and needs to be redefined.
Step 2: Propose Goals
A Goals Grid matrix is a helpful visual to use when
determining the appropriate goals according to the mission of the company. While going through the process of strategic plan, your ultimate goal should be to develop the strategic plan in a way that is easily translatable into action items. Many strategic plans address high level goals, but rarely get translated into day to day activities. A popular approach to defining goals is to put them into categories such as short-term, medium-term, and long-term.
Step 3: External Analysis
Once the mission and goals to be pursued have been
determined, it is time to take a look at what is happening in the world outside
of the company and determine how, it at all, specific events might affect the
company in the long run. These analyses of the external environment include
broad, global (macro) issues like social changes, new technologies and the
economic, political, and regulatory environments. It is rare that all external factors will carry equal weight, but your analysis should always focus on your customers.
Step 4: Internal Analysis
A critical component in the strategic planning process is
documenting what the company knows about itself. What defines the corporate
culture of the company? What is the image in the eyes of its stakeholders and
others? How is the firm organized, and how much experience does it have
relative to its competitors? These questions start the process of understanding its strengths and weaknesses relative to those of the other participants in
the markets it serves.
Step 5: Formulating Strategy
This is where the various findings from the external and
internal analyses are juxtaposed to the mission and the goals of the company in
order to determine the best course of action for success. Your company should
strive to craft a strategy that best takes advantage of its strengths, while at
the same time does not leave itself overly vulnerable due to its weaknesses.
The company should work to identify any competitive advantage it may enjoy in
its various businesses and/or products.
Step 6: Strategy and Operating Plan
Implementation
More often than not, the development of the plan is less
complicated that is its implementation. In fact, surveys indicate that nine out
of ten organizations fail to properly implement the strategies they formulated.
Often poor communication of the plan and failure of the majority to buy-in is
the root cause of implementation failure. Every unit within the organization
needs to understand the mission and goals that have been established, accept
the necessity of a plan, agree to its direction, and implement actions specific
to their areas of responsibility.
The return-on-investment for any company that takes the time
to properly communicate its plan for long-term success is quite substantial.
And there is no better way to involve an organization in the planning process
and effectively communicate the results than through visual communication.
What visuals do you use when working on your company’s
strategic plan?
