This article is the third in a series about simplifying strategic planning to make the process faster. The key idea is to focus only on the parts of the process that provide real value. While strategy itself is critical, not every part of the process is equally useful. Here are three quick ways to streamline […]
Continue readingIn strategic planning, we want to bring in people whose input and commitment are vital to the creation and implementation of a great plan. This requires three key perspectives in any organization: market understanding, operations understanding and financial understanding. In any organization with more than two or three people, you will want someone to adopt these perspectives in your strategic planning. There are other roles that may be vital in certain industries, such as IT in finance or HR in construction, but the three mentioned are the minimum when you expand beyond just one or two people doing your planning.
Continue readingWhy should you want to do strategic planning faster? Simply put, the time spent planning is time taken away from other activities. In addition, if you use a facilitator or consultant, a shorter engagement will cost you less. Some companies skip planning entirely to save time – but that’s penny-wise and pound-foolish. To responsibly scale […]
Continue readingIt’s not unusual, in strategic planning, to hear a team member say an issue is “just an operational issue”. In many cases, this may be correct – lots of operational issues don’t belong in your strategy discussions. In other cases, how your operation works can be central to the success – or failure – of […]
Continue readingSometimes executives I work with overlook culture as an important strategic building block of success. It may be that they see it as nonsense, and it may be they don’t see any return on the long and sometimes patient investment required to see results. But culture literally affects everything an organization does, even if it’s […]
Continue readingIn my last two posts, I discussed two of the three things that people get wrong in strategic planning: information and buy-in. Today, I’ll be discussing the third thing: sources and estimates. Data Sources As I mentioned in a previous post, people tend to want to find definitive sources of data for their strategic planning. […]
Continue readingAs organizations grow, buy-in gets more and more difficult, and this can be an issue in even the smallest businesses. In our experience, a cultural alignment of employees with the mission of the organization and its strategic plan are critical to success.
Continue readingMost people I encounter in business tell me they do strategic planning. When they describe their process, however, I can quickly identify key issues they will have with their planning and how to address it with a few key questions (or thought processes). Let me share my 30 years experience and conversations I’ve had with […]
Continue readingThe key to the “goldilocks” approach to your strategic planning is understanding how strategic planning can help you think about your business, your customers and your competitors.
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New technologies follow a fairly well-understood “curve”. We can think of these curves in terms of profitability, but this is oversimplifying things. Much of the thinking about technology curves in the business world comes from the work of Nikolai Kondratiev in the 1920s. The Kondratiev Curve In his work, Kondratiev suggested that there are long-term […]
Continue readingThis is one of the toughest questions to answer for most people who do strategic planning. The average company that does strategic planning typically achieves only 30% of their objectives. Since your strategic objectives represent the highest priority initiatives in your organization, why would that number be so low? First, we must recognize that strategy […]
Continue readingRobert Bradford will be presenting Simplified Strategic Planning in a series of six online presentations starting on June 17. You may participate live, and we will send video of each session to all subscribers. Each session is two hours long and will cover the entirety of the Simplified Strategic Planning process. Attendees will receive videos […]
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