In her previous blog (It’s all in the Planning, Strategic that is), Dawn Bott started a discussion about Strategic Planning. She mentioned the use of SWOT analysis as the beginning in order to start to the strategic planning process. Though a SWOT is part of a Strategic Plan, which can be a useful tool, I wanted to talk about the entire process of creating the Strategic Plan.
There is no one way in creating a Strategic Plan. There are many different approaches some can take a year other approaches can take a day. What is common among them all is the inclusion of the organization at all levels. Strategic Planning is all about feedback and gaining the commitment from the organization’s employees to implement the plan created.
In creating and implementing a Strategic Plan, by-in and input into the process from all levels of the organization is essential for successful implementation. It starts by including a good cross section of employees at all levels to determine what is working and what is not. To make an analogy, the TV show “Under Cover Boss” is a good example. For those who have not seen the show, the CEO goes under cover for a week to see how their organization is functioning or implementing their goals. They are disguised so no one will recognize them while they work alongside different employees in different departments over the next 5 days. In almost all cases, the CEO learns that what he/she has implemented at the upper management level may not actually be the best strategies for improving the organization’s products or service. And in some cases, what they thought was a good idea, turns out not to be a good idea at all.
So now let’s put this to practical use. How do you get started?
One of the best ways to start a Strategic Plan is to take this cross section of employees I talked about earlier and move them into a room, preferably off-site to eliminate distractions such as email and phone calls, so they can develop a list of Strategic Objectives. This process is led by a facilitator who has no connection to the organization and whose first job is to define a Strategic Objective for the group. Strategic Objectives are ideas and suggestions that will improve the organization in one form or another. The facilitator needs to challenge the group in developing these objectives.
Since the gathering of these Strategic Objectives is a brainstorming exercise, they do not need to be in any particular order; it’s just important to capture the ideas on paper. The Strategic Planning process may end up revealing ways to improve existing products or services and/or ideas for new product and service offerings. Just remember all of those ideas are captured through feedback from all levels of the organization, not just senior management.
So now that we have the Strategic Objectives, what do we do with them? Stay tuned . . .
Larry Martin is a guest blogger for www.tuoutreach.com. Larry is a Senior Project Manager with Towson University’s Center for Applied IT. During his 28 years in the project management field he has managed a wide-range of projects and has guided numerous state agencies and departments through the Strategic Planning process.

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