SIMPLICITY

Simplicity – Clarity – Action – Results It is not just a motto but a proven way of doing strategic planning that makes the process less painful and dramatically improves your chances of success. Throughout the book we will stress keeping things simple and clear. People like to take action on things and they want to get results. You want your people to do exactly that. If you are giving them complex and confusing direction, they will take action and you will get results. Will they be the actions and results you want? It is a fact that you will get much better results if your directions are simple and clear and lead to achievable actions. It is a well documented fact that more than 75% of strategic plans fail. They fail for a number of reasons. In many cases the plan is developed by a small group of senior managers at their annual planning event (sometimes linked to a recreational opportunity) and then placed in a desk somewhere until it is brought out for review the following year. It was never intended to be implemented. In other cases people are serious about building a real plan but fail to involve the right people so there is no buy-in and implementation fails. Still others will hire a high priced outside organization to create the plan and deliver it to them with great fanfare. These are the biggest, brightest and most costly flameouts. There is no shortcut to successful strategic planning. It absolutely requires full support and commitment from the senior ranks of the organization. You will need to involve as many stakeholders as possible to ensure buy-in and then unwavering focus on daily execution of the plan. If that sounds like hard work, it is. Anything worthwhile, like your organization or your life plan requires commitment and hard work. This book will show you how to make the process to plan and implement, simple and straightforward. Effective strategic planning and implementation requires the commitment and direct involvement of everyone in the organization. It is highly advisable to bring in an outside facilitator. Even in cases where you have very good strategic planning people on staff, you will benefit from outside help. An outside facilitator can act as a guide and remove the process as a barrier to what you are really seeking – a great conversation. Internal people, no matter how great, will always bring a bias to the process. Look for that trusted advisor to be your guide. There are also senior managers that will emphatically state that they do not need a plan, they are solely focussed on execution. Executing what? Without a plan there is nothing real to execute. People in those organizations are confused and frustrated. They show up for work every day wanting to do something that makes a difference with no hope. Execution without a visible plan is pure folly. Strategic planning is not an event; it is an on-going process. What that really means is that you must commit yourself and the organization to strategic management. Strategic management is the plan, effective implementation and sustaining high performance on an on-going basis. In this book we will take you through the steps to turn that plan on the shelf into a living process. Effective strategic management brings with it the clarity, accountability, trust and focus that will dramatically improve your chances of success. This book will guide you through the steps of effective strategic management for your organization. There is no one process or magic formula that works for all organizations. If someone tells you they have a template strategic planning process that works for everyone, show them the door quickly. You and your organization are unique. The process must be suited for your organization. We will show you how to do that. The steps in this book can be used for building your personal life plan as well. Look for the section on building your life plan. We have designed the book to be user friendly. You can go back at anytime and check specific sections, go over the key questions to ask or just help get things back on track.