Home -> Summer Management Series -> Strategic Planning and "Strategic Doing"  Strategic Planning Meets "Strategic Doing" We’ve all been there … periodically we spend one or two days away from the office, perhaps at a resort if we’re lucky, at a facilitated Strategic Planning session.  The leadership group is motivated and energized, spends time talking through the big issues and making grand plans to conquer our markets and competitors.  At the end of the session we go back to the office and not much changes.  On a good year, the ideas generated get typed up and distributed so that they can languish in a file folder on the computer or bound on a shelf gathering dust.  With all that effort … why can’t we make implementation? For most companies, the Strategic Planning is the easy part, but the "Strategic Doing" is the part that does not connect back and follow through.  This article presents a simple framework for tying week-to-week, month-to-month implementation directly back to an ambitious but achievable Strategic Plan. Contents Classical Strategic Planning Pitfalls of Classical Strategic Planning Strategic Doing Do you need a Change? Learn More and Take Action Classical Strategic Planning In some organizations, a strong individual CEO and/or Founder is the driving force of the business, and his will and judgement is extended to the actions of the firm.  In other cases, a leadership team of diverse individuals work more or less collectively on guiding the direction of the firm.  In either case, the classical approach to strategic planning involves sitting these people down in a room for a couple of days with a lot of financial reports, white boards, markers and snacks so that they can chart the course of the organization for the next year or the next 3-5 years.  Once this meeting of the minds concludes, the results are written up into a document, which may or may not be examined outside of the next Board Meeting or until the next strategic planning session the following year.  This document should contain the essential elements of theMission, the Vision, Overarching Goals for coming years, and broad Strategies. Meanwhile, business as usual continues, and real results do not relate to such “lofty” ideals as those guiding principals gathered in the strategic plan. What happened? Pitfalls of Classical Strategic Planning There are some clear and fundamental disconnects between an annual planning process and the business-as-usual functioning, if they are not deliberately tied together.  They include: 1.      Measurement:  Frequently, there are no direct mechanisms to ensure or measure the degree to which day-to-day activities match up with stated goals and objectives. 2.      Alignment:  Every company is a complicated combination of people, departments, services and products.  It is difficult to align all of these comprehensively toward achieving the strategic plan, especially if it is out of sight and out of mind. 3.      Measuring the wrong thing:  When there is in fact measurement to gauge the success of the plan, frequently the plan itself becomes more important than the goals and objectives it was created to achieve.  What if the plan wasn’t perfect? 4.      Environmental change:  The business environment has a pesky way of changing.  A published and bound strategic plan cannot change or adjust to match current conditions. 5.      Learning:  The upside of changing conditions is that you can constantly learn from your experiences, difficulties and successes, so that you can effectively adapt and try new things.  Again, a bound strategic plan does not allow well for learning or capturing new intelligence. Strategic Doing When you take actions between planning events that lead to the achievement of objectives, goals and fulfilling the mission of the organization, you have Strategic Doing.  Odds are that you do strategic things every day.  But do you think about them that way?  Can you measure them?  Are you learning from your decisions and actions, both good and bad?  These are the essential elements of Strategic Doing.  The goals and objectives for the year that are developed during the strategic planning retreat can be broken down into concrete, measurable elements, which can be tracked on an on-going or frequent basis.  Meanwhile, the lessons learned from actually doing the work can be captured and brought back into the process in order to strengthen the plan.  This is not rocket science, but it does require the proper systems, attention and follow through. Do you need a Change? Do your day-to-day business activities effectively support the achievement of your most important and strategic objectives and goals?  Ask yourself the following questions to seek that answer: Is there a single person in your organization that is responsible and empowered as the manager of the Strategic Plan to implement it throughout the year?  If so, what tools and authority does he or she have? Is the entire organization and all employees focused and aligned on meeting and achieving the goals and objectives in the Strategic Plan?  Do they even know what they are? Do you have an on-going or frequent process by which the organization and/or individual departments can create, track and measure milestone objectives toward the achievement of larger goals? Does the company search itself and empower its people to bring forward new and emergent strategies that were not thought of in the strategic planning session, but are in fact highly valuable and successful? Learn More and Take Action To learn more about Strategic Planning and Strategic Doing, please contact  Shepherd Advisors.  Shepherd Advisors facilitates not only top-notch Strategic Planning sessions (with lots of great snacks), but also helps companies build effective Strategic Doing frameworks so that they avoid the pitfalls of traditional Strategic Planning.