âWhy isnât my strategy working?â
Statistics around the failure rates of corporate strategies varyâsome put it as high as 9 out of 10 while others say nearly 7 out of 10.
It doesnât matter which number is right; both estimates are higher than they should be. That means the majority of organizations are floundering when it comes to crafting and executing their strategy. Many executives, when faced with these stats, are wondering, âHow do I avoid coming up short in my strategy?â
But donât worryâthese abysmal statistics donât mean youâre doomed to failure. You can be in the small percentage of businesses that actually achieve the goals in their strategic plans, and weâre here to tell you how. (Youâre already a step ahead of your competitors simply by taking the time to research the problem!) Over the years, weâve helped hundreds of clients beat the odds using the steps outlined in the guide below. It covers everything you need to know about strategy planning and execution, from beginning to end, in each of the three critical phases:
Preparing for strategic planning Creating your strategic plan Putting your strategic plan into practice Based on our experience, we know that following this three-phase approach will significantly increase your odds of getting high-quality results. So letâs get started.
What is Strategic Planning and Why is It Important? Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its direction and long-term goals, creating specific plans to achieve them, implementing those plans , and evaluating the results. On one hand, that definition makes strategy planning sound like a Business 101 conceptâdefine your goals and a plan to achieve them. Unfortunately, the strategic planning process isnât as straightforward as it seems, especially for large companies.
Some experts say thereâs a simple explanation behind the dismal statistics mentioned above: companies are failing to strategize at all. They may talk a good game and be able to explain an innovative new mission, but they cannot articulate the processes and business models that will make it happen.
As a result, nothing about their way of doing businessâincluding their priorities, projects, or cultureâchanges. Months or years later, strategic leaders are left wondering why the company never achieved what was intended.
This absence of a strategic plan demonstrates why having one is so important.
The strategic planning process is about looking forward, outside the immediate future for your organization, to reach a particular set of goals. But as noted in the definition above, it also involves laying outâstep-by-stepâhow youâre going to get there. Without this foundation in place, youâll either continue on a path to nowhere, or get caught up in a tornado of urgent activities that may not actually benefit your organization in the long term. Neither of these scenarios will give you the competitive edge you hoped for.
Why Strategic Planning Fails There are also plenty of organizations that do take steps to fulfill the requirements of strategic planning, yet still fail to see results. These strategies fail for many reasons, including:
Lack of communication : This is a big one. Research shows that 95% of most companiesâ employees donât understand their organizationâs strategy, and 85% of executive leadership teams spend less than one hour per month discussing strategy.Poor research around customer trends, organizational threats, and market opportunities : Companies tend to spend more time on internal issues (resolving conflicts and reconciling budgets) than they do analyzing important external information.Lack of management support : Organizations neglect to rally support for middle managers, who are key to making sure strategy is executed on a daily basis.Ineffective or inefficient performance evaluations : Organizations dedicate all their time to coming up with a plan, but either forget to follow through by tracking progress or have no organized, reliable way to track performance data.Lack of clear priorities : Organizations try to do too much at once and/or fail to identify the right activities that will help them achieve their strategy.Insufficient resources : Companies donât acquire new resources, or shift existing resources, to support identified priorities.Disjointed departmental goals and activities : Thereâs no alignment of departmental goals with organizational strategy. Without everyone working together, goals become more difficult to reach. Whatever is preventing you from meeting your strategic goalsâwhether itâs the absence of a strategic plan altogether or an imperfect plan executionâitâs worth your time to address the issue.
Analysis has shown that strategic planning has a positive and significant impact on organizational performance. Most importantly, it enhances an organizationâs ability to achieve its goals, but thereâs more to it than that. Because strategic planning forces companies to adopt a long-term view, it helps them better prepare for the future, setting them up to initiate influence instead of just responding to situations.
It also strengthens communication between employers and employees. The participation and dialogue that takes place among managers and employees throughout the strategic planning process improves transparency and engagement on everyoneâs part.
However, the same team that conducted the above analysis also noted that, for strategic planning to work, it requires some specific ingredients, including formal analysis of the internal and external environment, consideration of several strategic options, and careful consideration around whom to involve during the different steps of the strategic planning process. Weâll go through all these ingredientsâand moreâin the strategic planning guide that follows.
1. Preparing for strategic planning - Gather your team, set up meetings, and create a timeline Get the right people involved Letâs get one thing straight right now: If your organization has turned to you (or your department, a colleague, etc.) and requested that you âmake a strategic plan and then report back to the leadership team when youâre doneââstop right where you are. Thatâs not an effective plan. Why? You need to have buy-in across your organization, and so you need leadership involvement from the beginning.
Now letâs talk about the major player needed for this process: The strategic planner. The strategic plannerâs job is to align thoughts from the leadership team with a process the organization can use to execute on their strategy. If this is your role (or even if youâre just highly involved in the process), this guide will be immensely helpful as you navigate the coordination of the strategy.
The strategic planner will also need the help of a cross-functional team that involves members of the board or leadership, along with representatives from finance, human resources, operations, sales, and any other critical functions. Weâll discuss this further when we talk through the Office of Strategy Management.
Set up your strategy review meetings This is also a good time to think about your strategy review meetings, which are a necessity for staying on track over the long haul. However, try to avoid adding yet another meeting onto everyoneâs plates; instead, there may be a current meeting you can replace or redesign to make time for strategy discussion.
For now, decide how often youâll meet and who should be involved. As for timing, there are three types of strategy review meetings:
Monthly , where you review progress on projects and initiativesQuarterly , where you review progress on strategy and discuss key action itemsAnnually , where you review year-to-date performance and adjust the strategy as neededFor each of these, youâll want to send out calendar invites in advance and make sure people know these meetings are a top priority.
Monthly meetings typically include department heads and subject matter experts. Quarterly review meetings may include department heads and upper management. Annual refresh meetings may include upper levels of management and occasionally board members.
Create a reasonable timeline Next, you need to work out a timeline in which you can complete your strategic plan and move through the process. Reasonable is the key word here, as that depends on your organizationâs maturity level with regard to strategic planning.
If you refresh your strategic plan every year, you might be able to work through this process in 4-5 weeks . If youâve never done strategic planning before, 6 months could be more realistic. Whatever the case, donât expect this to be done by the end of the week. Youâll be disappointed.
Pro tip:
Itâs important to understand strategy vs. tactics . Strategy is focused on the destination and how you are going to get there, and tactics are focused on the specific actions you plan to take along the way.
So while this whole process is focused on your overall strategy (i.e. your long-term goals and how youâll achieve them), weâll be placing a lot of emphasis on the smaller steps (i.e. practices, resources, initiatives) youâll take to get there. Make sure your leadership team knows the difference between strategy and tactics going forward!
Sometimes it is smart to keep leadership out of the tactics, but other times, you might need a strong hand to guide the organization through some details.
- Gather the inputs to your Strategic Plan Get appropriate background information for your strategic plan Now itâs time to dig into your internal and external information.
Internal inputs : Do you know if one branch of your business is growing faster than another? If so, does this mean youâll focus more energy on the faster growing area, or shift to help the underperforming areas? These are key questions youâll have to assess.â External inputs : You may find that parts of your business have shifted, or outside factors are playing a role in where your business is headed. For example, in the late 1990s, the music industry evolved from albums to streaming, impacting many businesses who were associated with the industry. Or if youâre in the manufacturing industry and do a great deal of business overseas, political unrest or a trade dispute between your country and the foreign one you operate in could impact your strategy. Once youâve gathered up the quantitative data from the sources above, youâll also want to get feedback from a number of different sources:
Discuss the above findings with your leadership team and managers to see what their thoughts are about the future of the business. Talk with board members, customers, and industry experts to see what they think your organization is doing well and what needs improvement. These suggestions could deal with anything from operations to company culture. Combined, all of this data will help you get a better grasp on the future of the business.
âDonât reinvent the wheelâuse our assortment of strategic planning templates to get your strategy up and running more easily. See our most popular templates here.
â A SWOT Analysis stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. This exercise offers a helpful way to think about and organize your internal and external data.
What are your organizationâs strong points? What are your organizationâs weak points? Where are your biggest opportunities in the future? What are the largest threats to your business? Sometimes it is helpful to use the SWOT analysis framework to organize your interview questions for your qualitative data gathering.
âPorterâs Five Forces is another tool used to find these inputs. Itâs a time-honored strategy execution framework built around the competition in your industry. Who are your rivals? What are they doing? You then need to look at the threat of substitutes. Is there another product consumers could purchase instead of your industryâs product, for example, substituting natural gas or solar for coal when it comes to electricity generation?
Now that youâve prepared for your strategy...
You have a team of people who can help you with the strategic planning process.You have the raw material for strategy evaluation, including internal and external data.You can organize your raw data into a SWOT analysis, Porterâs Five Forces, or another strategy planning framework as you begin to create your strategic plan.Pro tip You may have researched risk assessments, core competencies, scenario planning, or industry scans as part of your strategic planning. If youâre wondering where these tools fit, theyâre all relevant to this first stage of strategic planning. They help you prepare to create the strategic plan. If you have worked through one of these tools before, the results can act as inputs to help you in the next stage.
2. Creating your strategic plan You now have all the background information necessary to create your strategic plan! But this plan doesnât live in a vacuumâso weâll start by revisiting your mission and vision statements and then get into the nuts and bolts of the planning process.
- Confirm your mission and vision statements. Mission & vision If you havenât created formal mission and vision statements, this is the time to do so.
Your mission statement describes what your company does and how it is different from other organizations in your competitive spaceYour vision statement describes a future state of what your organization wants to achieve over time.Where the mission is timeless, your vision is time-bound and more tangible.
âTwo tools that will help build your mission and vision statements:
OAS statement : OAS stands for Objective, Advantage, Scope. Talking through these concepts as they apply to your organization will help formulate a vision that is tangible and interactive. Note that while this exercise may be helpful to you, it is optional. You can read more about creating your OAS statement here .Strategic shifts: A second tool some people find helpful is called Strategic Shifts. These are exercises for the leadership team to help them define todayâs strategic priorities vs. tomorrowâs . For example, your leadership team may say, âWe want to shift from central control to autonomy when it comes to our decision-making capability.â If the whole team can get on the same page with these shifts, it can help tremendously once you define your objectives, measures, and projects.If youâve already created mission and vision statements, confirm that both are aligned with your current strategy before proceeding to the next step.
Pro tip
During your search for strategic planning tools, youâve almost certainly come across a Strategy Pyramid (shown below). This pyramid can be visualized in countless different ways, the order of the pyramid isnât whatâs important. The importance lies in ensuring youâve chosen the elements in the pyramid that work best for your organization, and making sure those components are going to help you achieve strategic success.
- Build out your five-year plan Develop the framework that will hold your high-level priorities You can use your OAS or Strategic Shift exercises to help you define your priorities and objectivesâbut more importantly, you need a way to manage these elements. The way to do that is by selecting and developing a strategy management framework that will bring all your priorities together in one cohesive format.
Using a framework such as Balanced Scorecard (BSC), Theory of Change (TOC), or Objectives and Key Results (OKR) is critical to your strategic success. Many management teams fail at this point simply because of their disorganization!
Note: Choose only one of these three frameworks, as they have numerous similarities!
The Balanced Scorecard The Balanced Scorecard , developed by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, has been one of the worldâs top strategy management frameworks since its introduction in the early 1990s. Those who use the BSC do so to bring their strategy to life, communicate it across their organization , and track their strategy progress and performance.
â The BSC divides up your objectives by perspectivesâfinancial, customer, process, and peopleâand themes, like innovation, customer management, operational excellence, etc. (The idea of perspectives is fully developed in Norton and Kaplanâs book The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action .) Hereâs an example:
Financial goals ââWhat financial goals do we have that will impact our organization?âCustomer goals ââWhat things are important to our customers, which will in turn impact our financial standing?âProcess goals ââWhat do we need to do well internally, to meet our customer goals, that will impact our financial standing?âPeople (or learning and growth) goals ââWhat skills, culture, and capabilities do we need to have in our organization to execute on the process that would make our customers happy and ultimately impact our financial standing?âFor an in-depth look at how your organization could use the BSC, check out this Full & Exhaustive Balanced Scorecard Example .
Theory Of Change (TOC) The Theory of Change is a logic model that describes a step-by-step approach to achieving your vision. The TOC is focused on how to achieve the change youâre looking for , and is popular amongst mission-driven organizations who are describing a change theyâre making in the world instead of putting change in their pockets.
The idea behind TOC is that if you have the right people doing the right activities, theyâll affect change on your customers, which will impact your financials, and bring you closer to your vision. A great example of a this theory of change is the nonprofit RARE .
According to the Harvard Family Research Project , the steps to create a TOC are:
Identify a long-term goal. Conduct âbackwards mappingâ to identify the preconditions necessary to achieve that goal.Identify the interventions that your initiative will perform to create these preconditions.Develop indicators for each precondition that will be used to assess the performance of the interventions.Write a narrative that can be used to summarize the various moving parts in your theory.Objectives & Key Results (OKR) OKR was originally created by Intel and is used today in primarily two ways: At the enterprise/department level and at the personal performance level.
Objectives are goals.Key results are quantitative measures that define whether goals have been reached.The idea is that your defined objectives and measurements help employees, managers, and executives link to and align with overall strategic priorities. Not only does OKR strive to measure whether objectives are successful, but also how successful they are.
Define your objectives, measures, and projects.
â The strategic planning frameworks above are all meant, in different ways, to help you organize your objectives, measures, and projects. So itâs critical that these elements are well thought-out and defined.
Hereâs how objectives, measures, and projects interact:
âYou have a high-level goal in mindâyour objective. Your measures answer the question, âHow will I know that weâre meeting our goal?â From there, initiatives, or projects, are put in place to answer the question, âWhat actions are we taking to accomplish our goals?â
â Weâve defined each of these concepts more thoroughly below with a few business strategy examples:
Objectives are high-level organizational goals. The typical BSC has 10-15 strategic objectives. Examples include:
Increase Market Share Through Current Customers (Financial) Be Service Oriented (Customer) Achieve Order Fulfillment Excellence Through On-Line Process Improvement (Internal) Align Incentives And Rewards With Employee Roles For Increased Employee Satisfaction (Learning & Growth) Measures help you understand if youâre accomplishing your objectives strategically. They force you to question things like, âHow do I know that Iâm becoming an internationally recognized brand?â Note that while your measures might change, your objectives will remain the same. You may select 1-2 measures per objective, so you are aiming to come up with 15-25 measures at the enterprise level. Examples include:
Cost Of Goods Sold Customer Satisfaction & Retention Percentage Of Product Defects Percentage Of Response To Open Positions Initiatives are key action programs developed to achieve your objectives. Youâll see initiatives referred to as âprojects,â âactions,â or âactivities outside of the Balanced Scorecard.â Most organizations will have 0-2 initiatives underway for every objective (with a total of 5-15 strategic initiatives). Examples include:
Develop Quality Management Program Install ERP System Revamp Supply Chain Process Develop Competencies Mode - Create your strategy map or graphic strategic model Whether or not youâre using a Balanced Scorecard as your strategy framework, youâll benefit from using a graphic model to represent your strategic plan. While many people use a strategy map (shown in the example below), you could also use icons or a color-coding system to visually understand how the elements of your strategy work together.
If youâre just becoming familiar with how strategy mapping works, this article will teach you exactly how to read oneâand what you need to do to create one.
Now that youâve created your strategic vision... You have a fully-defined mission and vision to use as you move forward with your strategy implementation process.You have chosen a strategic framework that will hold your five-year strategic plan.You have defined objectives, measures, and projects, and you know how they work together.You have a graphic representation of your strategic model.Pro tip â
Feeling the strategic fatigue? Itâs okay! This is a tiring processâso be careful to tailor everything in this section to what those in your organization will tolerate. Putting your strategic plan into practice (our final step) is the key to making it all work during the strategy implementation plan, and getting these details 80% right in a timely fashion is much more important than getting them 100% right in a year.
3. Putting your strategic plan into practice Youâve made it this farânow you have to be sure you launch correctly! To do so, you need someone from the Office of Strategy Management to push that process, ensure resources are aligned to your strategy, put a solid strategy communication program in place, and get technology to keep you organized.
- Launch your strategy Ensure the Office of Strategy Management (OSM) is pushing things forward The Office of Strategy Management is comprised of a group of people responsible for coordinating strategy implementation. This team isnât responsible for doing everything in your strategy, but it should oversee strategy execution across the organization. Typically, the OSM lives in the finance departmentâor it could be its own separate division that reports directly to the CEO.
Create your internal and external strategy communication plan Internalâ Be sure all elements of your strategyâlike strategy maps or logic modelsâare contained within a larger strategic plan document. (If you use strategy software , the strategic plan document will likely be contained there.) A great way to be sure your leadership team has a firm grasp on your strategy is to ensure they each have a copy of this document, and they can describe the strategy easily to someone who wasnât involved in the creation process .
More broadly, the strategy must be communicated throughout your organization. You should be shouting it from the rooftops to keep it top-of-mind across your organization. People wonât give it a passing thought unless you engage themâso every department head should be charged with explaining how their team fits into the strategy and why it matters. For actionable tips, check out this article that highlights how you can effectively communicate your strategic plan across your organization.
âExternalâ You also need to be sure you have a plan for communicating your strategy outside the organizationâwith board members, partners, or customers (particularly if your organization is municipal or nonprofit). Think through how it will be shared, and which parts of it are relevant to outside parties.
Align your resources to your strategy In the short termâwhich would be your next budgeting cycle or something similarâwork to structure the budget around the key components of your strategy. You donât need to completely rewire your budget, but you do need to create direct linkages between how your resources are allocated and how those efforts support your strategy. Over time, the areas that contribute less directly to strategic goals will become clear, and you can work on gradually aligning everything you fund.
But even if your budget only extends through the fiscal year, consider how youâll align your strategy to projects in the future. For future resource allocation, link your operations (what some refer to as the âwork planning processâ) to your strategy. Your expectation should be that the process of aligning your resources to your strategy can happen within year two of your strategic planning execution.
- Evaluate your strategy At this point, your strategy has been launched: Now you need to know whether or not youâre making progress! Hereâs how to do that.
Create reports to highlight your results Ten years ago, you may have evaluated your strategy annually. But in todayâs business environment, thatâs not a feasible option. At a minimum, you should be reporting on your entire strategy on a quarterly basis, or breaking down your strategy into pieces and reporting on one of those pieces each month.
The report you use should highlight progress on your measures and projects, and how those link to your objectives. The point is to show how all these elements fit together and relate to the strategic plan as a whole.
Hold regular strategy meetings Report on strategy progress via the quarterly or monthly review meetings you scheduled early in the process.
Itâs important to note that throwing together an impromptu meeting to go over results isnât going to get you anywhere. Instead, your strategy review meetings should be meticulously organized and accompanied by an agenda. (See this article for a sample agenda.)
â Your meetings should revolve around three key issues:
What is your organization trying to accomplish? This may include reiterating your mission and vision to add context around the conversation. Are you making progress toward these goals? You might review key metrics and the status of initiatives and milestones. What actions need to be taken to continue making progress? If metrics are off-track, for example, what can be done to get back on course. Encourage candid dialogue and make sure the discussion stays focused.
Pro tip
You may want a facilitator for the first few meetings, and you may want to script a few open discussions where a goal owner explains why they are behind schedule (red) on their goal, and the business leader offers support, not criticism. This will generate the atmosphere you need for everyone to start reporting honestly and working together to achieve the organizationâs goals.
Deploy strategy reporting software (if you havenât already) To make strategy execution work, reporting is unavoidable. While you might be able to track your first strategy meeting in Excel or give your first presentation via PowerPoint, youâll quickly realize you need some kind of software to track the continuous gathering of data, update your projects, and keep your leadership team on the same page.
If you want to learn more about the major areas of responsibility you should be covering in your strategy management processâand how strategy software can help with thatâtake a look at our ClearPoint tour .
Here are two additional helpful pieces of content as you move forward:
Youâve probably seen reference to the âPlan, Do, Check, Actâ framework before. If you want to integrate this checklist, this is the time to do so. Hereâs a breakdown on what it means:
Plan refers to creating your strategic plan. Do refers to making progress on or executing on the plan. Check refers to the reporting and monitoring process. Act refers to taking action through projects, work plans, or the budgeting process to continue to manage and execute on the strategy. âThe Benefits Of Strategic Planning (& Challenges You Should Be Aware Of) Done right, strategy planning can benefit your business tremendously, but a certain degree of stick-to-itiveness is required to get the job done. (As we noted at the beginning of this guide, organizations that actually meet their strategic objectives are in the minority. Donât worry, though, yours can be one of the success stories.) But those that develop a disciplined approach to both planning and execution have been shown to improve performance significantly.
â Why is strategic planning so effective? Because it fosters healthy organizational practices that drive better outcomes. Engaging in strategic planning will benefit you in multiple ways:
1. You have quality data available to support better decisions Setting goals and choosing the relevant metrics to track progress toward achieving them means you always have meaningful data to reference. That naturally leads to faster, more efficient decision-making, especially when that data is readily accessible to employees at every level.
Timely, valid, and actionable information is especially valuable in situations where organizations need to react quickly, so they can make the best decisions possible for all their stakeholders.
2. You allocate resources more effectively In Chapter 3, we discussed structuring the budget around the key components of your strategy. Doing so helps ensure resources are allocated correctly, and in a way that aligns with your goals.
Tying the budget directly to goals also makes it easy to adjust when necessary, if circumstances change and new goals are prioritized over old. For example, a local government may have had a goal to develop a green infrastructure plan at the beginning of 2020, but then had to pivot with the onset of COVID-19.
To support a new goal of developing a COVID-19 response plan, they could simply review the resources used by current projects, evaluate those projectsâ priorities and budget needs in comparison to the new goal, and reallocate funds as necessary.
3. You maintain focus Having a strategic plan brings your main focus points to the forefront, so you donât have to dig into the details of everything your organization is doing. That means thereâs no time wasted analyzing irrelevant and extensive data points in strategic meetings; instead, everyone stays focused on what is most important or where improvements need to be made.
4. You improve communication and build employee engagement. Strategic planning is intended to create a single, focused vision of where an organization is headed. When that shared vision is communicated clearly and consistently, it inspires employees to take ownership over their role in the plan, and they are typically more motivated to do their best work. High engagement will directly impact your organizationâs financial health and profitability.
3 Things To Consider Before You Embark On A Strategic Plan Having helped hundreds of organizationsâfor-profit, nonprofit, and local governments includedânavigate through the strategic planning and implementation process, weâve seen firsthand the many challenges that arise along the way. Thereâs no âtypicalâ scenario, but there are some common pitfalls that have the power to make or break your chances of success. Below are three things you should be aware of going into the process.
1. Everything about strategic planning takes time Donât expect your plan to materialize after a few meetings. The initial planning activities usually unfold over the space of several months, but strategy execution itself is an ongoing process. Anticipate devoting extensive time and effort in particular to:
Choosing the appropriate planning model . Before you can even begin to articulate your strategy, you need to choose a strategy framework that fits your organizationâs needs. All models can be customized to suit the way your business works, but this is a key decision that will shape all your efforts going forward.Creating a plan that everyone agrees on. Itâs crucial for your leadership team to support the planâs objectives if you want it to be adopted. Making sure everyone on the team has been heard and gaining a consensus is a time-consuming process.Getting âbuy-inâ for the plan. Research shows that, on average, 95% of an organizationâs employees donât understand its strategyâthereâs no surer way to guarantee failure than to neglect communicating your goals to your employees. You must continuously keep your strategy top-of-mind in a creative and meaningful way over the long term to gain the buy-in you need to succeed. 2. There is a danger of âanalysis paralysisâ Data and analytics are an integral part of strategic planning. And while it may be tempting to use all your available metrics, charts, and graphs for every business decision, doing so unnecessarily can be a detriment to the decision-making process. Itâs easy to find yourself drilling deeper into data when perhaps only a high-level view of the information is needed. Avoid squandering time and energy on excessive analysis by making sure the right people are focusing on the right data and actions:
Leadership should focus on organization-wide goals and progress. Teams should focus on the individual projects and daily tasks that are helping to accomplish those goals (and the data that goes with them).
3. Having a plan doesnât mean your organization will execute on it Good planning is only half the battle; the lionâs share of forward progress is in executing that plan. But the execution stage is where many organizations stumble. They arenât prepared for the work involved with follow-through, both in terms of the time commitment and the tools necessary to support performance improvement. Strategy consultants are excellent guides for plan creation, but most offer no guidance on how to carry it out; as a result, organizations are left floundering.
Itâs imperative to have a system in place that will measure and monitor your progress toward goals during the execution phase. Performance management tools like ClearPoint allow organizations to track a variety of metrics related to strategic projects, helping to maintain focus over the long term. And our team of strategy implementation experts is always available to provide guidance on every aspect of execution, from setting up an efficient management process to using our reporting tools optimally.
With the right plan in place, tools to support it, and committed leadership, every organization has a good chance of seeing their strategy come to life.
Youâve made it through these stepsâŠ. ...but be sure to place a great deal of emphasis on rightsizing this process for your own organization.
Did you recently do a SWOT analysis and create new vision and mission statements? Donât do it again.
Do you already manage with a robust set of KPIs? Use them.
Do you currently create reports for your board and management team? Modify them or use a strategy evaluation framework to make sure theyâre focused and move on.
Rather than doing everything, itâs more important to realize there is overlap between these steps. Understand how they all fit into your own strategic planning process, and then move forward with the sections youâre missing.
And if you have any questions along the way, get in touch with us. We live and breathe strategic planning and are here to help!
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