How We Do Strategic Planning Differently
What do you think of when you hear the words ‘strategic plan’?
Did your skin crawl just now? Did you start to doze off while remembering your last endless meeting where a lot of words were said but it felt like nothing got accomplished?
Even more common - do you have vague memories of drafting and circulating some sort of plan a few years back, but you’re positive that it’s filed away in a drawer somewhere and it hasn’t been looked at since?
That’s usually how strategic planning is done. Depending on the organization it can take place huddled around a cramped boardroom table for hours or even days on end, or if the resources are there, over a few days getaway at a fancy golf retreat. Whether there’s 18 holes and an open bar or dim lighting and lukewarm takeout, the end result is usually the same.
Far too many organizations attempt to plan on their own without, ironically, having a plan themselves. They go through an exercise because they know that it’s a necessity, but the discussions are easily sidetracked, and irrelevant tangents from around the room can mean quickly falling into unproductive rabbit holes.
After that ordeal, the document is usually saved and printed, sometimes even several copies, and then never reviewed again. Herein lies the problem with strategic planning. Even though a plan may be technically ‘in place,’ it’s never actually reviewed or implemented properly, and so it may as well not exist at all.
There’s also been a hesitancy about viewing strategic planning as this onerous ‘to do’ list. Some organizations believe that a plan should include a step-by-step checklist that’s followed militantly and that any derivation from the list is automatically a problem. That is also not how planning works. Strategic plan isn’t about knowing step-by-step how to reach a destination - it’s about offering a color picture of what that destination might look like, and some early stage guidance about how to get there.
The most common mistakes are the ones that make strategic planning a boring chore at best, and a painful undertaking at worst, except it doesn’t need to be either of those things.
When I started my strategic planning business over two decades ago, I decided that we needed to start doing two things differently.
Put Down the Pen and Pick Up a Pencil
There’s a longstanding misconception that strategic plans need to be set in stone. Historically they’ve been viewed like a cornerstone of an old building - it’s permanent, and quite literally ‘set in stone.’ No matter what happens, that strategic plan is supposed to be this immovable marker of time.
Except that’s not how real life works. Things change, and grow, and evolve over time. If your business does a strategic plan for the next 5 years, and then is in the same exact place 5 years later, then there’s been absolutely no growth and development over that time. That’s not how business grows and evolves, and that’s not how a strategic plan works either.
Think of your strategic plan as a living, breathing document. Yes, it’s meant as a rough roadmap to get you to where you need to go. But along the way new roads are built, new onramps and offramps become available, and you may gain access to a better route to reach that destination.
Just like how your GPS updates routinely, your strategic plan will require routine updates as well. Setting down your plan in pen is a dangerous move. That’s why we work in pencil, and always keep an eraser handy. If there is a major change in the business or in operations, your plan should be amended to reflect this.
Businesses survive by growing and adapting to change. Don’t just bury your head in the sand when it comes to changing your strategic plan. Instead, think about bringing it along for the journey.
Don’t Let Your Plan Collect Dust
The worst thing you can do with a strategic plan is to let it collect dust in a filing cabinet drawer - which is what happened to the majority of strategic plans for decades. Multiple copies are printed, usually at least one in color on high quality paper, and they’re distributed to top leadership in the organization…only to be filed away and not seen for years.
In fact, the only time that they usually come out of hiding is in 3, 4, or even 5 years when the team decides that it’s time to do yet another plan, and then everyone goes to retrieve the old document (whether from a paper or a digital file folder) and gives it a quick once-over before starting again.
That does not mean that some elements of the last plan did not come to fruition. Some pieces may have stayed in mind and become workable goals, but many of the finer elements get lost when you store it away. It effectively renders all of that hard work useless, and turns planning into an exercise in futility.
That’s why I work with my clients to review their plan monthly.
Once a month, we set up a call to review your plan in detail and see how it’s playing out. This lets you adapt and rework your plan in real time. Have there been major changes to your funding? No problem, let’s adjust that plan. Have you had a major change in leadership that wants to take the business in a different direction? Great, let’s work with that instead of letting it hold us back.
Staying agile is what stops your plan, and frankly your business, from becoming a lumbering dinosaur. Writing in pencil, and reworking that plan month after month means that that plan is as useful to you in 3, 6, or 9 months’ time as it was the day you wrote it.
And you know what? In 12 months’ time we’ll book a longer conversation, this time with a fresh set of eyes, so that we can formally review our successes and how we have moved towards achieving our goals.
I started doing strategic planning differently over two decades ago, and the results for my clients show that we are on the right track. Not only do we make the planning process fun and non-invasive, but staying fluid and staying in touch are what maximizes the value from that experience.