Strategic Impact

A Leader's Three-Step Framework for the Customized Vital Strategic Plan

Carol A. Poore, Ph.D.

• Publisher: Fast Company Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781632993168
• eBook ISBN: 9781632993175
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Strategy
• Index: Business

Are you a senior executive, board member, emerging leader, or consultant responsible for leading a strategic plan that actually gets implemented and delivers resu lts? ?Strategic Impact: A Leader's Three-Step Framework for the Customized Vital Strategic Plan presents a trailblazing method that will help you guide and customize your organization's strategic planning program. Dr. Poore delivers innovation through virtual strategy workshops, digital communication opportunities, and new, accessible cloud-based tracking systems. Strategic Impact provides a reliable, three-step framework, applicable to any organization, regardless of size, scale, or structure, allowing you to: • Declutter the typically complicated strategic planning process.
• Deliver a destiny-shaping program in an efficient, budget-conscious way—including for mission-driven small businesses and nonprofits with limited resources.
• Plan and lead a life-changing leadership workshop experience culminating in strategic goals.
• Craft a compelling written strategic plan which can be digitized and communicated through social media.
• Implement an effective tracking and communication system to monitor progress and ensure accountability.
• Engage employees, customers, and key audiences in celebrating your organization's strategic impact. Unlike other strategic planning books, Strategic Impact places intense focus on curating a vibrant, life-changing strategic planning workshop that strengthens leadership bonds and commitment for implementation. It simplifies the strategic planning process and ensures a clear, comprehensive, and customizable approach for you and your leadership team. Dr. Poore's emphasis on strategic goal implementation will amplify your organization's ability to get it done, fulfill your mission and purpose, and achieve strategic impact!

CHAPTER 1

IT’S TIME TO SIMPLIFY THE PROCESS

MOST EXECUTIVES SAY THEY DREAD STRATEGIC planning. Yet truly effective strategic planning should be life changing for the participants and life giving for the organization. Strategic planning studies during the past two decades have shown that more than half of global company executives are very dissatisfied with their organization’s strategic planning programs. Less than 20 percent of employees—one in five—have a good understanding of their company’s strategy and direction.¹ Leaders commonly describe strategic planning with words such as:

•“being lost in a haze, with no way out”

•“boring”

•“too complicated”

•“creating a shelf ornament”

•“lofty, but no implementation”

•“a mysterious process”

•“paying more than $300,000 to a management consulting firm that didn’t know what it was doing.”

So what do we need to do?

Most executives are excellent at running their organizations, but may not be quite sure how to develop an exciting leadership experience that will lead to a successful strategic plan and—most crucial—implementation. It’s important to consider your strategic plan as your company’s grand employee engagement tool leading to strategic impact for the organization, as well as for each individual employee.

Strategic impact is the ability to significantly and positively influence the future by achieving goals.

STRATEGIC IMPACT IS THE ABILITY OF: AN ORGANIZATION, BUSINESS UNIT, DEPARTMENT, AND EVERY EMPLOYEE TO SIGNIFICANTLY AND POSITIVELY INFLUENCE THE FUTURE BY ACHIEVING GOALS.

According to a recent employee mindset study, only one out of every ten employees says their overall work experience significantly exceeds their expectations. Only 38 percent would consider their employee experience as “awesome” or “great.”² With a clear and compelling strategic plan combined with management training to help those in supervisory roles be equipped to share, regularly discuss, and track the plan throughout the organization, leaders can help employees understand how their work connects to their organization’s purpose and creates strategic impact.

Employees want to know how their work connects to their organization’s future success. They not only want to be passionate about their work; they also want an employee experience that will move them toward a business partnership culture where each employee views their work as an entrepreneur does—as their own business. This kind of mindset creates loyalty and stronger partnerships with managers and team members.

Strategic planning should be a legacy-making, destiny-defining experience for company leaders and employees. It’s time to simplify the strategic planning process and, equally important, create richer, more meaningful strategic planning experiences.

WHAT IS STRATEGIC PLANNING?

The strategic planning process is a structured method of identifying and establishing a long-term vision for an organization to achieve its desired strategic goals. The process includes defining the organization’s vision and mission; developing strategic goals; crafting action steps to realize those goals; and developing plans for action, monitoring, and accountability.³ In addition, I believe vital strategic planning includes effectively communicating with—and celebrating results with—employees as well as with external audiences.

It’s been said that the twin hallmarks of strategic planning are the great size of the decisions, and their long-term significance over many years. Strategic planning should not be confused with business planning, annual operational planning, forecasting, or budgeting.⁴

What is strategy? Strategy is the process of making choices about the business you’re in, what you’re delivering, as well as what your organization has no intention of providing. Strategy is a framework for making decisions about how goals will be accomplished and deliver value and competitive edge, for which customers or service clients are willing to pay.

Strategic planning includes difficult strategy choices—choices about the “how” that drive market differentiation and competitive advantage, as well as choices that enable an organization to operate with revenue and profits. Difficult strategy choices could include capital investments, marketing methods defining how you will reach customers, and sales approaches such as how products, programs, and services will be delivered.

Clearly, strategic plans differ from operational plans, marketing plans, and business plans.

The most important difference between a written strategic plan and an operational plan is its time frame. Strategic plans feature longer-term goals than operational plans and are usually focused on a three-year time horizon. Some market sectors, such as information technology, may require shorter strategic plan time frames.

The essential elements of a strategic plan include a thorough review of the external environment impacting your organization, a description of the current state of your organization, a description of the desired future within a three-year period or time horizon appropriate for your industry and organization, and finally, specific and measurable goals to help your organization achieve that desired future.

An operational plan features annual goals. An operating plan, also known as “annual operating plan,” helps you look at the next year ahead and moves your organization toward achieving the strategic three-year goals. The strategy of “how” goals are achieved, including decisions about allocating resources to support the goals, such as expertise, funding, technology, and facilities, must be discussed with both strategic or longer-term and annual operating time frames in mind.

A marketing plan is a document that outlines promotional and advertising strategy that an organization will implement to generate customer leads and reach its target markets. A marketing plan spells out the promotional, communication, and public relations activities to be undertaken over a particular time period, noting how the company will measure the effect of the marketing initiatives. An organization’s go-to-market strategy uses internal sales representatives and outside distributors to deliver their unique value proposition to customers or clients, and achieve competitive advantage.

For anyone starting a business, developing a business plan is an important first step. A business plan is used to initially obtain funding and provide direction for business operations.

While a strategic plan is focused on a longer horizon of three to five years and shares a few common features with a business plan, the business plan is a defining document usually focused on the next twelve months—especially during the initial business start-up. A traditional business plan defines the operational purpose of the business. It summarizes financial objectives, including a detailed plan providing information about how the business will make money, and outlines projected revenues and expenses for the next few years.

What It Is and What It Isn’t

To build upon these working definitions, I’m including some of my favorite strategic planning authors and their quotes. These prolific planners describe the essence of strategic planning . . . what it is, and what it is not.

“Strategic Planning is a disciplined effort to produce decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, what it does, and why it does it.”

—John M. Bryson, Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations

“Strategic planning encourages new perspectives and new combinations of ideas that surpass departmental silos. However, strategic planning is imperfect . . . it cannot replace common sense and keen market awareness.”

—Henry Mintzberg, The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning

“Successful strategic planning includes addressing the ability of the organization to respond to its external environment. It forces thinking about the future. It focuses on the organization’s challenges and identifies opportunities to address those challenges.”

—Henry Cothran and Rodney Clouser, Strategic Planning for Communities, Non-profit Organizations and Public Agencies

“Strategic decisions and strategic goals alter the very destiny of the organization, pushing senior executives to contribute at the strategic level, where their input is most needed.”

—Harvey Bergholz, 4 Ways to Keep Strategic Planning Focused

“Strategy is about helping leaders solve a unique problem in their own organizational context, while also preparing them for a different future.”

—Ruth Tearle, Strategy for CEOs

“Strategic planning can bring significant advantages such as higher profits and return on assets.”

—Stephen P. Robbins, Mary Coulter, and David A. DeCenzo,
Fundamentals of Management

WHAT MAKES A COMPANY SEEK A STRATEGIC PLAN?

When do companies typically embark on a strategic planning program? It is generally when the organization completes a prior strategic plan—or whenever leaders need to reinvent the future of their organization. In fact, strategic planning is all about reinventing the future.

Reinventing the future includes clarifying a management team’s strategic priorities; establishing a clear path for growth, potential diversification, and sustainability; and setting clear goals for management.⁵ This also may include responding to changing market conditions such as new or emerging competition, an industry crisis, a game-changing scientific discovery, or a global event such as COVID-19. The need for strategic planning is also critical after mergers and acquisitions, when fresh vision and a new company identity must be forged. Strategic planning frequently occurs upon the arrival of a new CEO with a new vision for an organization. In fact, within the first hundred days, most CEOs announce a new strategy after conducting a strategic planning process.

Almost every new CEO struggles to manage the time drain of attending to shareholders, analysts, board members, industry groups, politicians, and other constituencies.⁶ While CEOs hired from the outside have a learning curve, those promoted from within face their own set of challenges. They must separate themselves from CEOs of the past, as well as divorce themselves from their own prior roles within the company. New leaders can build professional momentum and credibility by creating an engaging strategic planning process as an opportunity to bond with board members and staff and gain employee support for their new vision and direction.

Occasionally, a new CEO will be hired into an organization with no existing strategic plan. This can become a fortuitous opportunity for the new CEO.

This often happens when a start-up company is launched by a passionate founder with no strategic plan, where the company gains its first round of success, begins to scale up, and hires an experienced executive to manage the growth. It can also occur when a long-standing family business or nonprofit organization hires a new leader after a predecessor served for decades without a strategic plan. (Think about a century-old trade association, for example, that hires a new CEO after the organization had operated for decades with a list of annual goals, but no official strategic plan.)

New leaders know that developing a strategic plan will require support from the board of directors. However, a skeptical board member may question the need for the plan. Instead of avoiding the naysayer, if the new CEO is wise, he or she will invite the skeptic to serve on the strategic planning steering committee as it reviews the workshop agenda and provides input. That is, unless the questioning board member is a toxic derailer—someone who tries to sabotage the entire strategic planning process. In those circumstances, a strong and supportive steering committee will need to address the negativity directly with the sabotaging board member.

The workshop planning process may take a few months due to difficulty of scheduling the steering committee. But after rounds of discussions and edits, the agenda is eventually approved, and even the skeptical board member is onboard with his peers. The CEO moves forward with a vital strategic planning program, confident that the board provided full support.

The lesson learned in this scenario is that critical thinkers can play an ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: Strategic Planning as a Life-Changing Leadership Experience
• Chapter 1: It’s Time to Simplify the Process
• Chapter 2: Ten Steps to Swiftly Secure Executive Commitment
• Chapter 3: Your Vital Workshop: A Life-Changing, Shared Experience
• Chapter 4: Strategic Planning Post–COVID-19: Going Virtual
• Chapter 5: Your Vital Written Plan: The Shared Story of Strategic Intent
• Chapter 6: Your Vital Tracking System: Shared Outcomes and Strategic Impact
• Chapter 7: Communicate, Celebrate, and Engage Employees and Audiences
• Chapter 8: Your Strategic Personal Purpose: For You, the Vital Curator
• Conclusion: Closing Thoughts
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix: Vital Strategic Planning Tools, Templates, and Techniques
• References
• Notes
• About the Author