{"id":776,"date":"2012-10-18T10:05:40","date_gmt":"2012-10-18T10:05:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/strategiccommitment.com\/?p=776"},"modified":"2012-10-18T10:06:15","modified_gmt":"2012-10-18T10:06:15","slug":"how-do-people-typically-respond-to-the-strategic-planning-process-and-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/strategiccommitment.com\/wp\/how-do-people-typically-respond-to-the-strategic-planning-process-and-why\/","title":{"rendered":"How do people typically respond to the strategic planning process and why?"},"content":{"rendered":"

When we ask people about the strategic planning process the typical responses we get are: it\u2019s boring. It\u2019s tedious. Sometimes it\u2019s torturous.<\/em> The word dread crops up a lot.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not too hard to figure out why.<\/p>\n

Strategic planning can be thought of as a look backwards, plus some arithmetic. What have we done in the last three years? What incremental investment are we going to make in training or in resources or capital equipment this year? How\u2019s that going to affect our numbers?\u00a0<\/em> We\u2019re essentially going to identify the trend of the last 3 years and then add 3%.<\/p>\n

That predetermined orientation translates to a completely uninspiring mood.
\nI recently heard Jack Welch talking about this. He was railing against the standard strategic planning processes because the whole orientation is broken. I want four, you want to give me two, and the game for the next six months is I\u2019m going to twist your arm until we get to three. So we spend the next two quarters with me trying to get you to a three rather than using our energy to beat the competition.<\/p>\n

The orientation needs to be more engaging and energizing. Yes, you need to start with an honest conversation about where you are today. What has the history been? What is the competition doing? What are we capable of? Where are we strong? Where are we weak?<\/em> Fairly standard questions.<\/p>\n

Then you take it up a notch: if we had what we needed, what could we really do?<\/em> If we had the resources we needed, if we had the equipment we needed, if we had the investment we needed. It can be really effective to take off the shackles off and move away from, we\u2019re only going to get what we had last year<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t need to be a crazy brainstorming exercise but a simply an exploration grounded in vision. What would it take to win? What would it take to grow? How do we grow faster than anybody else is growing?<\/em><\/p>\n

From that you create commitments. Last year we did 100. This year given the environment and what the competition is doing probably 120 is out of the question. 110 is probably more realistic. Let\u2019s monitor it on a regular basis. If we\u2019re beating that trend then we\u2019ll up it a little bit. Let\u2019s keep this a living document but we\u2019ll also be honest against the background of what\u2019s happening with the industry and our competitors<\/em>.<\/p>\n

We want to look at it not as an exhaustive financial planning exercise, but as an opportunity for us to identify what things could be. If we make a little more investment here of money, energy, time, people, headcount, what would that look like? What are the possibilities?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not dreadful, that\u2019s exciting.<\/p>\n

Next up:<\/strong> Lip service vs. ownership. How do you know<\/em>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When we ask people about the strategic planning process the typical responses we get are: it\u2019s boring. It\u2019s tedious. Sometimes it\u2019s torturous. The word dread crops up a lot. It\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,5,7,1,12],"tags":[26,19],"class_list":["post-776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commitment","category-communication","category-leadership","category-strategic-commitment","category-strategic-planning","tag-leadership","tag-strategic-planning-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/strategiccommitment.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/strategiccommitment.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/strategiccommitment.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strategiccommitment.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strategiccommitment.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/strategiccommitment.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":781,"href":"https:\/\/strategiccommitment.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776\/revisions\/781"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strategiccommitment.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/strategiccommitment.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strategiccommitment.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strategiccommitment.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}