Elevate Your Strategic Plan
Many managers, even experienced ones, struggle with strategic planning, often not certain what it is, why it’s important and where to begin.
Strategic plans help organizations decide what to achieve during a certain time period, enabling them to make decisions to remain competitive, prosper and grow. They help leaders and employees stay focused. They allow organizations to allocate resources (financial, intellectual and human capital), identify and proactively address opportunities and threats (new products, technologies, or competitors), and approach problem solving in an integrated manner.
As individual department managers set out to do their own strategic planning, they must understand the overarching organizational strategic plan and make sure their department’s plan is in alignment.
Initial considerations. Ask yourself if you understand the following:
Plans for the organization to grow
How the department’s work supports those plans
Significant industry or technology changes and their impact
Accuracy of the department’s past budgets and projections and ways to improve
Crafting a plan. Strategic plans answer two questions: what and how. There’s an easy framework to answer them—a framework that can guide you through the process.
What includes goals and objectives.
A goal is a target that describes what you are trying to achieve in general terms.
An objective describes what you are trying to achieve in specific terms.
How includes strategy and tactics.
A strategy is the path to achieving “the what” – the general resource allocation plan.
A tactic is the specific way(s) you will go about doing it.
Let’s look at an example from a membership-based organization:
What
Goal (general): Develop a more engaged and supportive membership community
Objective (specific): Create an expert knowledge exchange by the end of the third quarter
How
Strategy (general): Create a platform that identifies members’ expertise
Tactics (specific): Have the marketing and membership departments: develop a call to members via meeting and email announcements; curate the list of respondents; create committees with experts to support the organization’s mission.
Finalizing the plan. Learn and understand as much as possible about your organization and its business and/or strategic plan. For example:
Where your department fits. As a support or staff department such as accounting, human resources, or IT; or as a core products or services provider? If the later, will there be new offerings, a consolidation of offerings, or new technologies that will affect your department.
Position your department. As a support department, position yourself as an internal consultant for the organization based on your expertise. As a core provider, position yourself as a decision-maker and be prepared to provide options and solutions to senior management
Network outside the organization within your industry and encourage your team to do the same.
Use facts and objective data to support your suggestions and options. Information is valuable and will allow you to leverage your knowledge and authority.
Build partnerships across the organization and serve on internal task forces outside the scope of your traditional duties. This will broaden your perspective, allowing you to more accurately represent the organization’s needs and make strategic and appropriate recommendations.
Strategic plans aren’t static. The external environment changes quickly and often. Leaders make continuous adjustment. Maintain awareness of changes in your functional area so that you and your team can also adjust.