Traditionally a strategic plan is a document-based creation of leadership, exco and senior management that is “brought down from the mountain” to be implemented throughout the organisation, mainly by people who haven’t been consulted or engaged in the process.
This ‘trickle-down’ approach often becomes a source of conflict and frustration because the only power held by the uninvolved and the unengaged is to make implementation difficult, if not impossible. Additionally the language and approach to strategic planning including how core ideas are shared and spread throughout the organisation make it difficult to understand and engage with in certain parts of the organisations.
Additionally, the approach to developing the strategic plan and the language used might not appeal to everyone’s style of thinking. Some folk like focused attention to detail, data and facts while others prefer a high level ‘big picture’ overview. This means that a good strategic plan needs to appeal to both styles of thinking – it needs to inspire emotion as well as satisfying those who want detail. To ensure successful implementation the stretegic plan needs support from all levels of the organisation.
A strategic plan is a story of the future and a story of the journey that we must undertake to reach it
Elements that make for a workable, implementable strategic plan include the following.
- All key organisational players need to feel that they have a part to play in the construction of the strategic plan – implementation is made difficult without engagement and involvement in the planning phase. This entails listening to the different viewpoints and providing feedback.
- A Management By Objectives (MBO) style is often useful as it describes an end result leaving people free to figure out how they will achieve it -much easier for everyone in contrast to top-top-down management.
- The Strategic plan is driven by a compelling but simple story that describes a motivating vision of the future, the “promised land” where the plan has been implemented and bears its’ fruit.
- The strategic plan shows how all key players (i.e. everyone) needs to be engaged in its on-going realisation
- The strategic plan includes a high level of detail, data and checklists for those who want the high-focus approach. We refer to this as the ‘ant view’
- For those who want the ‘big picture’, the strategic plan also includes a compelling story that acts as an attractive vision of the future. It is this high level story that contains and drives the detail.
- Everyone needs to be reminded of the strategy on-going during the journey. This is often achieved using various media such as calendars, coffee mugs, screen savers, events, posters, t-shirts etc..
- The strategic plan isn’t cast in stone. Rather should be flexible and open to revision and change as circumstances and the environment transform.
Views: 46