Strategy | Planning | Leadership Development | Organizational Growth
What You Don't Want to Hear About Strategic Planning
Writing the Plan is Just the Beginning
Developing a clear strategy is not enough. Successfully executing a strategic plan takes focused effort, a clear workplan, great communication, and the involvement of the entire organization.
Many organizations undergo a rigorous process to define their strategic plan which often involves research, data analysis, debate and trade-off decisions. The process can be exhausting. At the end, those involved often feel as though their work is complete when the plan is published.
In reality, however, the work is only beginning. According to Harvard Business Review 70% of strategic change initiatives fail and 95% of employees do not understand their organization’s strategy.
To move from strategy development to effective strategy implementation requires clear communication, reallocating resources, engagement at all levels of the organization, and disciplined monitoring and tracking. Based on ongoing feedback and changing market conditions, regular conversations about any necessary adjustments will also be required. Setting an organization-wide strategic plan often involves only those at the top of the organization. But, once those strategies are chosen, it will take the entire organization to achieve the plan.
Ensure Clear Communication
Strategic initiatives must be well defined and clearly articulated. Ensuring that the strategy is captured in written form as clearly and concisely as possible will enable business leaders, even those who were not involved in its creation, to understand its key elements. Even those closest to the process may have different perceptions of the outcomes since it has evolved during he creation process. Make sure that everyone agrees to and understands the meaning of the words in the plan and the intent of the decisions that were made.
It will take everyone across the organization to effectively implement the plan. Each individual may not impact each objective, but more likely than not, each individual will be able to positively impact at least one aspect of the strategy. Cascading the plan throughout the organization, and beyond, helps ensure the entire ecosystem is working together to capitalize on the identified opportunities.
True understanding most often comes from dialogue. As such, bringing the plan to life will require verbal presentations and conversations with business leaders and influencers across the organization from senior executives to middle managers to front-line supervisors. Real one-to-one connections and hallway conversations bring the plan to life. One of the biggest mistakes an organization can make is to communicate the strategy without making sure its meaning is understood.
Make Cross-Functional Trade Offs
One particularly effective mechanism for cascading the plan is to engage leaders at all levels of the organization to imagine and articulate how their business unit or functional area will contribute to the plan’s execution. For example: What will marketing do differently to implement the plan? What will sales or operations do? How will each modify current priorities, eliminate unrelated activities, and implement new actions in support of the strategy? Encouraging all leaders to solicit input from their team(s) and share their thinking both within the team and cross-functionally helps to ensure that the entire organization is aligned for success.
True alignment often requires cross-functional tradeoffs. One functional area may need to allocate resources to support a new initiative being driven primarily from another functional area. Budgets in one area may need to be trimmed and those resources reallocated to another to ensure strategic imperatives are properly funded. Cross-functional coordination is critical, and it only occurs when overarching organizational goals are clear and everyone is working collaboratively to achieve them.
“30% of managers cite failure to coordinate across units as the single greatest challenge to executing their company’s strategy.” – Harvard Business Review
Shed Irrelevant Projects
Most organizations do not have unlimited resources. Capital, people, cash, operating assets – all are finite. From the top to front-line employees, everyone needs to understand what investments of time, money and other resources will be eliminated in order to make room for those required to execute on the new strategy. And, incentives and culture need to be adjusted to help drive those changes.
Most organizations fail by continuing to add new programs and initiatives in support of a new strategy without determining what they will give up. Over time, continuing to add without eliminating will weaken the organization and burnout its people. Take time in the strategy implementation process to identify what will be eliminated to make room for the new. Then, make it clear how the assets you’ve freed will be reallocated. Reflect these decisions in staffing plans, budgets and functional team objectives.
In addition to the new strategies, there are often ongoing operating imperatives that keep the organization positively moving forward. Combining these current imperatives with the new ones when defining the annual operating plan and budget, and establishing realistic project deadlines will help stakeholders effectively balance both.
Plan the Work
Most high-level strategies are multi-faceted, complex, multi-year initiatives requiring sequential steps. Coordinating those efforts across functional areas and multiple stakeholders requires a clear workplan that outlines timelines, responsible parties and dependencies.
Translating strategic initiatives into tactical activities and action steps is paramount. Establishing timelines and assigning responsibility for completion of the components of each strategic initiative makes it clear who will be leading each effort and sequences activities across the three- to five- year strategy life cycle. For each near-term imperative, breaking down the action steps for its implementation into a detailed implementation workplan clearly articulates who will do what and by when, and accounts for dependencies across teams and business units.
Diligence in project management, monitoring, communication and performance tracking is therefore critical to success. In large organizations, this responsibility often falls to a strategy team or PMO office. However, in smaller organizations appropriate resources are not always available. Coordinating multi-faceted strategic initiatives can be time consuming and often fail without focused effort. For those organizations without internal resources, turning to an outside consultant or contract project manager may be a worthwhile option, at least to establish the plan, organizational structure and tracking systems.
“Only 10% of leaders are confident their company will achieve even 2/3 of its strategic objectives.”
– 2016 Strategy Implementation Study, Bridges Business Consultancy
Track and Monitor Progress
To track activity, it is important to establish leading and lagging indicators of success to understand whether the identified activities and initiatives are having the desired impact. Clear, measurable key performance indicators (KPIs) should be established for each set of priorities and then tracked and evaluated regularly. KPIs should include measures of whether the team is successfully undertaking the right activities (leading indicators) as well as whether the organization has achieved the desired outcomes (lagging indicators). Gathering information about the activities believed to drive success allows for earlier intervention and clearer redirection should that be necessary. Over time, this data allows the organization to better understand the causal relationships between specific activities and outcomes.
In addition to tracking and reviewing KPIs, organizational leaders must set aside time to regularly discuss what is working and what is not. Understanding the story behind the numbers is just as important as reviewing the numbers themselves. Establish regular meetings to review the metrics and share feedback from functional leaders, team managers and front-line employees.
Adjust as Necessary
The world is changing at an exponentially faster pace each year. In this world of increasing and constant change, it is important to be prepared to make real time adjustments to both the plan and the tactics. Feedback on initial implementation efforts, customer responses, operational challenges and market conditions can all impact an organization’s ability to realize its strategic goals. To ensure successful strategic outcomes, senior leaders must carve out regular time for reviewing progress and barriers to success. An important aspect of organizational agility is to remain open to eliminating poorly performing initiatives and embracing emerging opportunities that align with the strategy. To do all of these things, senior leaders must plan for ongoing dialogue that regularly helps to clarify opportunities and strategies and adjust initiatives to ensure success.
As US Army General George S. Patton famously said, “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” Having a strategic plan is not enough. To truly drive strategic change, an organization must be intentional about dedicating the time, focus and resources necessary to implement the identified strategies. With shared understanding, prioritization of efforts, a detailed workplan and ongoing dialogue to monitor and adjust, organizations can overcome barriers and achieve their strategic imperatives to ensure long term organizational success.
By STEPHANIE KUSIBAB
Stephanie Kusibab is an accomplished and versatile strategy consultant with more than twenty years’ experience delivering programs that accelerate growth and mission achievement. Through broad business experience and perspective, she quickly understands and assesses a situation to identify growth opportunities across industries and professions. Stephanie believes the most powerful ideas come from bringing people together. Through deliberate, structured interactions digitally and in-person, she helps organizations mine diverse perspectives to generate new ideas, coalesce around high impact strategies, build stronger teams, and understand market opportunities.
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