Tag Archives: strategic plan

Strategic Planning: A Time for Reflection

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Denise Harrison

In today’s fast paced economy, we often find that executives think that they don’t have the time to reflect on their business.  While quick decision-making is important, taking the time to reflect on the possible choices and looking at long-term implications will set your business on a course to achieve long-term success. 

Reflection: What does this mean?

 There are three areas that we often find are missing when teams develop a strategic plan: 

  • Discussion of topics for research
  • Collection of research in a consistent format
  • Analysis tools that help the team think through what is the best use of the company’s resources

 Topics for Research

Many teams have a two to three-day retreat to develop a strategy; this is a good time for team building and gets ideas out on the table.  But if your strategic planning is done during this retreat, we often find that the team does not have all the information to make good decisions.  Our recommendation is a more-robust three-step process:

1.       Situation Analysis

Select the topics that require further research (markets, competition, opportunities, etc.)  Selecting these topics and then developing research allows the team to have better information for decision-making when they get to the next step.

2.       Strategy Formulation

Review the information to have a shared base of knowledge and make decision based in this information. Now you can select the strategies and the strategic initiatives that are most likely to position your company for future success. Take the time to develop action plans for your strategic initiatives so that you know what steps need to be undertaken, who is responsible and how much time and money each step will take.

3.       Implementation

Vet the action plans to ensure that accomplishing the steps will achieve the objective and assess whether the company has enough and the right talent and financial resources to accomplish the task set out in the action plans. 

 A three-step process allows your company to reflect on the correct topics to research.  Once the research is completed, the team can reflect on the information gathered to make informed decisions concerning the future direction of the company.

Consistent Format

After you select the topics for research and develop the research, it is important that the information is collected in a consistent format.  Having templates that aid in consistent information development allows for better analysis as your team develops its strategy.  For example, without a consistent format, you will get different information regarding opportunities to be researched and this will make it hard to compare options because the data is inconsistent.

Analysis

Once you have reviewed the research and the team has a shared base of knowledge, it is important to use analytical tools to assess where the best opportunities lie in your business. Tools include the Growth/Share matrix (often associated with Jack Welch) to assess which of your core business should get the most emphasis.  Analytical tools pull out the key variables and help the team better understand the information that has been gathered.

 If you would like to learn more about a structured process, with templates for research and analytical tools to help digest the information please call or email me: Denise Harrison, 910-763-5194 or harrison@thestratplan.com.

© Copyright 2017 by Spex, Inc., Wilmington, NC — Reprint permission granted with full attribution.

Listening: An Important Skill for Successful Strategic Planning

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by Denise Harrison, President, Strategic Planning and Execution, Spex, Inc.

Recently I spoke with a CEO and found that the most important thing that his team learned during strategic planning was the importance of listening. This was an unusual answer to my question asking how his team had benefitted from the strategic planning process, so I asked him to explain his answer. He said that his company was full of “idea” people who spent so much time talking about their ideas that they failed to listen to others. Without solving this problem, his company would have been stuck in the mud and perhaps gone out of business because nothing moved forward – each person was his/her own island.

Listening: An important skill for strategic planning

One of the benefits of presenting research on key topics during strategic planning is to ensure that all of the team members have a shared base of knowledge from which to make decisions. By listening to all of the research and ideas, the team can have constructive discussion concerning what is the best course and direction.   The ability to listen allows each team member to thoughtfully consider what the company should say “yes” to and, more importantly, what it should say “no” to. Important facets of listening include:

  1.  Allowing all team members to develop a shared base of knowledge, broadening their understanding of the business and the possible choices the company can make.
  2. Allowing for better discussions and the development of a broader range of solutions, due to the shared base of knowledge.
  3. Allowing each team member to better understand the impact of a variety of different forces on a particular idea, as each idea is looked at from different points of view (financial, customer, product development, production)
  4. Allowing the CEO to sit back and watch the team develop their strategic thinking skills instead of always being the one with the answer. Strategic thinking is like a muscle – the muscle develops with use, but atrophies if it is unused.
  5. Allowing the team to hear what customers have to say, rather than just presenting solutions. This listening skill can enable the company to develop a better understanding of their customers’ businesses enabling better future solutions.

Considerations for your strategic planning process

As you go through your next strategic planning process, remember the importance of listening. Remind team members that it is not only important to have good ideas, but also important to listen to other’s thoughts. It is the team’s combined thinking that generates a great strategic plan.

Interested in how you can get your strategic planning team to listen better and to capitalize on  team-building benefits of strategic planning? Please contact me at harrison@thestratplan.com .