When it
comes to strategic plans, and I see a lot of them, most of them leave me a bit
puzzled and flat. Funny thing is they seem to leave most of the people working
in the organization feeling the same way as they often get ignored, except for
events like strategic planning retreats and occasionally board meetings.
As
briefly as I can, I would like to share three secrets to keeping your strategic
plan relevant in 2019. I say secrets, only because most organizations don’t
seem to know or recognize them.
The
first secret has to do with the definition of a strategic plan. Yes, you may
have created, many of them, but what should it really be?
1. Imagine
you are in an open boat at sea. You have oars, you have a sextant, so you can
take a reading and get your relative bearing. The sky above you is clear so you
can see the sun, but all around you the horizon is blocked by fog.
You have a
compass, but you’re not sure it’s accurate or working properly. You need to get
to shore, to safety before nightfall, but you’re not exactly sure in which
direction to row. The sea is getting rough, sometimes the waves seem to be
changing directions in some sort of confusing pattern. How do you proceed?
This situation describes for me what a
relevant strategic plan is. It is your guess on how best to get to safety,
usually represented as profitable growth and risk reduction.
That’s it. The first secret is that
your strategic plan, is your plan to get to some place better – so focus on
that, nothing else.
The strategic plan, to be relevant,
must focus on answering the question “How do we grow while operating within our
value system?” This is really limited. Most organization’s strategic plan is
way too broad. Imagine being in the open boat, day light is running out, and
you’d better start executing a plan.
Hopefully it isn’t to yell for help or re-organize the cushions at the
front of the boat, improve the tightness of your shoe laces, re-look for extra
water in the boat or any of 50 things you could attend to.
2. If
we’re in the boat together, let me share the 2nd secret. You don’t have an
enough resource to do lots of things all at once – certainly not well.
You
can’t get to shore if you row in 9 different directions at once, even if it
were possible. You can’t row and try to put up a sail and check for leaks and …
all at once.
The second secret is to keep your
strategic plan brief, lean and based upon reality. Keep it to just the
initiatives you believe will get you to shore. Remember you don’t have a lot of
resources, not nearly enough to do all the things you might like to in 2009.
So, prioritize and keep focused on just the initiatives you have the most faith
in. The ones that seem to best fit your market environment and your
organizational capabilities. Just the initiatives that will take you to shore.
So, you pick a compass heading and start rowing.
3. Here’s
the third secret, and hopefully it is evident that you’re already ahead of me,
given this analogy. After you row for a while, you had better do a sighting,
check the sun position with your sextant and determine your position, determine
if you’ve made any progress, if you’re going the right direction.
Without checking, you could row in circles, you
could get swept off course and not know it, you could change directions and
be-unaware.
You
know what I’m going to say, but here it is anyway, the 3rd secret to having a
relevant strategic plan is to regularly measure if your plan is working.
By the
way, most businesses I work with either create strategic initiatives they can’t
figure out how to measure, or don’t budget for and invest the resources
necessary to regularly measure their progress. It’s as if the thinking is “just
keep rowing, we’ll get to shore”.
Don’t
fall in this group. Another way to think
of this, is to only include in your strategic plan what you’re prepared to
measure (do all the work to collect the data) … regularly.
Let me
know if those three secrets help.
Bottom Line:
Do
yourself a favor this year, create a relevant strategic plan that takes you
and the business to someplace better and remember the 3 secrets to keeping it
relevant:
· Keep
your plan limited to just those initiatives that you believe will drive growth
· Limit
your plan to include just the initiatives that represent your best guesses
within your current reality (you may want to check the facts again).
·
Regularly measure and adjust the plan as needed.
