3 Ways To Empower Staff For Strategic Planning Success

 

One of the fundamental aspects of good strategic management is knowing how to empower your employees.

Your staff is more likely to provide valuable input into the strategic planning process if they are truly engaged and understand their role in the grand scheme of the strategy. To make sure you are tapping into the full potential of your employees, make sure you follow these three rules of employee empowerment.

1. Facilitate open communication

Many organizations, especially the larger ones, stick to a rigid hierarchy that can make it difficult for those across the organization to communicate and collaborate.

The typical employee may find it particularly difficult to convey their ideas to upper management, unsure about how they will react or if it is even possible to communicate with them at all.

You should make it clear to your employees that their input is valued, and set up channels through which they can reach out to you with their ideas.

2. Clearly define and delegate roles

One of the pitfalls of poor strategic planning is a lack of clarity surrounding who is tasked with what. Not only can this confuse everyone, it can also make employees feel devalued as they are unsure of their place in the organization.

Fortunately, technology such as strategy mapping software can help you get around this problem. StrategyBlocks, for example, divides your strategy into clear, disparate blocks that group relevant departments and individuals so everyone involved understands what they have to do.

3. Be inclusive

There is no point in devising a strategy if only a select few are solicited for input.

Make sure you don’t leave anyone out – use business strategy software to include all the relevant people in strategic planning and allow them to have their say.