Have you seen or had experience with an organisation that every year has a strategic planning day and yet nothing substantially changes within the next year? There are many reasons that management teams feel they have to have a strategic planning day, some of the drivers include:
- The business environment is changing.
- A growth initiative of some sort is needed, whether that be growth by acquisition, organics growth, sales growth or margin growth.
- Costs need to be cut from the business.
- The business needs to be repositioned in order to be sustainable and relevant.
- Opportunities need to be assessed.
A document or set of slides are usually created that outlines what the objectives are for the next year and they either reside on a device or shelf somewhere gathering dust. It is information shared only with a selected few.
A big issue is that the strategic objectives that have been set are not communicated and explained to those that need to implement and deliver them.
According to a recent Harvard Business Review article “When CEO’s Talk Strategy, Is Anyone Listening?” the author found that only 29% of employees can correctly identify their company’s strategy. So you can see why execution fails.
This means that approximately 70% of people have no idea what the strategy is and whether what they are doing is adding value or wasting time, effort, money and opportunity.
So wouldn’t it be better to use a strategic performance framework such as realising success® to bring the strategy to life and build internal capability at the same time? I think so.
For any strategic initiative you need to take your people on the journey with you. You need to leverage what you have and ask the question; what’s possible?
