Engaging Your Organization in Strategic Planning: Do You?

As I have commented on before, one of the most common mistakes in strategic planning occurs when only senior managers, or those in the “ivory tower” is the “ivory tower,” come up with a plan in total privacy and secrecy and then make the “big announcement” to the company. In fact, I would be willing to say based on my research in the practice and experience that these types of plans suffer the most “shelf ware” type of failure from a lack of momentum and participation. They start “top down”, feel “top down”, and do not engender mutual trust or respect. On the flip side of this, engaging employees early and often in relation to what is happening in your external environment, gaining insight into current market conditions, understanding the internal challenges you face, and also to encourage the sharing of their innovative ideas builds mutual trust and respect (which is a gain for the organization), and more importantly, likely will results in greater innovation and stronger, more concrete, achievable strategic objectives and goals.

So, how do you engage your organization in strategic planning? Here are a few high-level thoughts on key activities you might ensure are happening either on an ongoing basis or just in preparation for your larger strategic planning effort:

• Create an overall culture where employees feel comfortable sharing ideas, pushing back a little, challenging “sacred cows”, and where managers listen and share “up” ideas they hear from below.
• Have regular (meaning ongoing as part of normal business) small group planning meetings where you talk about what is going on in the external environment (customers, market,      etc.) and internal challenges and successes (cross-functional work, best practices) and where you continually challenge the status quo. Ensure that managers share downward and upward information gathered and learned. Demonstrate regularly that the senior team does hear from the organization through sharing back great ideas, changes brought about from these activities, etc.
• Announce when you intend to enter a strategic planning process and (a) make sure the whole organization knows that you want and value input, (b) ask each key manager to hold meetings within their division/group and get input, ideas, concerns, and bring those back to the senior team to analyze and consider, and (c) make sure at some point you communicate back (to the organization) what you heard and how that fit into the thinking.
• If you do use outside consultants to evaluate strategy, ensure that they speak with individuals at ALL levels of the organization and not just speak with a few management team members. Also, remember that the arrival of consultants can spread some natural “fear” (fear of dealing with consultants that are only looking to save money, consolidate, etc.) and to be transparent and open about their involvement and create a positive environment for their participation vs. keeping things a “secret”.
• As key managers share “up” those ideas, trends, forecasts, financial reports, requests, etc., ask questions, digest and take interest, look beyond any negatives to try and understand what is driving those negatives, dig in further to understand what is going on so that when it is time to plan strategically you really do understand ongoing issues and ideas, vs. just      going on intuition, numbers, or a survey or two.
• When a good idea emerges, make sure that someone or a small group investigates the feasibility of implementing an idea, include the person or group suggesting the idea, show that ideas do matter and that you want to investigate ideas as part of the planning process.
• When you enter the actual strategic planning process (series of actual meetings), be sure you are including, regardless of title or position, the individuals in the organization that represent every functional area directly and make things happen. For example, if you have one Cxx that manages three functional departments, include at least one person from each department rather than just that Cxx representing all three. Don’t make the mistake of only including key managers from revenue generating units.
• Finally, communicate your finalized strategic plan clearly, include a reference to the participative process, communicate as a whole, communicate through managers, recognize employees or groups that promoted great ideas, and do whatever possible to help this feel less “top down” and more about “our share vision and plan.” I do realize that at the end of the day, some person and/or team has to decide the final plan, but hopefully the process      has allowed others to feel like they shared in the creation of the plan.

This is certainly not the forum for a complete step by step analysis or “workshop” on this topic, but hopefully this provides a few key guidelines you might consider in “preparing” for strategic planning while consciously working to engage your organization.