For Those Who Love Strategy As Much As We Do
Never lose sight of the fact that strategic plans are guidelines, not rules. Deviating from your plan is okay, but you need to understand why you make a course correction. The figure below gives a visual decision map to help you determine whether you need to adapt your plan. Every three months or so, evaluate the plan implementation by asking these key questions: Will the goals be achieved within the time frame of the plan? [...]
There are key elements of a strategic planning template that are essential in a strategic plan. The plan is used as a guiding tool over the next three to five years by everyone involved in the organization. This ensures everyone is on the same page and understands what is expected of them. Below is a list of the key components for such a template. Mission Statement: A statement of purpose and reason why your organization [...]
With the inordinate amount of strategic planning tools that are out there, it is sometimes hard to see what really needs to be done when creating a strategy for your organization. A recent video post for Harvard Business Review on The Two Choices to Make in Strategy gives a clear path of what strategy is and how to create a good one. Roger Martin says that “strategy is the intersection of two critical dimensions-where you [...]
Strategy development is the model by which organizations use to identify key components of the process when developing their strategic plan. The number of steps is not as important as what is accomplished in order to get to the point where everyone is on the same page implementing the plan and measuring progress. The key points to focus on in strategy development are: Setting expectations and determining outcomes Assessing your current position (re)Establish purpose and [...]
“A bit of nonsense now and then is cherished by the wisest men.” – Willy Wonka I know the quote above is generally used to refer to the value of whimsy and humor, but sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t be better applied to dysfunctional corporate culture. One nationwide organization, which shall remain nameless to protect the innocent, has implemented a massive undertaking of converting all their paper files into a digitized database. (No, this [...]
Once you have your strategic plan all together in one place, it’s time to step back and evaluate. Did you create the strategy you intended to create? More than likely, you and your team have put a lot of time into the document you now have in front of you. Put it away for a week and don’t look at it. No peeking! After working on this document for months, it’s easy to get so [...]
Assembling your strategic plan is an important part of the entire strategic planning process. Having your strategic plan assemble in the correct order can help give clarity and direction to it. When you are finished going through the process, you reach a point where you need to take all the work you’ve done up to that point and put it together in one comprehensive document. This task may seem tedious, but I bet you can [...]
Some organizations get stumped during the beginning steps of how to write a strategic plan. Strategic planning can definitely seem daunting with all the guides, recommendations, books, and consultants out there telling you to do it one way or another. Sometimes the best thing to do is step back and take a look at the key elements of a strategic plan. Not to oversimplify the planning process, but by dividing a strategic plan into four [...]
Creating a strategic plan is critical to a businesses sustainability. What exactly is a strategic plan? The term strategic planning refers to a coordinated and systematic process for developing a plan for the overall direction of your endeavor for the purpose of optimizing future potential. Why should you create a strategic plan? What does it do for your organization? Organize the chaos and all the good ideas Get you ready for the coming growth Employee [...]
Writing your strategic plan is only half the battle in strategic planning. Implementing that plan is the other half to it and it is definitely the hardest to do. Coming up with ideas and typing them into a document is easy enough, but coming up with strategy that you can actually implement, track and use is another story. That is what separates the real men from the little boys. Implementation is critical to making a [...]
Without a clear, concise strategy there would be no strategic plan. Lately it seems as if organizations are becoming wrapped up in the process of creating a plan for planning purposes and not creating a plan based on strategy. In a recent article from Harvard Business Review titled, Don’t Let Strategy Become Planning, Roger Martin writes about how people need to think about strategic planning as strategy and not just creating a written plan. Martin [...]
Updates to the MyStrategicPlan application are going live Friday, February 1st. These enhancements are a result of your feedback and we are excited to bring them forward. Changes not displaying? You may need to refresh your page. PC: CTRL+F5 MAC: Opt+Cmd+E, then Cmd+R What do these updates mean for you? These features focused on Track Performance > Track My Progress. Filter: Separate what matters to you with seven different options. Sort: Columns are sortable top-to-bottom [...]
Last week we had the pleasure of working with our own Washoe County. We spent the day strategizing with the Board of County Commissioners on some great topics. We reviewed their current mission, vision and values and updated them accordingly. The passion and dedication of the Commissioners was seen in their determination to solidify their plan and make the appropriate changes so that it has a clear direction for the community. By thinking regionally, instead [...]
After grabbing the typical continental breakfast from @Element Hotels, M3 Planning visited the Boy Scouts of America headquarters in Irving, Texas to participate in a live feed called “The Breakfast Club”. With millions of volunteers and hundreds of councils across the Country, the Breakfast Club informs and offers an informal channel for sharing BSA news and taking in questions. Our work highlighted this session was all about the Voice of the Scout, a membership experience [...]
Having goals, objectives, and strategies are great, but knowing how they all work together (if in fact they do) and if you need them all is another story. We suggest ignoring the semantics and focusing on establishing a time frame. What matters is having a combination of long-term and short-term markers to keep your organization moving in the right direction. Think of the following hierarchy to demystify the terms of your priorities: Core values: Your [...]
In Patrick Lencioni’s book, The Advantage, an organization that is eyeing to capitalize on its success embodies two basic qualities: being smart, and being healthy. To be a ‘smart’ organization, they are good at: Strategy Marketing Finance Technology To be a ‘healthy’ organization, they have: Minimal politics Minimal confusion High morale High productivity Low turnover In order to be successful, an organization fits together these qualities to ensure it is complete and consistent. Typically, an [...]
Is agile on your list of competitive advantages? Can your business react and change its game plan based on either customer feedback or shifts in market, all while keeping that end vision in focus? A successful business has the ability to assess any given situation and decide how to proceed based on the findings. Adapt quickly The ability to adapt quickly is the name of the game in today’s business climate. When everyone on your [...]
Looking at the next step in productivity, we took a fresh approach to building and cascading goals and actions. The challenge was to improve the simplicity of goal setting, thereby increasing your success in the execution of your plan.We just released the new “Linear View” page for adding/editing goals. This new page is dynamic and more intuitive for entering and editing goals, and it also works great on iPad and other tablets..The original add/edit page (listed [...]
I received this question on our Facebook page, and I thought I’d share the answer here as well: “What are the challenges that face Performance Management?” There are a number of challenges that can prove to be an obstacle to effective performance management. Obstacles can include but are not limited to: writing a poorly structured strategy, failure to communicate the strategy to stakeholders/staff, failure to achieve buy-in of the strategy, not measuring progress, not holding [...]
In order to move from a list of possibilities to an actual plan, you need a workable list in each of the four S/W/O/T quadrants. Depending on the length of your SWOT and the number of people involved in your process, here are some ideas for pairing down the quadrants: Idea #1 – Create Themes: Simply combine like themes until you have a workable list of less than 10 per quadrant. Idea #2 – Choose [...]
* Strategic Planning 101 with MyStrategicPlan
* Execute, Execute, Execute
* How MyStrategicPlan Helps Organizations
Follow Us!