Byline Strategic Plan Made Easy

Signature strategic plan

hi my name is Erica Olsen with m3 planning today's topic is about what is strategic planning really you know strategic planning means different things to different people and we have found that if we're not really clear about what we mean by strategic planning for an organization upfront before we get started we tend to have some problems getting people engaged in the middle of the process or there's just roadblocks or or people's resistance gets in the way so here are the different types of things we mean when we talk about strategic planning and and there are different outcomes most of the time that leaders are seeking when they're engaging in a strategic planning process these build so let's talk about them sequentially and then you can think as we're moving through what you're really looking for in your strategic planning process so at the very base level a strategic planning process is an articulated plan people want an articulated plan for their organization so what do I mean by that that means we have a mission we have a vision we have goals objectives etc an articulated plan sometimes we want to add on to that that that plan is actually strategic and you may say well it's a strategic plan but that's not necessarily true unless you bring in external data if you don't bring in external market data such as what your customers think what your competitors are doing what's happening in your environment in your industry you're not going to have a strategic plan yours can have a plan now sometimes we don't need a strategic plan sometimes we just need an articulated set of mission vision goals objectives but sometimes we really need to figure out what our strategic differentiation is in the market place and in which case to do so you need to add into your process that market data collection use it to make strategic decisions about what you're doing and not doing such your plan actually articulates how you're different okay so a plan that strategic that also drives organizational engagement how do we drive organizational engagement we cascade goals and cascaded goals mean that everybody in the organization knows what their piece of the strategy and the plan are that drives organizational engagement and you may say well of course I want everybody engaged and sometimes we want that in organizations but we don't have the wherewithal to actually make that happen and sometimes that's not necessary right now so it's important to know if your strategic planning process is intended to drive organizational engagement or not and if it is you need to make sure that your plan goes all the way down to the individual level so everybody knows their piece of the future so sometimes we add on to that they'll want to actually drive organizational transformation using a strategic planning process and how do we do that we have an articulated plan that's strategic that's cascaded through the whole organization that we talk about on a regular basis and we make changes to as we move along the way and we helped shift behaviors and we help drive choice and we do that by visibly talking about it in specific meetings I'm calling quarterly business reviews you may call them something else but the point is we're using this information to drive decision-making and drive behavior and we're talking about it and we're being visible about it so as you're thinking about your strategic planning process think about what's important to your organization right now and get everybody on the same page about what the real outcome of your process is intended to be