Guidelines to Keep Perspective View during Planning.
Many managers spend most of their time "fighting fires" in the workplace. -- their time is spent realizing and reacting to problems. For these managers -- and probably for many of us -- it can be very difficult to stand back and take a hard look at what we want to accomplish and how we want to accomplish it. We're too buy doing what we think is making progress. However, one of the major differences between new and experienced managers is the skill to see the broad perspective, to take the long view on what we want to do and how we're going to do it. One of the best ways to develop this skill is through ongoing experience in strategic planning. The following guidelines may help you to get the most out of your strategic planning experience.
1. The real benefit of the strategic planning process is the process, not the plan document.
2. There is no "perfect" plan. There's doing your best at strategic thinking and implementation, and learning from what you're doing to enhance what you're doing the next time around.
3. The strategic planning process is usually not an "aha!" experience. It's like the management process itself -- it's a series of small moves that together keep the organization doing things right as it heads in the right direction.
4. In planning, things usually aren't as bad as you fear nor as good as you'd like.
5. Start simple, but start!
Stacking the deck in favor of a successful Strategic Planning Effort
{ How not to do Strategic Palnning}
It's best to have a team of planners conduct strategic planning. Therefore, it's important to have skills in developing and facilitating groups.
Commitees ( fro example,may have committees do environmental scan,get input from others) Conflict management in Groups.
Conflict Management (this topic provides basics in managing conflict in groups)]
Consultants :You may want to use a consultant to help you plan and carry out strategic planning
Creative Thinking :Very important when setting goals and how they will be reached
Innovation : Very important when designing strategies or methods to reach goals
Decision making : Useful when selecting which goals and strategies to follow.
Facilitating in Face to Face groups : These skills are very important when helping a group come to consensus
Focus groups ; Get input from internal and external customers to identify issues ,goals,methods
Group –based Problem Solving and decision making:These activities are at the core of stragic planning
Meeting management : Planners make a decision in meetings;these sklills will be very useful .
Problem solving : This is helpful,especially when tackling difficult decisions.
Value Diversity : It’s best tpo egt a wide variety of perspectives when planning.
Need Consultant or facilitator to help you with Planning?
You may want to consider using a facilitator from outside of your organization if:
1. Your organization has not conducted strategic planning before.
2. For a variety of reasons, previous strategic planning was not deemed to be successful.
3. There appears to be a wide range of ideas and/or concerns among organization members about strategic planning and current organizational issues to be addressed in the plan.
4. There is no one in the organization who members feel has sufficient facilitation skills.
5. No one in the organization feels committed to facilitating strategic planning for the organization.
6. Leaders believe that an inside facilitator will either inhibit participation from others or will not have the opportunity to fully participate in planning themselves.
7. Leaders want an objective voice, i.e., someone who is not likely to have strong predispositions about the organization's strategic issues and ideas.
Who should be involved :
Strategic planning should be conducted by a planning team. Consider the following guidelines when developing the team.
(Note that reference to boards of directors is in regard to organizations that are corporations.)
1. The chief executive and board chair should be included in the planning group, and should drive development and implementation of the plan.
2. Establish clear guidelines for membership, for example, those directly involved in planning, those who will provide key information to the process, those who will review the plan document, those who will authorize the document, etc.
3. A primary responsibility of a board of directors is strategic planning to effectively lead the organization. Therefore, insist that the board be strongly involved in planning, often including assigning a planning committee (often, the same as the executive committee).
4. Ask if the board membership is representative of the organization’s clientele and community, and if they are not, the organization may want to involve more representation in planning. If the board chair or chief executive balks at including more of the board members in planning, then the chief executive and/or board chair needs to seriously consider how serious the organization is about strategic planning!
5. Always include in the group, at least one person who ultimately has authority to make strategic decisions, for example, to select which goals will be achieved and how.
6. Ensure that as many stakeholders as possible are involved in the planning process.
7. Involve at least those who are responsible for composing and implementing the plan.
8. Involve someone to administrate the process, including arranging meetings, helping to record key information, helping with flipcharts, monitoring status of prework, etc.
9. Consider having the above administrator record the major steps in the planning process to help the organization conduct its own planning when the plan is next updated.
Note the following considerations:
10. Different types of members may be needed more at different times in the planning process, for example, strong board involvement in determining the organization’s strategic direction (mission, vision, and values), and then more staff involvement in determining the organization’s strategic analysis to determine its current issues and goals, and then primarily the staff to determine the strategies needed to address the issues and meet the goals.
11. In general, where there's any doubt about whether a certain someone should be involved in planning, it's best to involve them. It's worse to exclude someone useful then it is to have one or two extra people in planning -- this is true in particular with organizations where board members often do not have extensive expertise about the organization and its products or services.
12. Therefore, an organization may be better off to involve board and staff planners as much as possible in all phases of planning. Mixing the board and staff during planning helps board members understand the day-to-day issues of the organization, and helps the staff to understand the top-level issues of the organization.
You shoud invite all the people concerned to strataegic planning groups.
How Many Planning Meetings will we need ?
Number and Duration of Planning Meetings
1. New planners usually want to know how many meetings will be needed and what is needed for each meeting, i.e., they want a procedure for strategic planning. The number of meetings depends on whether the organization has done planning before, how many strategic issues and goals the organization faces, whether the culture of the organization prefers short or long meetings, and how much time the organization is willing to commit to strategic planning.
2. Attempt to complete strategic planning in at most two to three months, or momentum will be lost and the planning effort may fall apart.
Scheduling of Meetings
1. Have each meeting at most two to three weeks apart when planning. It's too easy to lose momentum otherwise.
2. The most important factor in accomplishing complete attendance to planning meetings is evidence of strong support from executives. Therefore, ensure that executives a) issue clear direction that they strongly support and value the strategic planning process, and b) are visibly involved in the planning process.
An Example Planning Process and Design of Meetings
One example of a brief planning process is the following which includes four planning meetings and develops a top-level strategic plan which is later translated into a yearly operating plan by the staff:
1. Planning starts with a half-day or all-day board retreat and includes introductions by the board chair and/or chief executive, their explanations of the organization's benefits from strategic planning and the organization's commitment to the planning process, the facilitator's overview of the planning process, and the board chairs and/or chief executive’s explanation of who will be involved in the planning process. In the retreat, the organization may then begin the next step in planning, whether this be visiting their mission, vision, values, etc. or identifying current issues and goals to which strategies will need to be developed. (Goals are often reworded issues.) Planners are asked to think about strategies before the next meeting.
2. The next meeting focuses on finalizing strategies to deal with each issue. Before the next meeting, a subcommittee is charged to draft the planning document, which includes updated mission, vision, and values, and also finalized strategic issues, goals, strategies. This document is distributed before the next meeting.
3. In the next meeting, planners exchange feedback about the content and format of the planning document. Feedback is incorporated in the document and it is distributed before the next meeting.
4. The next meeting does not require entire attention to the plan, e.g., the document is authorized by the board during a regular board meeting.
5. Note that in the above example, various subcommittees might be charged to gather additional information and distribute it before the next planning meeting.
6 Note, too, that the staff may take this document and establish a yearly operating plan which details what strategies will be implemented over the next year, who will do them, and by when.
7. No matter how serious organizations are about strategic planning, they usually have strong concerns about being able to find time to attend frequent meetings. This concern can be addressed by ensuring meetings are well managed, having short meetings as needed rather than having fewer but longer meetings, and having realistic expectations from the planning project.
Always First Do "Plan for a Plan"
Too often, planners jump into the planning process by reviewing the organization's mission or then establishing a vision and goals to achieve in the future. Instead, planners should always start by doing a "plan for a plan." When planner skip this step, they too often produce a plan that is not relevant to the organization, unrealistic to apply, and inflexible to the culture and limitations of the organization.
Strategic Analyses -- Analyzing External and Internal Environments
(Many planners prefer to start strategic planning by clarifying the mission, vision and/or values of the organization. Other planners prefer to start by taking a wide look around the external environment of the organization and also the inside of the organization, and then clarifying/strategizing what the organization should do as a result of what the planners find. If you prefer to address the mission, vision and/or values next, then skip to those sections later on below.)
A frequent complaint about strategic plans is that they are merely "to-do" lists of what to accomplish over the next few years. Or, others complain that strategic planning never seems to come in handy when the organization is faced with having to make a difficult, major decision. Or, other complain that strategic planning really doesn't help the organization face the future. These complaints arise because organizations fail to conduct a thorough strategic analysis as part of their strategic planning process. Instead, planners decide to plan only from what they know now. This makes the planning process much less strategic and a lot more guesswork. Strategic analysis is the heart of the strategic planning process and should not be ignored.
Taking a wide look around the outside of the organization to dentify.
An external analysis usually includes looking at various trends, including political, economic, societal, technological and ecological.
What is an Environmental Scan ?
Environmental Scanning.
Consider these Diving Force Impacts.
Taking Stock(very basic overview of environmental sceanning)
Look out ! Environmental Scanning for associations.
Also consider the needs and wants of stakeholders -- do a stakeholder analysis.:
Stackholder Analysis and Consultations.
Looking around Inside of Organization to Identify
Strengths and Weeknesses.
The following assessments might be useful in helping you to take a look around the inside of your organization -- to assess the quality of all of its operations.
Organizational Assessments for Profits and non profits.
People problems masquerading as Business problems.
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