Results From Planning
Planning with the "end-in-mind" makes for a better plan that actually is
implemented. We all are used to the classic SWOT analysis where you consider your
company's internal strengths and weaknesses and your external threats and
opportunities. We all tend to focus on weaknesses because, let's admit it, they're easy
to come up with. Threats are pretty obvious, but many times they come from
sources we can do nothing about. Strengths - and let's hope there are lots of them -
help you decide what to focus on. If you don't have a strength to support a strategy,
maybe it was a very good strategy for some other company.
Some thoughts come to mind: A simple SWOT analysis on a flip-chart with a few
people gathered around may not be enough. Spending just a couple hours or days a
year considering your strategy may be woefully inadequate. Polling the room for
opportunities is nice. You may in fact come up with a few good ideas. However,
unless those opportunities are tied to actual execution you are wasting your time
(Barrow).
Everyone is busy. Unless you really commit resources to executing the plan, nothing
is likely to happen. Folks, after all, are already busy doing what they are already
doing. How can you expect them to do more? Those woefully short days of planning
are flawed because they don't include any plan for monitoring performance. Just
having the plan is not enough. Implementing is nice, but it can't be implementing in a
vacuum. You've got to tie your planning to periodic, repetitve re-visiting of your
strategies and the action plans you have put together to carry them out. Those re-
visits have to take place with everyone regathered in the room to talk about
progress, what changes to make, and what strategies or portions of action plans to
drop.
Other ways to consider strategy (Center):
•Spending some time considering how other folks in companies in your industry and
in companies you admire - bench marking - can be very useful.
•Considering you company not as an individual entity, but as part of a business eco-
system makes for more comprehensive strategy. Consider customers, yes, but don't
forget suppliers, logistics, human resources, information technology, customer
service, along with manufacturing and service delivery.
•The more people you have involved in the process, the better. The receptionist
knows more that you might think. So do the folks on the loading dock.
•Simple, actionable, dated goals are easier to refer back to. People will forget the
particulars, however, unless you make the objectives more relevant to the
individuals involved. Tell a story about how your objectives work at your company.
Include more narrative or, literally, stand in front of a small group and tell a story
and ask for their feedback on implementing the plan based upon the story's
description.
•Keeping a score card of performance on objectives may be useful. Posting it on the
wall works. So does posting it on the wall with a neon sign. They've done it with
safety results at steel mills for years (remember the signs "462 days without an
injury"?). How can you do it with marketing results, or HR results for that matter, in
a similar fashion?
•Mission statements, done properly, will focus your company on providing products
or services that match the company's core competencies. Straying from your core
competencies may rightfully cause you to re-consider whether such straying really
makes sense.