strategic planning

So far this month, we’ve looked at the importance of having a strategic plan, steps for developing a strategic plan, and some tips for ensuring execution. I want to close out this series of articles by focusing on idea of plan review.

Even the best plans need periodic review to make sure they are still relevant. Any number of things can lead to a necessary course adjustment. Market fluctuations, competitive positioning, regulatory restrictions, personnel changes, and policy or procedure adjustments – all could mean your well-defined plan just went out the window. On top of that, it’s a good idea to periodically check the numbers and take the pulse of the team.

Approximately every 90 days, I suggest pulling the team back together for a strategic plan review. This is your opportunity to kick the tires and make any tweaks needed to keep the plan moving forward. Here are a few questions you can ask as part of your review:

• Did we get what we expected from each particular strategy?
• How far off the mark are we?
• How far over the goal did we get?
• What worked, and why?
• Can we do more of those activities that seem to be bearing fruit?
• What could have been done to make it even more effective?
• What fell short, and why?
• Can we fix it, or was this just a bad idea to begin with?
• What should we have anticipated that we didn’t?
• What are our team’s strengths?
• How can we capitalize on these in stronger ways?
• What internal issues need to be addressed so we can be more effective going forward?
• What outside forces need to be dealt with?
• How needs to happen to improve our FOCUS?
• How needs to happen to improve our MOTIVATION?
• How needs to happen to improve our ACCOUNTABILITY?

These and other questions can help stimulate a discussion about the state of the team’s performance against the plan. Based on the insights gleaned from your discussion, you should update your plan. Plug the holes in viable strategies.  Reinforce the efforts put into the best ones. Replace the worst ideas with new ones that seem promising.

These periodic reviews are a great way to reenergize the team. You’ll find people recommitting themselves to the process and approaching their work with a renewed energy. Ownership will go up and the dedication they show to the plan will bleed over into other aspects of the job.

So, the strategic planning cycle looks like this:

DEVLOP > EXECUTE > REVIEW > REPEAT

The bottom line is to treat your strategic plan less like a one-time event and more like a living, breathing part of your team. Like any employee, your plan needs support, attention, and ongoing development. The more you put into the strategic planning process, the more you will get out of it.

They say that the first step to success is having clearly defined goals. They should be written down and reviewed regularly. In fact, many experts speak to studies that show individuals who take the time to articulate their goals in writing have a much higher likelihood of actually achieving them.

If goals are the first step toward success, I believe having a strategy is definitely the second. A goal without a plan is just a dream. And like your goals, your strategic plan should be as clearly defined as possible. It should be written down and referred to on a regular basis.

Last week I promised to walk through the steps to creating a basic strategic plan. If you’ll follow this outline, you should wind up with a roadmap for achieving the goals that have been set out for your team. That’s what a well-written plan does. It not only points you in the right direction, but spells out the steps required to arrive at the desired destination.

There are five steps to developing your strategic plan.

1. DEFINE. Start by defining your goals as narrowly as possible. Perhaps your goal is to grow sales by 5% over the next year. Well, 5% of what, exactly? What specific products do you need to focus on? What group of customers or prospects? What are the interim goals you need to achieve so that a 5% growth becomes possible? What are the deadlines involved?

By defining the goal as much as possible, you start to break the journey down into more manageable pieces. When staring at a forest, it can be difficult to determine which tree you should cut down first. The more you define the expectations in front of you, the more you start to focus in on specific solutions

2. DESIGN. Having identified, as specifically as possible, what it is you are after, the second step is to create a rough outline of your action plan. Pull the team together and brainstorm activities that will help you achieve each goal. This process involves the entire team. Anyone involved in executing the plan ought to be part of developing it.

When brainstorming, remember that the goal of the exercise is to come up with as many ideas as possible. In order to achieve this, you must create an environment conducive to sharing ideas. Make sure the team understands the rules of brainstorming:
* No negativity. We don’t judge the ideas presented by others.

* Limit distractions. Try to eliminate outside influences that will interfere with the team’s ability to focus on the exercise.

* Crazy ideas are ok. Some ideas might be laughable, but they are still valuable as conduits to other lines of thinking.

* Keep moving. Don’t dig too deep into any the specifics of any one idea. The goal of brainstorming is volume. Talking through any one idea at length will bring the flow of ideas to a halt.

* Start individually. Have team members walk into the meeting having already written down a few ideas of their own. This will help jump start the process.

3. REFINE. Now that you have a list of potential strategies, it’s time to start trimming it down and refining the best ones. Settle on the best ideas and then start tightening each one up by asking a series of questions.

What does that look like? What will we get? What would this strategy to fail? Keep asking questions until you have a plan of action that can’t be refined any further.

4. ALIGN. Determine what resources you need in order to execute your plan. Are there people outside the team you need to bring in? Are there marketing resources you need to create? Are there budget or approval hurdles that need to be cleared? Make sure you have all the necessary pieces aligned to help ensure your team’s success.

5. ASSIGN. The final step in developing your strategic plan is to assign responsibility for each bit. Determine who has ownership of each step and verify understanding of expectations. Don’t walk away from a great strategic plan without addressing this part.

Now that you have a plan, it may feel like the work is done, but it’s just beginning. The plan is meaningless without action. Next week, we’ll take a look at some tips for implementing your strategic plan.

We really are creatures of habit, aren’t we?

We humans have become extremely proficient at developing routines. We find comfort in the expected, so much so that we rely on it. We become dependent on it. Our expectations start to revolve around systematic events over which we have no control. We fall into a rut and set ourselves up for disaster.

Because, what happens when the routine breaks down? What happens when that email we’ve come to expect every Monday morning doesn’t arrive on time? How do we respond when the friend or coworker that’s been so reliable suddenly isn’t there for us anymore? What are we to do when the customer we were counting on to make our monthly numbers takes their business elsewhere?

I don’t mind a good surprise now and then, but there are some things I like to have control over. When it comes to running (and growing) my business, I don’t want to be so dependent on things outside of my control that a surprise break in the routine can cause chaos. That’s where a good strategic plan comes in.

I’ve said before that “hope is not a strategy.” However, that’s exactly how many leaders run their business. They sit back and hope enough new business will walk through the door to make their numbers. Others rely on assumptions. They assume the same customers will always come through. They assume market conditions will remain favorable. Things have always worked out in the past, so they just assume things always will.

Hope and assumptions are not sound business strategies. Having a plan is. A strategic plan outlines the results you want and the steps you and your team must take in order to achieve those results. There is no hope or assumption involved. There is action – specific, measurable action that, when executed properly, virtually guarantees your success.

A lot of leaders will say they have a strategic plan in place. Few actually do. Oh, some may have a few ideas written down on a piece of paper somewhere – typically because they’ve been forced to by someone up the food chain; but I rarely meet teams who have proper strategic plan.

A simple strategic plan includes three components.

1. Goals. What is it the team is trying to achieve?

2. Actions. What has to happen in order for the goal to be achieved?

3. Accountabilities. Who is responsible for executing the identified actions?

Over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to walk through the process of putting together a strategic plan. I’ll give you some tips for writing your first plan, or for plugging some holes that might exist in an existing one. You can follow along and have a basic strategic plan for the rest of the year completed by the end of August.

It’s not too late to take control of your year. It’s not too late to break away from the routines that might be holding you back. Now is the time to stop hoping, stop assuming, and lead your team across the finish line in championship fashion.

Now is the time to make success a habit.