Five Factors That Contribute to Successful Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is important: it creates a vision for a business’s future. Many companies get bogged down and either procrastinate their planning or meet week after week without seeing real progress. What can you do to ensure that your strategic planning will be successful?

Employee Engagement

It might seem that too many people contributing their ideas might be a recipe for disaster, but employee insight can be incredibly helpful when it comes to strategic planning. For example, input from employees can give senior level members insights into challenges, concerns, day-to-day issues and innovative ideas that might otherwise be overlooked.

 Another benefit to involving more people in your strategic planning is that these people will already have “buy-in” when the strategic plan is finalised. If they have been included, they will feel that the plan belongs to them. They’ll already be behind it.

Communication

Of course, if you’re going to engage more people in the process, your communication has to be impeccable. 

One method of including more people is to explain to all the employees that the Strategic Planning process is beginning and you need everyone’s help. They can offer input through surveys, meetings, and focus groups. This initial communication needs to be followed up with thorough coverage of the finalised strategic plan. Then you can get everyone on board.

Risk-Taking Innovation

Innovation requires trying something new, and this can be very scary for leaders. It feels much safer to simply try to improve on what you’ve always done in the past, but this kind of strategic planning doesn’t lead to greatness.

In order to innovate on a large scale, you should open up your planning to all kinds of ideas. You may find some interesting but wild ideas in the surveys you give to your employees. Take them seriously. Consider how they could be accomplished, even if it would require some major changes.

Focus

It’s all too easy to let a strategic plan become unmanageable and overly complicated. Although complicated strategic plans may look impressive on paper, they’re too much for anyone to fully integrate into their vision.

Focus on the things you’d like to change about your business. Create goals, and then be specific about the objectives necessary for reaching those goals. Specific goals supported by clear objectives can easily be embraced by your managers and employees, and they will give everyone the focus they need.

Implementation

In order to be truly strategic, your business needs specific ways to accomplish the goals you’ve planned for. It’s best if your plan includes responsibilities, resources, and a timeline. Once your implementation strategy has been revealed, you’ll need to follow up with staff regularly. Some businesses discuss their implementation efforts at meetings throughout the year. Others have “dashboards” with key metrics, so everyone can monitor the effectiveness of the company’s efforts.

Engage your employees through good communication, take risks, stay focused, and implement your plan. With a successful strategic plan, your business will thrive.