Activating your strategic plan
A strategic plan is a cornerstone to a successful organization. Yet 90% of executives in a study revealed they had failed to implement some part of their strategy successfully (source: Brightline Initiative, published in Strategy@Work).
That astonishing percentage is further reinforced by Harvard Business School’s John Kotter, noting that 70% of all strategic initiatives fail because of poor execution. This is why how you activate your strategic plan is as critical as the plan itself. One without the other is a recipe for failure.
STRATEGIC PLANNING SUCCESS BEGINS BEFORE THE PROCESS STARTS
Success begins with the leadership team, before the activation starts. There must be clear leadership support to not only provide the team with the resources necessary, but also to ensure commitment and alignment across the organization. Best executed plans sometimes fail when colleagues cannot count on the commitment of their team through the process. In a Harvard Business Review study, 80% of managers say they can rely on their boss and their direct reports all or most of the time. Great news. But then only 9% of managers in the same study said that they can rely on colleagues all the time, and that only half said they can rely on them most of the time. Leadership must set the stage for support and alignment.
METRICS MATTER
Leadership support? Check! Team alignment? Check! You still may not be as ready for activation as you think if you don’t have your measures in place. Your metrics or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are how you will measure progress, or lack thereof. Minimally each tactic will have a clear and measurable metric. Additionally, you may want to have a metric assigned to your strategies. We recommend using the SMART system to assign metrics. Each metric is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. We won’t go into the details here, otherwise you’d never want to read through the rest of this article, not smart (sorry for the pun). A quick search online will provide dozens of well written explanations and examples on SMART.
ACTIVATION SUCCESS FACTORS
Team. Identify the team members who are responsible for each major component of the strategic plan. This requires identifying the people who will have the authority and capability to drive the strategy forward. Your strategy level items may or may not have a person responsible for that strategy. If so, great. However, every tactic should have a single person responsible for that item. Having multiple people or a group within your company responsible for a strategy or tactic is asking for trouble – it allows for excuses to come up in the event something is falling behind schedule. It’s hard to hold a group accountable vs. a single individual.
Alignment. Schedule a launch session to ensure everyone that is part of the team is clear on their role, the objectives, and can identify what they feel might impede their success. Ask them what kind of support they believe is needed to ensure their success. Transparency and alignment from the beginning will mitigate potential issues down the road. Based on this session, there may be some updates made to the plan. Be flexible as needed. Throughout the process, be willing to adjust – the focus is the objective. Process is important, however, remember it’s your tool and it shouldn’t manage you.
Schedule. Hold regularly scheduled meetings to manage the plan. During these meetings, the status of each component is discussed and updates made to the plan. Everyone who is responsible for a component of the plan needs to come to the meetings prepared to provide their updates and recommendations on how to get items back on schedule if they are falling behind. If anything is falling behind or if new issues are identified, discuss ideas and what is needed to resolve the challenge. There may not be a solution in the moment, if so, the task may be to acquire new insights or identify who might have the answer. Make sure to do this at the meeting, not afterwards in the hall or via email.
Communication. Communicate quarterly (or as needed) a summary status of the plan to the executive team, board members, and/or other key stakeholders. And don’t assume that communication is the same as understanding. Solicit feedback from your team on how they feel the process is working or not, and how any improvements can be made. Get feedback from others outside of the strategy team to see what they think of the progress, communications, and if they understand how the work ties back to achieving the objective and the vision of the company. Don’t get lost in the path of execution and lose site of the reason you are doing it. Keep connecting the dots for all involved.
And just in case you were wondering - definitions of strategic planning components:
Mission. What inspires every employee, every day, to achieve the vision of the company.
Vision. What the brand aspires to be in the future. Aspirational, yet tangible.
Objective. What you want to accomplish.
Strategy. How you will achieve your objective.
Tactics. The actionable items that will be done which support the outcome expected of the strategy.
EASY PEASY LEMON SQUEEZY
OK, well maybe not that simple. No one said strategic planning was easy (they lied to you if they did). But with the understanding of what needs to be done before you start and applying these guides through the activation process, you will have a far better success rate than most companies out there!