The Powerful Simplicity of Strategic Planning and Focus

Photo by Danny Smith

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. “I don’t much care where–” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat. “–so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation. “Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.” - Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Last week I gave a lecture on strategic planning in the project management course that I teach in Samford University’s Master of Science in Environmental Management program. I will give another lecture on strategic planning tonight in the Sustainability course that I also teach. Strategic planning is a fundamental concept undergirding each of these courses. It should also be a fundamental concept undergirding all organizations; however, the power and effective simplicity of strategic planning seems to be a lost art in today’s world. In recent years, I have seen organizations of all types and sizes either completely ignore strategic planning, make the process monstrously complex, or transform strategic planning into an irrelevant institutional process that is only given scant attention once per year at best or maybe only considered once every five years. Unless a current strategic plan is guiding daily actions, an organization is “flying by the seat of its pants” or always “putting out fires” as it reacts to whatever seems to randomly happen along the path of life. It does not have to be this way; however, effective leadership is required to make strategic planning happen. Unexpected problems, issues, and crises will continue to occur and disrupt the best of plans, but proper strategic planning and a proper strategic focus can pull us back onto the course we were following and help us decide what issues outside of the strategic plan deserve limited organizational resources. Let’s look at a few common failures associated with strategic planning.

First, a strategic plan is NOT a political platform! We have all heard political candidates from all political parties with platform objectives like: “I am for better education”; “I am for jobs”; “I am for a better standard of living for all people”; etc. Candidates from opposing parties often have similar platforms with a lot of vague objectives without any details to which no one will disagree. There may be good political reasons for such strategies on the campaign trail; however, it is a very poor way to run an organization whether it is a corporation or non-profit. Vague and overly subjective objectives might possibly provide short-term benefits if your compensation is tied to those objectives; however, long-term, sustained, organizational success is certainly not the aim of such vague objectives.

Another common problem with strategic planning occurs when whatever plan you may have becomes irrelevant. Effective organizations have regular staff meetings at all levels of the organization where the status of strategic objectives are discussed. If the objective is behind schedule or experiencing problems, the group works together as a team to identify solutions and implement an action plan to pull the objective back on track. Don’t waste your staff meeting time with boring and irrelevant reports of what each person did since the last meeting. Don’t waste everyone’s time making them write weekly or monthly reports about what they did the previous week or month with no attention to strategic objectives. Organizations should not be focused on documenting what happened in the past – they should be focused on future actions! Monotonous details and statistics of what everyone on the team did the past week or month are typically worthless, time-consuming, exercises better suited to the comedy series – The Office. Seek to create a strategic organizational focus instead. It is all about effective leadership.

Another problem to avoid with strategic planning is needless complexity. The KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle applies to strategic planning. An organization’s strategic plan can and should be no more than a few pages. Nonetheless, many organizations make the process overly complicated with too many components and too many words. The longer and more complex it is the less likely anyone is to read it regularly and actually use it. Look for every possible way to make it simple and achieve the desired results with as few words as possible.

Lastly, individual employee objectives must be tied into the current organizational objectives. It is irrational to establish annual performance objectives for individual employees that are not tied into current organizational objectives. While an employee’s objectives may appropriately include some routine organizational performance expectations reflecting the organization’s principles on matters such as safety, specific unique individual objectives in support of various organizational objectives is essential. Therefore, it makes no sense to establish annual individual performance objectives before the organization’s annual strategic plan has been established. You should not “get the cart before the horse”.

So what does strategic planning look like in its purest and most simple form?

It begins with a Mission Statement. A Mission Statement tells everyone what the organization does. It is the basic reason why the organization exists or its purpose. It should ideally be one sentence or maybe two at the most and no longer. It is a succinct statement that anyone in the organization should be able to memorize and recite when asked to do so. The mission statement is the initial “litmus” test for everything that you do. If you are spending resources on something that does not support the Mission Statement it should be scrutinized and possibly eliminated. It is very important for everyone in your organization to know the mission with clarity.

An organization’s values set forth within a Statement of Principles is the second most important component of a strategic plan. The organization’s Mission Statement and Statement of Principles should be relatively static documents that rarely change over many years. The organizational values memorialized within a Statement of Principles are the lenses through which decisions are filtered. These principles define the character of the organization and should guide how you do what you do on a daily basis. Your organizational principles might address specific ethical standards for how you conduct business, how you relate to your employees, your investors, customers, public stakeholders, and how you address various environmental and sustainability issues, etc. Perhaps your sole reason for existence is not just to make a profit, but to serve various societal needs – this would be the place in your strategic planning to address that. The Statement of Principles should be limited to a few pages in length to ensure that it is referenced in the routine operation of your organization. Be as specific as possible in writing these principles.

The next aspect to strategic planning is an annual SWOT analysis to identify and list internal Strengths & Weaknesses and external Opportunities & Threats. This should be done on an annual basis by the organization’s leadership team. This critical analysis is essential.

Next, annual organizational objectives are created to address the annual SWOT analysis results considering the organization’s Mission Statement and Statement of Principles. With limited resources, most organizations need to rank and prioritize the list of proposed objectives and only include those most highly ranked within available resource limits. A simple ranking matrix can be used to score each objective using criteria such as net present value, conformity to various organizational principles and the mission statement. If certain criteria are more important than others, weightings can be used to reflect the relative importance of each. Each objective should be concise and reflect the following commonly used SMART characteristics:

1. Specific: Each objective should specifically state what is to be accomplished.

2. Measureable: Each objective should be designed so that progress and completion of the objective can be measured. 

3. Assignable: Specifically indicate who in the organization is responsible for completing the objective

4. Realistic: I Think an “R” is included here just to make “SMART” work so let’s skip the “R”

5. Time Related: The objective must include performance milestones and/or a completion deadline.

Finally, in addition to an annual strategic planning meeting and tracking strategic performance throughout the year, it is very important to evaluate the annual strategic performance of individuals and of the entire organization at year end.

These are all fairly simple things that corporations and organizations of all sizes often fail to do. I can assure you that there will continue to be storms in this fallen world, but with strategic planning, a proper strategic focus, and the Lord as your anchor, you and your organization can endure those storms.

“Where there is no vision, the people perish …” Proverbs 29:18