In an earlier three-part blog series I discussed ways to seize the value by putting your strategic plan to work.  Recently one of our clients that successfully completed our PathLight^SM strategic planning process asked how to keep the plan current and relevant in an ever-changing world.

In this particular case, a major change had occurred in our client’s marketplace and they wanted to know how to evaluate the affect of this event on the strategies and actions in their strategic plan.  In other words, because of this event:

• Should their strategic plan be changed?  If so, how?
• How can they determine if this event requires a major shift in strategies?

Having a process for addressing trigger events that may affect your strategic plan as well as conducting periodic assessments will keep your plan relevant and enable you to anticipate and respond effectively to change.

I will examine the steps and highlight key concepts for assessing your strategic plan after a trigger event and on a periodic basis in a two-part blog series titled “Your strategic plan at work”.

I invite you to share your thoughts and comments as we progress through this series

Up next: Your strategic plan at work – part 1 of 2: Assessing a trigger event.

During a recent radio interview, I talked about “How a business can align its strategic goals with execution to achieve success”.  In doing so, I mentioned that each of our consultants keeps the Kano Model in mind as we work with our clients.

Following the interview a number of listeners contacted me to find out more:

• What is the Kano Model?
• Where did it originate?
• How do you apply it?

The Kano Model was conceived and named for Noriaki Kano, professor emeritus of the Tokyo University of Science.  He developed the model during his research on quality and customer satisfaction.

As we engage with our clients, we always keep this model in mind.

 Most service providers understand the importance of listening to you to discover your expectations – capturing the Spoken/Expected requirements. 

But great providers, and we like to think that we’re one of those, strive for the “innovations” – Unspoken/Unexpected requirements – that add value, while also being mindful of those items that you consider “intuitively obvious” – the Unspoken/Expected requirements – that if missed, result in major dissatisfaction.

Keeping this model in mind helps great service providers understand your expectations, drivers, and their context — key elements to ensuring success.

Communicating the appropriate elements of your strategic plan.

In this final installment of our Putting your strategic plan to work series, we will look at a critical but often overlooked element in strategic planning – communications.

Because of the sensitive nature of some of the information in an organization’s strategic plan, it is often believed that the plan needs to be closely guarded and its contents divulged on a strictly need-to-know basis. While I certainly don’t advocate the full disclosure of the plan’s contents willy-nilly, I have found that effectively communicating the right elements of the plan, in the right way, to the right audience yields significant benefits and can bring your plan to life!

Imagine the value of communicating to your customers your vision, mission, and guiding principles.  It helps them to understand who you are and the value you have to offer.

Your employees and contributors can more fully understand the basis for your decisions and the role they can play in making the organization successful.

There is no one-size-fits-all template or formula for effectively communicating your strategic plan.  However, the best communication plans address the following areas:

• Audience – May include higher-level decision authorities (such as a Board of Directors or Regulatory Agencies), clients, partners, and employees.
• What – What elements of the strategic plan should be communicated to each audience?  What are the benefits?  What are the risks?
• How – What are the most effective channels for communicating with each target audience?  Face-to-face?  Electronic vs. hard copy documentation?    Newsletters?  E-mail?
• Who – Who is responsible for communicating with each target audience?
• When – When and how often should the strategic plan, and the implementation of its initiatives, be communicated to each target audience?  One time?  Regular updates?

The pursuit of success starts with a solid plan.  The value of the plan is realized through the implementation of the initiatives within that plan.  Effectively communicating the appropriate elements of your plan plugs everyone into the process; providing standards for accountability for people, projects, and allocated resources.

These steps put you in the position to seize the value of the strategic planning process – Carpe pretium!

Planning and managing the execution of your initiatives

Vision without action is a daydream.  Action without vision is a nightmare – Japanese Proverb

An effective strategic plan, as described in Part 1 of this series, Developing an effective strategic plan, captures your vision – the desired end-state for your business focused on aligning your people toward common goals.  The successful planning and management of the initiatives in your strategic plan moves you beyond the daydream and avoids the nightmare to achieve your vision.

In my experience, the effective planning and management of the initiatives in your strategic plan begins as part of the strategic planning sessions described in Part 1.  Before concluding the strategic planning sessions the team should develop high-level action plans that capture key elements of each initiative such as the purpose, mapping to goals and objectives, ownership of the initiative, and expected outputs and deliverables.  Using a template to capture and display this information helps participants to understand the initiatives and to perform more detailed planning during implementation.

We have found that this approach ensures the team knows what comes next, who is responsible, and when it is expected to be completed; avoiding the  “it’s not my job” syndrome that results from a lack of ownership and can cause many strategic plans to be ignored.

This information also provides a great starting point when a program or project manager will be used for the detailed planning and management of the initiative(s) for the organization.  Many of the initial questions the program manager will have are answered and the risk of miscommunication has been reduced, improving your odds of success.

Your strategic plan is a roadmap.  The effective planning and management of the initiatives in your plan aligns the right resources to the right priorities at the right time to help you achieve success.

Up next: Putting your strategic plan to work – part 3 of 3: Communicating the appropriate elements of your strategic plan.

Developing an effective strategic plan.

An effective strategic plan creates a picture of your organization’s future, based on the current and expected business environment and trends that will affect you, and then charts a course that leads to the realization of that picture.

I believe three factors have a major influence on the creation of an effective strategic plan:

1. Approach
2. Contents
3. Presentation

Approach – to develop an effective strategic plan, a step-by-step process with specific objectives and deliverables should be used.  One method is to divide the process into two phases: 1) Pre-work and 2) Planning session(s).  

One of the advantages of this method is that it ensures the disciplined capture of the relevant information needed to establish the current and expected operational environment that will influence your organization.  It also allows the dissemination of that data in advance of the planning session(s) so the participants have a common reference point.

A dedicated planning session(s) gives you the opportunity to bring a diverse group of people into the process, thereby leveraging the talent and intellect of your people.   This typically results in a more robust critique of the information from the pre-work phase and a broader view of how your organization can effectively respond to it.  You may be surprised where the next great idea comes from.

Contents – There is general agreement on the basic contents of a strategic plan, including vision, mission, and, of course, strategies.  I have found that the most effective strategic plans include:

–       Vision, Mission Statement, Guiding Principles

–       Planning Context/Environmental Descriptors including;

• Market Overview
• Major Account Overview
• Competitive Landscape
• Organizational Assessment

–       Goal Areas/Objectives

–       Strategies

–       High-level Action Plans

This outline is effective because it integrates the resulting strategies with the context that served as the basis for their genesis.  This invaluable linkage contributes to the effectiveness of the plan by allowing you to quickly assess the impact of a sudden environmental shift on your strategic initiatives; and to plan your response accordingly.  This flexibility and responsiveness helps keep your strategic plan from becoming a static, little-used management resource. 

Presentation – Here I have found that a simple approach is best.  Regardless of the method used, capturing the contents outlined above in a concise fashion keeps the key messages in focus.  A simple and focused approach is far more effective than generating voluminous documents with superfluous prose.

By focusing on the development approach, contents, and presentation of your strategic plan you can direct your energies and resources more effectively and improve your likelihood of success even when the business landscape changes.

Up next: Putting your strategic plan to work – part 2 of 3: Planning and managing the execution of your initiatives.

In my last post, What’s on your shelf?, I reflected on the idea that the value of a strategic plan is derived from the successful implementation of the initiatives contained within that plan.  This naturally leads to the question – what do we need to do to identify, pursue, and achieve that value?

It has been our experience that this value can be realized by focusing on three key process steps:

1. Developing an effective strategic plan; including high-level action plans.
2. Planning and managing the execution of the strategic plan’s initiatives.
3. Communicating the appropriate elements of the strategic plan in a timely and effective  manner.

I will examine each of these process steps and highlight key concepts for each in a three-part blog series titled “Putting your strategic plan to work”.

I invite you to share your thoughts and comments as we progress through this series.

Up next: Putting your strategic plan to work – part 1 of 3: Developing an effective strategic plan.

The 2009 holiday season is just behind us and one of the most talked about items this season was the The Elf on the Shelf: A Christmas Tradition by Carol Aebersold and Chanda Bell.  When I saw the title it reminded me of what I would often see on the bookshelves in business executives’ offices – what was on their shelves?

Generally you see corporate policy manuals and books on leadership, management, etc.  Oftentimes I would also see a binder that contained the company’s strategic plan.  Look around your own office and you will probably see many of the same things.

The real question is:  how much dust do we see on those books, particularly the strategic plan?  How much dust they gather tells us how often they are used or referenced.  And while it may be fine to “shelve” a book that has already been read, does the strategic plan really have value if it is shelved?

Like New Year’s resolutions, a company will oftentimes prepare a strategic plan with the best of intentions.  The executives of the company will spend time and resources answering the key questions:

1. Where are we now?
2. Where to do we want to be?
3. How will we get there?
4. How will we measure the results?

However, once complete, the strategic plan is put on the shelf only to be reviewed or considered again during the next planning cycle – as if the completion of the plan itself was the goal or prize. 

In our opinion, the value that the organization is seeking is not in the strategic plan itself – it is in the implementation of the initiatives contained within that plan.  While developing the plan can seem difficult, the truly hard part is in the detailed, tactical planning, marshalling of resources, execution of tasks, and measurement of results.

These critical next steps are often missed, creating seemingly insurmountable challenges to implementing your strategies; achieving your objectives; accomplishing your goals; achieving your mission; and, ultimately reaching your vision. 

With all that in mind, what’s on your shelf?