Strategic Planning —What Will You Stop Doing?
By now, most companies have already completed their early phases of strategic planning by reviewing past performance, gathering insights, and setting some broad priorities and goals. Followed by a fervent level of activity to finalize and get plans in place to take on the world with a running start in the new year.
All good, but many plans often only touch on a component that make any strategic plan live up to its full potential. The people.
It’s not that you necessarily have incompetent people doing the work. Let’s assume you have brought together a bright, qualified, and motivated team. The weak link is how they are being empowered and set up for success.
Most plans have a lot of detail on what needs to get done, but there is not enough thought put into what they need to stop doing or how they will need to work differently. For the most part, the same teams, with similar tools and resources, are going to be given new directives, and somehow, expect better outcomes.
What Will You Stop Doing?
Your team already have full-time jobs and like most of us, have more on their plates than it seems possible to handle. Being part of the team that is responsible for either or both the planning and then the implementation of the plan, this is now an additional item being put on that already full plate.
Any high-performing team member will say they can handle it. Though in the back of their minds, they’re wondering how in the world they will get it done. Given our area of focus, we’re looking at this through the lens of marketing. Though even if it’s not your CMO or Director of Marketing that is taking this on, the same principles apply to any other area in the organization.
Be Realistic & Flexible
Be realistic about how much more time this will take. If it’s an additional 2 or 10 hours a week more work, what can be taken off their plate or the teams they are leading to compensate for the additional work? Sometimes, it’s as simple as diving deeply into the marketing plan and identifying the tactics that are not performing as well as others. If that’s the case, then stop doing them. The marketing plan should completely align with and support the greater strategic priorities. If marketing is doing something that doesn’t directly align with the corporate strategy, this is the time to make changes and stop doing what is not driving towards the shared vision.
If the alignment is there, and you have eliminated what’s not working or could take a pause from, yet still have a concern about getting everything done, then you need to look at other options. It could mean, finding new tools to automate a process. Or it could mean bringing on additional short-term resources such as hiring an agency to do the work that might currently be managed internally. Don’t just assume that somehow there is simply some bandwidth that can be absorbed. If that bandwidth exists, then you may have other problems to address.
Finally, it’s important to have some flexibility. Even though a lot of work went into developing the plan, remember that the plan is still a tool and it’s not about checking off boxes. You must be willing to acknowledge if there is part of the plan that is simply not working, or you may have thought of a better way to achieve the objectives. This is not about giving up because things get hard, but sometimes there are new variables that come up that didn’t exist when the plan was being developed. New competitors, economic changes, technological impacts, or new regulatory mandates to name just a few.
None of this is complicated, but it takes the same discipline you bring to the planning part. If you do this, you will have a far better chance at success.
If you need assistance in developing the plan, the process, or external objective oversight to help keep the team accountable, then we’d love to chat with you.