Full Article .pdfs Posted: Common Paths to Strategy Creation and Core Components of the Strategic Plan

I wanted to share the full article .pdfs of my recent articles.

You can access these at the links Common Paths to Strategy Creation and Core Components of the Strategic Plan.

Or go directly to my website or blog.

Happy New Year!
Rob

Core Components of the Strategic Plan: Implementation Considerations

Some say that plans are useless and planning is everything. I might extend this perspective to suggest that planning without action is, well, nothing, or at best an exercise. We plan to take the best course into the future and implementation is a natural extension of planning activities. The boundary between well crafted strategy and the journey of implementation can be hazy, but it does not need to be. The section discusses important considerations when moving from planning to implementing.

Implementation. Planning is a cyclical effort, we cycle between periods of discovery and tracking, to periods of visioning and goal setting, to periods of nose-to-the-grindstone action. Strategic plans can include reference to all of these or simply focus on the visioning and goal setting portions. More often than not, I see strategic plans limited to statements of strategy such as mission, vision, value, and goals. If this is the case, attention must be paid to the action or implementation plan that should accompany the strategy document. This is one reason why I recommend a system of living documents as a strategic plan, with some documents more stable through the entire planning period and other documents updated regularly and as things change in the environment.

With that, here are a few implementation considerations and definitions for the planning process:

Implementation Plans. Detailed documents that take the strategic plan strategy by strategy and include details required for implementing the strategies. Some elements of an implementation plan include but are not limited to: time or planning horizon, expected outcomes, tracking metrics, actions to be taken, resources required, costs, responsible manager, and individuals named by their assigned actions. Some of these are expanded in the definitions below.

Action Plans. The collected specific actions required to implement a strategy. Action plans can take in many and multiple forms depending the requirements of the strategy. At minimum, the action plans should list actions one by one and sequenced. Action plans can also include a tracking function that indicates the status of the action such as pending, in progress, or completed. Some organizations use full-blown project management processes to manage action planning.

Accountability Matrix. Most successful strategic plan systems include sufficient detail to track progress in a sort of accountability matrix. In the matrix, each strategy has a number of individuals with different roles. These roles may include actions, resource management, responsibility for outcomes, authority to make changes, etc. The grand matrix allow executives to quickly understand how implementation is being managed and accomplished.

Resource Determination and Funding. A difficult task is estimating the resources required to implement a strategy. During the process we ask: What might this cost? What revenue might be generated? What are the human resource requirements? Are there yearly estimates and projections? Once we have a reasonable estimate we turn to the fundraising needs the plan demands. Part of the financial and action planning that accompany the strategic plan involves the best sequence activities so the strategies can be realized.

Managing Resources. Many strategies require human and financial resources to implement. It can be helpful to consolidate the managing functions of these resources strategy by strategy with a single manager so that funds can be released for expenditure, budgets can be overseen, and progress toward goals can be tracked.

Authority and Responsible. Responsibility for actions and outcomes can be managed down to the specific action level or at high levels in the taxonomy such as goal or strategy. Authority over a strategy gives an individual the ability to make significant changes when necessary within the strategy to optimize actions, resources, or outcomes. Accountability, management, responsibility, and authority can be placed with a single individual or with multiple individual or groups depending on the complexity of the organization and plan.

Tracking Progress. Each strategy or goal should have a measured starting point, ending point, and perhaps milestones along the way. Progress is tracked by monitoring metrics or key indicators at various intervals. The implementation plan should include details about how progress will be tracked. Many organizations use KPIs or key performance indicators to track high-level organization performance measures. Some use KPIs to track strategic plan progress. While some KPIs are useful for this, I have found that most are not. Strategies often require specialized metrics. I like to call these KSIs or key strategic indicators, differentiating them from KPIs.

Correcting Course. Regular evaluation should be conducted during implementation strategy by strategy and goal by goal to be sure progress is meeting expectations. When gaps develop, careful evaluation should uncover the reasons. A successful adaptive planning process is dynamic and responsive to changing conditions. The overall strategic plan should allow for necessary course corrections with outcomes deviate from expectations. Sometimes this is due to internal conditions and other times the organization's environment change to such a degree that strategies must be significantly overhauled or even abandoned.

So we must answer the question, are these implementation details part of the strategic plan or are they included in a separate action plan? And depending on that answer, then are there corresponding documents and if so, how many and what are their contents? Again there is no perfect answer, it is a matter of utility for the organization. The system that provides be best changes of understand, communicating, and using the documents is the best one.

Expedition Mapping. One more thought about implementation before concluding. In practice, I see the strategy development phase end before the implementation planning begins. I think this is a mistake. I often find that strategy development could be better informed if implementation were thought through and tested a bit before the strategies are finalized. In the entire process vision and strategy are the most difficult to change once fully developed. It is easy to create an unattainable strategy, in fact, some strategists advocate for audacious strategies as a way to push organizations. As much as I like to stretch, if an organization does not have the resources, funds, or inspiration to achieve success, the entire plan can fail.

The handoff from the strategy generation to the implementation phase is an important one and a common place for plans to fail. Because of this, I have developed a number of tools to help manage the transition, informing plan development in both directions. One of these is called Expedition Mapping. I have an article available on this technique. Here is a snippet from the introduction:

Expedition mapping is a strategic planning and execution methodology that helps ensure success at reaching difficult organizational destinations. Expedition mapping is a new method for strategic implementation that blends together storytelling, action planning, resource analysis, and adaptive, ongoing environmental scanning – and it is delivered in a mix of face-to-face and online collaborative activities.

In conclusion. This article is by no means a roadmap to creating a strategic plan, but it does outline some of the foundational elements of the process and possible components of strategy. I attempted to expose some of the important decisions that need to be made along the way and move the discussion, a difficult transition, from planning to implementing strategy.

If you combine the suggestions and guidelines I have offered here with many of the related process recommendations and methodologies I outlined in related articles, you begin to get a more full picture of what it takes to form and implement strategy. The entirety of strategy crafting, however, is not yet fully exposed – more to come.

Soon I will begin to share insights gained about the future of strategy crafting. I am calling these innovations in strategy crafting. They are innovations because they are different approaches to crafting strategy and go beyond the tradition toolbox that many of us share the use.

Core Components of the Strategic Plan: The Strategic Structure

With a sound conceptual foundation in place, I will move on to the heartbeat at the center of the strategic plan, the strategic structure. This consists of a hierarchy of statements organized in a specific taxonomy (how things are organized and classified). Other important matters are the granularity, or level of detail, planning horizon, or timeframe, and level of visualization required.

Taxonomy and Hierarchy. My experience is that there is no single correct way to name the elements of the hierarchy of a strategy. In fact, the highest level can have many interchangeable names from this list: strategy – priority – direction – goal – objective – pillar – foundation – initiative – aim – you fill in the blank. The same goes for the next layer down. Is a goal composed of multiple objectives? Or is a objective composed of multiple goals?  If anyone tries to convince you there is one right answer to this, ignore them. Any combination works as long as everyone in the organization agrees to the taxonomy and it is used consistently throughout the strategic plan.

An important consideration in the planning process is to determine which taxonomy and hierarchy will work best for the organization in the coming planning period. Some considerations for this decision may be what does past practice suggest, what regulatory agencies may require, what competitors are doing, what may be the latest fad, or what language may have benefits beyond the taxonomy.

I like to start with the following: strategies —> goals —> actions —> outcomes which leads to the image below.

Whatever the decision at the time, the taxonomy and hierarchy needs to accomplish certain things. The taxonomy needs to be understandable and reasonable. I have seen strategic structures that were unwieldy and didn’t allow for a reasonable person to connect a long list of actions and resources to the highest level strategy. The hierarchy must adequately connect strategy to action. If that leap cannot be made, some strategies may be left unobtainable. I like to recommend an easy to understand number system that allows for multiple layers of goals, actions, and outcomes to be quickly understood.

Granularity. Once the labels are known the next important decision in the strategic structure is the level of granularity. How much detail is contained in the plan? How long should the document be? How many layers of goals are there? Are names named, units or departments named? A sound organizational structure allows for the necessary cross-referencing later the process from connecting multiple goals to a strategy, to allocating resources for implementation, to ensuring outcomes can be tracked years down the road. It is important to choose the right number of layers in the hierarchy. Too few and the organization ends up with many actions tied to a broad strategy. Too many layers and it is hard to discern between the layers and to deal with prioritization of actions during implementation.

Planning Horizon. The planning horizon is the period of time from the beginning of the strategic plan to the end. Important questions include… When does the planning period start? When does it end? Are there segments along the way? How often are strategies and goals updated? What can change during the planning period, such as goals and actions? What cannot, such as the top level strategies? In practice I have observed that most strategic plans have a beginning and ending date or year, but in reality different parts of the plan move at different speeds during implementation. I now recommend that even though the overall plan may have start and end dates, that the planning process fully considers a unique planning horizon for each strategy. We live in a dynamic environment and forces continually act on our organizations. Some forces slow us down – I call these decelerators. Other speed us up – I call these accelerators. In a dynamic strategic plan, the organization continually monitors internal and external forces and adjusts actions and resources within each strategy to optimize impact.

Visual Elements. I have seen strategic plans that are fully text with long narratives and lengthy lists. These are probably the worst as they are difficult for anyone to understand but the plan’s authors. I have also seen plans that are just a few pictures that may be equally as bad as the lack details and are open to interpretation. While there may be organizations that require one or the other, most strategic plans should be a combination, blending clear, concise narratives with neatly organized lists, tables, and spreadsheets with appealing visual elements. My recommendation is to get as visual as possible, especially at the early stages of planning, and add required text and table details as necessary until the optimal blend is achieved. There is no right answer here, so it depends on the organization's needs, practices, and culture.

Strategic Context

Strategic Context

The equally important early consideration is to fully explore the strategic context in which the strategic planning process is operating. The follow is a good list of the plan’s components that should be considered:

Context. This component includes the planning assumptions, updates on the organization’s recent activities and events, and any information from the external environment that is pertinent. While this is not the place to report on a full environmental scan or internal audit, the major forces impacting the organization should be mentioned.

History. Many planners and executive like to trace the history of the organization to broaden the context beyond the current state. In some planning processes, there is a desire to hold true or return to values that may have eroded or been lost. In other cases, we want to give weight to directions in history that we judge as less than positive. A good history component can do either or both. Between the history and context components, the reader of the plan should be able to rather easily answer the question “Why planning now?”.

The Prior Plan. If the organization has a prior plan, it should be analyzed and reviewed early in the planning process. At minimum, each prior strategy should be analyzed in regard to the progress that was made, what gaps in outcomes remain, what can be left behind because it was either achieved or is not longer relevant, what was not accomplished that needs to be done, and what new things have emerged related to the strategy that should inform the next plan. These details may or may not be included in the next strategic plan for a variety of reasons.

Results of Discovery, Scanning, and Analyses. Nearly every planning process requires data, but the kind and nature of the sources and the resulting analyses really depends on the planning context and point in the organization life cycle. Startups require different data than century-old organizations. While most of the discovery, scanning, and analyses, though required, will be left on the cutting room floor, some of the key findings and facts could prove critical elements of the strategic plan.

Mission Statement. A key strategic statement that indicates what the organization is here to do, what it does, who is part of these activities, and what outcomes and impacts are expected. Mission statements can be shorter or longer, there is no perfect length. They must however communicate to those internal and external to the organization. Mission and purpose statements are synonymous.

Vision Statement. A vision is an image of the organization's desired future. While many organizations today prefer short, repeatable vision statements, I often find it more effective to suggest more lengthy and colorful statements. Sometimes a short key opening sentence can be written followed by a few descriptive paragraphs. Another approach in communicating vision is to back up a short statement will narratives and storytelling delivered verbally. I have also seen lengthy, multi-page visions that tell the story of the organization as if the future was happening in present tense. Whichever type is used, the vision should be compelling and communicate with excitement and color what we hope our future will be.

Values. Organizational values are important and lasting beliefs shared by members of a group or culture. There are other ways to explain what values are, “things that really matter to us” or “elements of your life you find personally important” or “guiding principles that guide behavior or action”. Regardless of the definition values are often paired with strategy so the organization understands the kinds of beliefs and behaviors required to achieve strategy and align effort.

Not every plan needs to contain every component, but some like mission and vision are rather necessary. Most of these components can be contained in the primary strategy document, but should be cross referenced in other documents, especially in the recommended one-page image of the overall plan.