by Bill Curry
The basics to holding a successful strategic planning session for your company are missed by most companies. Companies will significantly increase their odds for attaining the results they want if they adhere to the following truisms of strategic planning 101.
1. Hire an experienced facilitator. This is especially true for the first two SP events you do. An experienced facilitator will be instrumental in preplanning and participant preparation, managing the meeting, and setting you up for successfully executing the plan.
2. If your company has never done an SP the first one will be spent using the SWOT analysis to turn over all the rocks and addressing the core issues within the company. Yes, at this first session you will come up with a Vision, Purpose, Mission and Values (Culture) for the company but most likely it will not be your best effort.
3. The first SP will be more a tactical not strategic exercise. Even with a facilitator it will be internally focused and evolve into dealing with people, roles and process frustrations. The facilitator will keep it moving and not allow any alpha dog agendas to control the flow of the meeting.
4. A year later at the second SP session the facilitator will be able to keep it strategic by managing an externally focused session on what the market demands and how your company can meet or exceed those needs. At this meeting you will come up with the right Vision, Purpose, Mission and Culture that will drive your success.
5. Leadership wants the planning session to identify the what and the how. What the company needs to be and how they can be it. Leadership feels if they can get the team aligned behind a purpose they can do anything. This is the holy grail that is always a work in progress. It is also an objective that can be achieved one step at a time.
6. Every SP will conclude with a timelined and objective based business plan. There will be both a long range plan which will move you toward achieving the company vision and a short range plan that encompasses the first steps toward accomplishing the long range plan.
7. To accomplish the objectives requires timelined actions or tasks. In example if you want to have the best trained staff in your space you would have a task assignment to determine the definition of best trained staff.
8. Always assign an objective or any task to a person, not a committee. When a committee is responsible, no one is responsible! Likewise one person has to be responsible for the overall business plan. It is that person’s job to require that the objectives and tasks are tracked using S. M. A. R. T. metrics.
9. Use Patrick Lencioni’s guideline for meeting protocols, (Death by Meeting), to schedule SP followup meetings.
10. Follow Yoda’s credo that: “There is no trying, only doing” in being singled minded in accomplishing the objectives and tasks. That said recognize that objectives can change so they must be continually challenged.