I know my company needs a strategic plan, but where do we start?

One of our most read blog posts is nearly a decade old, but it continues to be a popular topic. Entitled Strategic Planning: Why Do We Need To Do It?, it outlines the value of having a strategic plan and why your company needs one. The longevity of this post makes one thing clear: there is still a lot of curiosity as to whether a formal strategic plan is the right approach for every business.

Having worked with organizations of every size, both public and private, all around the world, we can confidently say that yes, your company needs a strategic plan. Answering that question is the easy part. What takes a little more thought is what kind of plan is right for you? What is the best approach to implementing a strategic plan in such a way that it offers successful results for your organization and for your team members?

While each organization’s goals are different and each company approaches strategic planning in their own unique way, there are key steps that benefit every company. 

Read on to discover the three key elements to building a tangible strategic plan that will help you realize your vision now and in the years to come. 

First, set goals

It may be the most obvious first step, but you may also be surprised to discover that your organization hasn’t taken the time to properly identify and lay out its goals. Or, perhaps you have identified a few loftier, long term goals but haven’t set more realistic goals that can be achieved along the way.

In the book “The Management of Organizations,” authors Jay B. Barney and Ricky W. Griffin highlight four key functions of setting goals and how it serves the organization: 

• Goals provide guidance and direction, 
• Goals facilitate planning,
• Goals motivate and inspire employees, and
• Goals help organizations evaluate and control performance. 

It’s not uncommon for us to speak to organizations who have a clear sense of where they want to be in 5-10 years, but that have not clearly identified goals for the next 12 months. Another common issue is that the executive team may be clear on goals, but those goals have not been well communicated to the team. This means individual employees are working without a singular vision toward achieving company-wide goals, often doing tasks without considering how they relate to the bigger picture. 

The first quarter of the year is the ideal time to make sure goals are both clearly defined and clearly communicated. Start by asking where you want to be in five years, and work backwards from there. Reverse engineer smaller goals that are meant to help you achieve the larger, loftier goals. Encourage every department, and every employee, to set goals that can ladder up to the bigger, company-wide initiatives.

Identify strategic actions

As the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry famously said, “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” Creating a strategic action plan is critical to achieving your goals. It starts with understanding what is required to meet your goals. For example, do you have a goal to increase revenue by a certain amount by year’s end? It may seem obvious that to increase revenue, you need to increase sales, but that isn’t a strategic plan.

Instead, consider just how your organization can increase sales. Which departments should be involved? Do you need your marketing team to help develop new materials or create a pathway for reaching new audiences? Do you need to generate new incentives for your sales team to expand their quotas or increase referrals? Do you need your IT department to implement new technology that will enable better allocation of resources? Do you need your product team to create new features or make improvements that will encourage more sales?

No matter the goal, there are multiple steps required to achieve it, and typically multiple stakeholders. By taking the time to go deeper with a strategic plan of action, you help to empower your entire organization. 

Create a system of accountability 

This is the most common part of strategic planning that companies fail to do. Taking the time to identify and clearly communicate goals, then create strategic actions to meet those goals, is a wasted effort if there is no way to keep track of progress.  

As we all know, the best indicator of future performance is to consider past performance. If you have no way of knowing the outcome of various activities, it’s impossible to ascertain whether those activities are beneficial toward achieving your goals. Even if you have failed to adequately track progress in the past, however, there is no time like the present for getting started.

The good news is, that by setting clear goals and creating strategic initiatives for meeting those goals, you’ve taken the first step in creating a system of accountability. Allowing various departments and team members to be involved in that process also helps increase accountability. It is also important to lead by example, holding the executive team accountable first and foremost for meeting goals will help other departments to better understand their own roles.

Establish a reporting structure that is transparent and reflects progress as close to real time as possible. Hold regular meetings where the strategic plan is discussed, and team members have a chance to share what is working and what is not. Encourage open dialogue for how to adjust activities to better meet goals and create an environment where employees can fail fast so that you can move quickly on to something that will deliver better results. 

Starting with a blank piece of paper can feel daunting when it comes to envisioning goals and creating a system to achieve them. But by building out a strategic plan based on these three steps, you’ll be better able to see how each activity helps to ladder up to achieving your company’s vision and mission.

StrategyBlocks has made it easy for you to build a strategic plan that works for your organization. The StrategyBlocks platform uses an interactive visual approach to formulate a concise set of strategic goals. Contact us today and let us help you create a strategic plan to meet your 2023 goals and beyond.