The steps of the strategic planning process in under 15 minutes

ladies and gentlemen Anthony Taylor here Strategy Fromme I just wanted to thank you for downloading your tool, whether it's the 15 questions, the

strategic

planning

template, the

strategic

planning

assessment, or something else, and as a bonus I wanted to walk through the strategic planning

process

with you so that you can get the most out of your tool and bring the most value to your organization, so I strived to do this in less than 15

minutes

, so let's do it so that the strategic planning

process

when we do it basically has four components, where we are? now where are we going, what's going to get in our way and what do we need to do to get where we want to go, in our process, our alignment strategy development process that we do here, there are three types of alignment, alignment with leadership. team, so making sure everyone on the leadership team is on the same page, i.e. board or leadership, aligned on the vision and strategy and alignment within the entire organization, from top to bottom, from the bottom up, everyone is on the same page so that the first part of the strategy The planning process is getting inputs, where are we now?

That's things like doing an external analysis, whether it's a SWAT or a pestal analysis, you need to find out what's happening outside your organization and inside your organization, as you build your strategy on the latter. The inputs I would recommend are doing an internal analysis, something like a stakeholder engagement survey or just input from the management team, and that's why a strategic planning session is so valuable and we even do a survey before the our. This is the overview of the strategic planning process. It starts with the vision where we are going, then you will get there by fulfilling your mission you will have goals and objectives along the way that will help you fulfill your mission that will help you achieve your vision and then the strategies how you will achieve it Your objectives and tactics are the individual pieces of your strategic plan, so the most important piece of creating your strategic plan is the vision of where we are going.

The future is uncertain, but we as an organization have the opportunity to create that future, so how can we? create a vision that is not just words, a vision is very valuable in being able to motivate your people and inspire them to want to do more and contribute, so one way to think about it is if success was a place, how would we know if we arrived? there, where we are going, why we should go there and what is winning, we are creating the future, however long it is from now and we want to be as descriptive as possible, from the beginning, so what do you see for your organization in 3? 5 years or maybe 10 to 25 years, what's one big goal within that vision that could polarize your team and ideally that one big goal that everyone can contribute to?

It's really important for them to describe the vision as vividly as possible, so what do the operations look like? What does the staff look like? What do the clients look like? How else does your organization look different? Think of it like a blueprint for a house. That's what you're building. The next piece of this is the mission and purpose if you complete your mission. You will move towards the vision of why you exist, what you do it for, who your main client is and what you do for them. It's important to realize that you have to keep it simple to understand, there are no buzzwords and this is not a self. marketing exercise, this is the core foundation of why your organization exists, so the next piece that helps the mission of staying together is the values ​​within the organization, you could use values ​​or culture, but it is actually the DNA of your organization what you currently value within the organization.

What are the cultures and norms of your organization and your people? Because they are important? What values ​​are important to them? How would you describe the organization if you were a good or bad person? What is the way we do things here? When explaining to someone new what it is not except the behavior of the cable, it is important that you recognize that values ​​drive performance, it unites the entire strategy, so again you must align your strategy with your vision and your purpose if you achieve your purpose, your mission and then you will be closer to achieving your vision, so there is some risk here.

What will get in our way. Leadership if you don't have the entire management team on board will push back on your strategy because they are the ones giving the marching orders. for communication between your staff and your employees, this is the biggest obstacle to successful implementation because people don't know what the plan is, they don't know what they are doing and they are withholding important information that is really crucial to the Plan resources if you don't spend enough time or money to implement something then it just won't happen and then you accept. Do you want to create a plan and push it to your people or do you want them to buy into it? the plan because it is allowing them to contribute and move forward on their own, so other implementations offset time budgets, HR technology and pretty much anything you can think of, it is waiting around the corner and there are opportunities in the planning process to identify them create impact studies and mitigation plans to minimize the downsides of these risks, then what uncertainties exist for us, what are the impacts of those uncertainties, what is the probability of that happening and what can we do to mitigate that risk in that way.

You are proactive rather than reactive and keep your plan focused, so what are the most important things you need to do in your organization to achieve your mission and vision? Strategy inherently is about options and there are a million options every day. So when you create the plan, you need to work backwards to create the tasks, the roles, the individual areas of responsibility and you can see right now how the work plans are created as they exist. This is one of the tools we actually sell. in strategy and this is the Purpose Pyramid in other words and we just say, hey, focus on a handful of objectives, don't do too much, the strategic priorities we'll make significant progress on them and then we'll move forward from there.

Ideally, your strategic priorities will help you. you achieve your mission, it helps you achieve your vision, everything is aligned and then from there you have to put the specific objectives and initiatives, the underlying strategies and tactics, as well as the kpis, so kpis are measures and performance objectives, how will you measure your strategy? priorities, how will you know if you are successful? And this is really important. You have to have a scoreboard for your people, they need to know how they are going to succeed in your plan. If you don't have it, then I'm just going to work with a Le minus objective almost aimlessly um and it will really hurt you to come so this is the balanced scorecard um you can find it in strategy or anywhere else or your organization fundamentally makes four things: there are financial metrics, there are customer There are metrics, there are learning and growth metrics, and there are internal business processes, and for each one you have objectives, measures, goals and initiatives that are included in your strategy and that help you achieve your vision, so another important piece is cascading goals, so think about goals from the beginning. organizational level the team level the functional level and the individual all need to be integrated into the end goal of the organization and so this can be designed um it can't really be done in a meeting it needs to be done over time and everyone needs to know how they can Do your part to contribute to the strategy.

Such a broad panorama. Compared to practical application, there are people you need to manage, so who are the key people in your organization who are responsible for the functional areas where there are key gaps? roles you have right now and if there are people responsible for more than one area, that basically means who will be the human, not the department, who is responsible for moving these strategic initiatives forward. The buck has to stop with one person and people can be difficult to manage, communicate the plan, as I said before, communication is key, how are you going to share this strategic plan with your organization so that everyone can know how to contribute?

Keep in mind that different people absorb information in different ways, words, audio, images, whatever works. For you, you need to have the plan in mind so people can know where the organization is going and what they need to do to move forward. It's all about alignment if you lose some of these pieces throughout the process. strategy can fail, you need to make sure the plan is aligned, your people are aligned and it goes top down and bottom up and once you align and buy in, that's when the real magic starts to happen and you make progress really big and important. in your plan and everything you work on, how to achieve alignment, you need to communicate clearly and simply, you need to be involved, so bring people into the process so they know how they can contribute, you need to match goals and motivation, think about it .

From their perspective, everyone has a different reason for coming to work and that's why we are very passionate about what we do because we improve people's lives. Your employees will have a better life. It will affect their families and communities when they can be successful in their work and to be successful they need to have the ability to do it so you have to give them the tools and the resources that they need to be successful if you give them a plan but you know, lock them down. and don't let them do it. To be successful, they won't be highly motivated to come to work and do their best, so when the time comes, you'll need to align your team and execute the plan, which means communicating and then working backwards from vision to create a plan that is joint and well aligned, like I said strategy is about choices and you only need to choose the most important things that will move your organization forward in the most effective way possible, so if you have an aligned plan and have a clear direction and keep it in mind and don't deviate from it, you will save time, money and resources, your people will be happier and you will simply get more done, which means you will have a greater impact and help more people and from that This is really such a happy planning for everyone.

I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope it helps you structure your strategic planning process and I hope it helps you add more. value to your customers and anyone else who is affected by your business, so it has been Anthony Taylor. I'm the managing partner of strategy and I really hope this helped you have an amazing day and happy planning.