Clients often express interest in strategic planning for several reasons. First, due to a shifting and uncertain business environment, business owners want a process designed to revisit the viability of their current strategy and develop a plan to address future challenges. Second, owners are struggling to get their business organized. Disorganization often stems from having numerous, competing and constantly shifting strategic priorities that has led to people within the organization working at cross-purposes. Accordingly, they are looking to engage their organization in a strategic planning process designed to get everyone aligned and pulling in the same direction. A final reason occurs when the business owner must make an important strategic decision. The high degree of uncertainty, ambiguity and complexity that comes with making strategic decisions can lead to a desire to thoroughly analyze the situation to make the right decision. However, the impetus to continually engage in analysis delays decision making and leads to a frustrating state of decision paralysis. Under these circumstances, business owners are looking for a strategic planning process that will facilitate reaching a decision and moving forward with confidence.
The Challenge
Business owners can often face difficulties and challenges when attempting to engage their organization in strategic planning. Frustrations can mount when:
Time devoted to strategic planning goes nowhere.
Discussions devolve into disagreements on what strategy is.
Disagreements surface as how to go about discussing the organization’s strategy.
Internal politics and differences of opinion derail the process.
Business owners may also be disillusioned as past attempts have created strategic plans that never get implemented. In such circumstances, owners can be frustrated at having wasted a lot of time and money only to develop a plan that has no effect on the organization.
Coaching Plan
A typical client engagement follows a three step process:
Step 1: Process Design
The first step is to design the process. When constructing a strategic planning process, it is important to recognize that each organization has a unique set of needs, objectives and circumstances. Accordingly, my goal is to partner with you to co-develop a tailored process that reflects what you want to accomplish and how we will measure success. Additionally, the goal is to build a customized process that adheres to strategic planning best practices. Thus, this first step often entails a discussion of best practices to determine which ones offer the best fit.
Step 2: Strategic Plan Development
Step 1 concludes once we have constructed a process that meets with your approval and we are ready to begin developing your organization’s strategic plan. During Step 2, we will work together to create a plan that gets everyone on the same page and headed in the same direction. Additionally, we will use the goals surfaced in Step 1 to monitor progress and determine if we need to make adjustments to the process.
Step 3: Implementation
Once the plan is developed, the next phase often shifts into coaching sessions designed to support you and your organization as you execute your strategic plan. These coaching sessions are not only valuable for working through the challenges and issues that will naturally surface as you implement the plan but also to help assure that the plan gets executed and does not sit in someone’s office gathering dust.