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Building a Strategic Plan from the Bottom Up
Strategic planning, as a structured and systematic process, is successful when it is leader-led and overcomes the five reasons 70% of all strategies fail. Learn how to see your plan through to success. The strategic planning process is where leaders of an organization establish the vision of the organization’s future and then develop and implement the actions necessary to achieve that future. This article expands on the strategic planning concepts addressed in Think Big, Take Small Steps and is designed to help you achieve success in your strategic planning process.
A Successful Systematic Process to Apply at Your Strategic Offsite.
How many of you attended, participated in, or facilitated a strategic planning session where you started with the mission and vision and then went around the table coming up with goals that every felt the organization needed?
FAIL!
Welcome to the world of the Good Idea Group. Where leaders come up with things they think they want to work on and everyone gets assigned a goal so everyone is “part of the strategic plan.”
If you have been or are doing this, you are going to build a strategic plan without an Executable Focus and you will undoubtedly become one of the 70% that fail at achieving desired results.
The bad thing is that I have done this too! Yep, I, even as a leader of organizations, have created plans built this same way.
Want to break this mold?
What to walk into a strategic planning session and walk out the end of the day with the best strategic plan possible?
Want everyone who attended the offsite feel like this was the most productive time they’ve ever had planning?
Want a plan the makes sense and is easy to implement?
If you answered yes to those four questions above, than this blog is for you. As part of Leading Your Leaders to Develop an Effective Strategic Framework, this blog specifically describes how to build a strategic plan quickly, efficiently, and effectively. You will find this technique is applicable to anything you are trying to solve. Ready for this?
I Certify, that if you follow this approach, you will create a strategic plan with a solid executable focus that is designed to overcome problems in your organization and leverage your strengths and opportunities. The resulting plan will, without a doubt, be fully implementable and you will always know why and how every action supports the vision of the organization.
Imagine this (above) as your company. You have a Mission (where you are today) and a Vision (where you want to be in the future) that you have validated during the first part of the offsite–we discussed this in the last blog, Facilitation of an Effective Strategic Plan Offsite. Between the mission and vision, there is a raging river that prevents you from getting to the river. What you need to build is a bridge that connects the too so you can actually get your organization to the vision.
The troubled water between the two banks was outlined by your organizational assessment that we covered in the How to Conduct an Organizational Assessment portion of this blog. This is what you must overcome–what is in that water are the things that prevent your organization from reaching its vision. However, scattered here and there in the river are low spots and rock outcroppings that help you in your journey of building a strong bridge to you vision.
If you keep this analogy in mind, you will easily understand this approach–as a matter of fact, I show a similar slide on the board to kick off this part of the offsite with their mission written out on the left and their vision written out on the right. During the offsite, I cal these series of exercises “What We Need.”
This exercise happens in three parts:
- What We Need…
- Diagramming…
- Ownership…
What We Need
At this point, we have reviewed the Organizational Assessment and finalized a solid Mission and Vision Statement (I will talk more about these in upcoming blogs). I normally send everyone on a break and then I update the appropriate slides for the next section.
When everyone comes back, we review the high-level SWOT assessment, which encapsulates pretty much what is going on in the organization. I might refer to white boards or flip charts where specific items where added. This refreshes everyone’s thoughts on what is happening. Then I bring up the bridge slide with the new mission on the left and new vision on the right. At the top of the slide is the statement, “What we need…”
I give the team (normally) 60 minutes to silently finish this sentence:
What we need to achieve our vision is…
I ask them to write each thought down on a 5×7 post it note. The statement should be a concrete thought like “professional development training for all levels,” not something simple like “training.” They have 60 minutes to silently brainstorm ideas to finish this sentence.
Each idea should be focused on overcoming the challenges the organization faces today and leveraging what’s good.
I like to have two or three people working with me at this point. One or two go around and simply pick up the post it notes and bring them to me. I then start arranging them as they come in into group using affinity diagramming. I stick them on the wall in their groups. Sometimes I use a large white board or I hang empty post it butcher block paper around the room and organize the groups that way.
As you can imagine, this can be a fast and furious activity, especially if the leaders are strong thinkers. You can quickly generate hundreds of ‘what we need’ ideas.
Once everyone appears done, or at the 60-minute mark, I stop the exercise and put everyone on break. While they are on break, I get the helper(s) to review my groupings and help me finish them up. At this point, this is my affinity diagramming–not theirs.
Diagramming
When everyone is back from break, the first thing I like to highlight is the number of strategic ideas they came up with (number of post it notes) to achieve their vision. This number is normally well into the hundreds and is always impressive that in an hour or less, they could come up with so many ideas.
Then I explain how I have organized their ideas on the wall. Note that I don’t talk about group titles or anything, just explain the process I used. Several times the executives I work with have never seen affinity diagramming at work–many have never even heard of it.
By the way, this approach has been so effective with organizations that many executives have asked me to help them apply the same technique to many other types of projects.
For the next 10-15 minutes (or so), I ask the team to come up to the board and review all the ideas and validate the grouping. They are free to discuss and move anything on the board, but they cannot remove any idea–all ideas are valid at this point.
Once they have agreed on the final groupings, we walk through each group and discuss the items–I normally read them off. Then I ask them to label that group with a name. After all the groups are named, I ask them if any of the groups are similar in nature and could be grouped into a larger group–this is what is called tree diagramming (grouping the groups).
Once the final large groups are done, I step back and point out that they have just come up with their strategic plan. They have their Goals–the large groups, Objectives–the original affinitized groups, and the Actions–the ideas on post it notes.
It is normally at this point that every executive in the room is so amazed that they have created so much and done it in under two hours!
Of course, the plan needs work by me, but everything is there. My next job is to write it all up in a structured document. But the plan is now theirs! It was their ideas and their groupings, all i did was facilitate their thoughts in a beneficial direction to achieve their vision. This breeds ownership of the executives of the plan.
Ownership
The next and final step (normally) is for you to strengthen the ownership of the plan in the executives. List out the goals (hopefully you have between three to five at this point) and pose to the group, who will own each of these Goals. There should be one owner for each goal. I have seen where they have multiple owners, trying to give everyone ownership, but that fails, because it gives leaders an out when you share the accountability. Everyone will end up being involved in implementing the plan, but right now, you simply need accountability for each goal resting with one throat to choke.
This is a point where you would hope that the senior leader of the company would weight in (I normally prep him or her before hand) and make a determination after discussion.
The end result…
You have just created a new mission, vision, goals, objectives, and actions in one day following this approach. The executives at this event will be amazed at how simple and effective the process was and can definitely see the value of the strategic plan.
Your next step, outside of the offsite is to bring it all together in a concise document for them to review. I normally put this together in a detailed PowerPoint after action review that talks about what actions took place, what additional information was learned along with the SWOT, the final mission and vision with the goals between them marching across the bridge left to right (often referred to as the bridge slide), and a slide for each of the goals with written out objectives. backup i have all the ‘what we need’ statements on slides aligned to their appropriate goal and objective.
This after action report take a week or less to put together…sometimes I can have it done the next day. Most of it I build before the event and simply fill in the data after the event.
Following this approach is fast, efficient, and effective. You will be recognized by the leadership for one of the best planning offsites they have ever been to, and you will have a rough strategic plan built with a solid strategic framework and executable focus. The next step will be to translate this strategy into execution.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll discuss some of the finer points of products from the strategic planning offsite. we will look at:
- Scenario Planning
- Mission Statements
- Vision Statements
- Values and Principles
So, 70% of all plans fail to some level; however, by following these guidelines you can help ensure your strategic plan will be one of the 30% successes that everyone reads about.
Start With A Strategic Mindset
Leadership is a dying art in the world today. The great leaders of the past are found few-and-far between these days. There are some that have been fairly successful leaders that have rose to an iconic status, but have they been truly great leaders or just really successful at running something?
Often there is contention between the skills that a leader needs and what a manager needs. I believe, if you’re not a good leader, you won’t be a good manager, and if you’re not a good manager, you won’t be a good leader. It is my contention that those who apply both of these talents expertly demonstrate what I call, “LeadermentSM.” This is the expert combination of Leadership and Management together.
Leaders Think Strategically All the Time.
Great leaders don’t hold strategic planning sessions once a year; great leaders think strategically all the time. They still hold strategic planning sessions annually and more than not, once a quarter. Because great leaders know that their leadership team doesn’t always think strategically and they have to set aside time for them to think as the leader does. But the leader–a true leader–is always mentally in the strategy realm.
This doesn’t mean that they are out-of-touch with reality. If you understand strategy, then you then know it’s more than just visions and big ideas…it’s tactics and actions that make these things happen.
I don’t care who you talk to, everyone has a different definition of strategy. It becomes even more difficult when you through in terms like strategic plan, strategic planning, strategic mindset, strategic, thinking, etc.
I’m sure I’ll get a lot of comments from “strategy experts” on this, but for this blog, thinking strategically, means you think always about your Mission Vision, Values, Goals, Objectives, and Action Plans–your thinking takes the form of a strategic plan. To Develop the Leader Within, you must learn how to think like a leader–this is a skill all managers and leaders should develop.
“Stuff” happens at the Tactical-level with whatever you do. This is where the day-to-day activities take place. We “live” here mentally all the time. That’s because it’s what’s front of our nose’s day-in and day-out. It is very hard for managers and leaders to step out of this tactical-level because they feel that if they take the time to focus elsewhere, they will lose focus on the operation and things will fail. This is human nature.
Normally, managers and leaders are promoted to the their position because they showed skill at the Tactical-level as an employee. This sent a message to their leadership that they might be good managers and leaders. This doesn’t always prove to be true, but mainly this is because the newly promoted person can’t get their mind out of the tactical-level. Normally, they are too worried that mistakes will happen and the mission will fail, so they stay overly focused on the day-to-day. This often leads to micro-management of the people and frustrates everyone.
Focusing on the Tactical-level is a failure of effective LeadermentSM.
Above the Tactical-level is the Operational-level. Here, long-range objectives become your daily bread. Almost everything in the Operational-level falls into the form of projects and programs. For definition sake, projects are duration-based activities–in other words they have a beginning and an end. Programs run for a long time–they may end at some point, but they last a long while. Many employees initially have trouble transitioning from the Tactical to Operational levels because they still think day-to-day. Non-exempt employees are used to being hourly and when they move to exempt status and find themselves in the Operational-level, they often have trouble reacting.
Formerly non-exempt employees tend to move in one of two directions, which defines their behaviors for the future.
- They treat everything as a day-to-day task. Thus, they can’t think in long-term projects and programs. They feel overwhelmed because they feel that they can never get their work done. This is frustrating to them and their managers because often they are shying away from long-term necessary work and focusing on things they can get done during the day. They look at their day as a eight-hour schedule and see what they can accomplish in that time frame.
- They become workaholics that put in excessively long hours to try to get long-term tasks done quickly. Their focus is to get everything on their plate off their plate as quickly as possible. Thus they stay late to work on a project and push things through. They’re often not extremely collaborative on their projects, because others don’t move at their pace. Their management tends to reward these “high performers,” but the employee burns out and eventually gets frustrated because no matter how hard they work, the work never seems to get done.
Neither of these behaviors at the Operational-level are desirable. Focusing on the Operational-level is a failure of effective LeadermentSM.
Then we have those that literally live in Strategy Land. They’re constantly dreaming up things to do, directions to head, and brand new ideas. They’re the big thinkers and the dreamers and we’ve all worked with and for them. Life is easy for them, because they never get their hands dirty. They’re the ones pushing new projects and programs to the Operational-level that fit the purpose of the day and move with the winds of change. Managers and employees who exist and operate at the Tactical-level never know what direction the organization is heading, so they burrow in and simply focus on the job.
Leaders that live in the Land of Strategy find themselves very frustrated that all their grand ideas never seem to get accomplished, especially in the time frames they envisioned them occurring. They become more-and-more impatient and they tend to push their employees beyond their limits. They stress the entire organization and frustrate even the hardest and most dedicated workers.
Focusing on the Strategic-level is a failure of effective LeadermentSM.
So, if thinking strategic, operational, or tactical is a failure of effective LeadermentSM, how should a Leader think?
Leaders Think Strategically all the time…
This doesn’t mean they live in Strategy Land…this means they think all the time like their strategic plan. Refer to the image below:
All Leaders and Managers, regardless of what level they work at, should apply Strategic Thinking every day. When you think strategically, everything you do starts to change. This means that you are always considering all three levels every day and with every decision.
Strategic Thinkers ground themselves in the values, principles, mission, and vision of the organization–regardless if they came up with them or not. They are constantly evaluating every decision to ensure it fits within the values and principles, is it part of the mission of what they should be doing, and does it move the organization toward the vision.
Strategic Thinkers understand that nothing–I repeat NOTHING–happens at the Strategic-level outside of creating direction. Things do not get done at the Strategic-level and if they think they will, they’re simply fooling themselves. If you are waiting for something “strategic” to happen, then you’re going to wait a long time. Things happen at the Tactical-level.
Strategic Thinkers ensure that their programs are aligned to the strategy of the organization. Programs are long-term and very lasting, thus they should be 100% aligned with the mission. Programs do not support the vision–I know that may surprise you, but they don’t. Strategic Objectives, which are aligned to Strategic Goals, take the form of Projects. Operational Projects, which are temporary in nature, should be primarily designed to evolve Operational Programs to move the organization toward its vision.
Projects are not always 100% aligned to the mission and vision of the organization, but for the most part they should be. Occasionally, you might have to do something that simply doesn’t move the strategic needle.
Strategic Thinkers know that this means that Programs are mission-focused and Projects are vision-focused. Thus, Strategic Thinkers don’t live in Strategy Land pushing down new idea after new idea. They ensure the programs running in the organization support the mission 100%. They also ensure organizational Projects are designed to move the organization’s Programs toward the vision. If something isn’t supporting the strategic plan of the organization, it must be questioned.
At the Tactical-level, Strategic Thinkers know this is where the real work gets done. However, there are two types of tactical work–Program and Project. Understanding this helps those who operate at the Tactical-level connect to the mission. Also, understanding this helps those that operate at the Operational-level better focus on how their day-to-day actions affect the bigger picture and thus relieves a lot of stress and frustration.
Additionally, Strategic Thinkers understand that the act of strategic planning is a tactical activity that should operate within an operational program–in other words, organizational strategic thinking is a strategic program that should always exist. The problem is that it seldom does.
If you work at the day-to-day Tactical-level, your actions exist within a Program and sometimes they support a Project designed to evolve a Program. Just thinking this way fully aligns what you do every day to the strategy. If what you’re doing every day doesn’t support this, ask yourself why.
If your mind exists in one level–strategic, operational, or tactical–then you will fail to achieve effective LeadermentSM. No matter where you operate, you must always think strategically–think like a leader. Following this guidance will build your competence in the LeadermentSM YouniversitySM and prepare you for greater challenges.
When you think of great leaders think about what styles and concepts of LeadermentSM they employed. What did they do that was so effective…that propelled the masses under them to great things. As we can see, these styles vary in application, but an effective leader and manager should understand and apply all traits in a combined approach as appropriate.
LeadermentSM and YouniversitySM are service marks of Crosscutter Enterprises