Simple, obvious, ignored?
A current strategic planning client executive said today that our draft plan and report for his organization is "by far the most useful" he had ever seen. Of course I was thrilled to hear this, but then I had to ponder why that would be. After all, most plans offer a strategic vision for the organization and strategies to move toward the vision, as well as address implementation. Ours did as well.
At another level, perhaps, the report offered a few less common things:
Results from a stakeholder survey on what key groups thought the organization was facing and could do, and what they wanted to see it become and achieve.
Feedback from planning meetings where leaders assessed survey feedback, offered more input, created a shared vision for the organization and developed a tight set of prioritized strategies to pursure.
But still, while important and even necessary, this is fairly common strategic planning output.
Then it hit me: What might be simple, even obvious, but probably ignored in most strategic planning work is to map the interconnections to be sure that the plan meets the marks. The report we offered mapped:
The 13 strategic gaps against the 12 points of the shared vision, to show what would impede achievement of various aspects of the vision.
The five strategies the planning group provisonally adopted to the 12 vision points that they will help achieve, to assure the strategies actually support the vision.
The five strategies to the 11 identfied strategic gaps that they will address, in varying degree, to show that the gaps have been considered.
The five strategies to the four Balanced Scorecard areas, to assure that the strategies will work across the organization.
The 26 non-selected strategies against the five selected strategies, to help reveal how some of the non-selected strategies are, in fact, more tactical and may be potential action steps for implementing a selected strategy; how others are, in effect, sub-strategies of the selected strategies and may suggest implementation action steps; and how yet other ideas are indeed full strategies that should be considered for future implementation.
Simple, maybe obvious, but I suspect not often done: Mapping the points of the shared vision, the strategic gaps, the adopted strategies, non-adopted strategies and the Balanced Scorecard categories is a methodology that can help show if your plan will be effective or if it falls short from the start. Try it!
