Change #1:  Open it Up

It is more important than ever to get as much involvement as possible from the entire organization.  Strategic planning should not be the sole province of the board of directors and a handful of senior staff.  The more you can involve—and I mean truly involve—in the creation of the plan those who will be accountable for actually executing it, the more commitment (as opposed to mere compliance) you will obtain.  People like to see their “fingerprints” on something they are being charged with carrying out. 

Change #2:  Plan for Less, Get More

Do you still use a five to ten year cycle for your planning horizon?  I now recommend that my clients look only two or three years into the future to set their vision.  Change is happening much too quickly for there to be accuracy in planning beyond that.  There isn’t “visibility,” as you might hear the pundits say.  People truly can’t envision a longer future.  Twelve months ago, could you—or anyone—have predicted the world we find ourselves in today?  Set the vision two to three years out; then couple that with a very concrete, practical action plan for the next twelve months. 

Change #3:  Hone on the Range

Instead of talking about a mountain for the vision, I should really call it a mountain range.  The vision for future success is rarely a singular point in the future.  I used to spend quite a bit of time during and after a strategic planning session working with the board or a sub-committee to refine a mission and/or vision statement that would be “suitable for lamination.”  I think it is much more important that everyone in the organization be in agreement directionally and less to be in agreement literally.  I have found that the conversation sparked is more important than the actual statement we developed (which always ended up reading as though it had been created by a committee … because, in fact, it had!).

Change #4:  Begin at the End

I was trained as a strategic planning consultant to begin with a very clear picture of where you are today.  “How can you effectively plan for the future without the hard, cold reality of your current state?” some ask.  I say that most boards and staff are acutely aware of the difficulties of their current state.  My experience has shown that they are better served to think aspirationally first.  Now, in almost every case (the exception being when there are extremely divergent views of the current state), I begin with the end in mind, creating the vision for the future.  Once this picture is clearly in each person’s mind, I assure you a more targeted, accurate assessment will follow.

Change #5:  Swat the SWOT

This may be heresy in some strategic planning circles, but I have switched from the conventional SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis to the lesser-known but much more effective Force Field Analysis for assessing the current reality.  I simply facilitate the identification and discussion of those forces working for and against our success in making this vision a reality.  Too often with the SWOT (and I know you have all been there), what should have been a healthy dialog denigrated into unhealthy conflict over which box to put something in. Was it a strength or an opportunity? A weakness or a threat?  Instead, through a deeper level of conversation, we found that in fact the same factor could be both positive and negative, and thus we could focus the majority of our attention on how to address it.

By making these changes to your annual strategic planning session, you will develop a plan that gets the whole organization aiming in the same direction and catapults your results to even higher levels of success!

  Thomas Edison 

Did you know that one of the reasons the population of fireflies appears to be diminishing is because of ambient light or “light pollution”? There are too many distractions.  All these other bright lights keep fireflies from performing at their best. How similar and true for the people on our own teams, if we don’t have a common vision of success to focus our time, attention, and resources.

Scarcity of resources—both human and financial—demands that we focus our efforts.  If you’re scheduling an annual planning meeting in the coming weeks, you’re probably aware that the value of strategic planning is not only deciding what you will do, but also deciding what you will not do.  When done well, strategic focusing can be one of the most exciting and effective team development tools available to a leader. 

There is a well-known saying: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”  I have found that the most effective teams are exceptionally clear on two things—where they are going and how they must work together to get there.  In taking hundreds of teams through the strategic focusing process, I have found this metaphor to resonate with people:

The road we are on is our mission.  If this organization ceased to exist, what would the world lose?   

• The mountain in the distance is our vision for success.  Three years into the future, how will we know if we have been successful in living up to our mission?

Mile markers are the key milestones.  How will we measure our progress against the vision and course-correct if needed?

• The guard rails are our guiding principles.  How will we commit to work with each other to reach that mountain?

Next post…the top 5 ways my approach to strategic planning has changed over the last 10 years.

Myth #3:  The Lone Creative Genius. 

For example let’s take this fellow here – all alone it would appear in his lab.  Want want to take a guess as to who this inventor is?  (If you give up, look at the big lightbulb over his head for inspiration!)

 That’s right…Thomas Edison!

Many people think of him as a lone creative genius, but even he said “Genius is 1 % inspiration and 99%….(you fill in the blank)….perspiration.” 

Let’s just stop and think about that a moment.  Although in cartoons we might see something like a light bulb showing up over someone’s head or a bolt of lightning out of the blue – and boom a brilliant idea is born.  But that’s not how it works in real life.  You have to nurture a brand new idea.

He also said another great quote – that I absolutely love and think can be instructive for all of us… “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”

You might have thought that Edison worked alone —- developing all those patents, but that’s not the case. 

In fact he worked with a broad creative team.   Here they are in 1876 on the site of their industrial research laboratory in Menlo Park, Pennsylvania.   He called it “the invention factory” – because they were always working on several different inventions at any one time.  Together they were more creative than Edison could have possibly been on his own. Together they found success – and over 400 patents.

Just like on your team – each one of you have a critical role to play to bring out the best in your team. 

Because all of us are smarter than any of us.

Tim Brown is an industrial designer by training, and has won numerous design awards.  His team even appeared on a news show, demonstrating how to create a new and improved shopping cart in just 4 days.  His passion is finding ways design can be used to promote the well being of people living in emerging economies. [In fact, many innovative ideas are being created by focusing on these emerging economies].

 He says one of the keys to great ideation is great preparation.  And great preparation begins with a design brief.  Here he captures the power in his own words:

“The difference between a design brief with just the right level of constraint and one that is overly vague or overly restrictive can be the difference between a team on fire with breakthrough ideas and one that delivers a tired reworking of existing ones.”

And I have found this to be true in my work facilitating innovation sessions, though it may seem counter-intuitive.  Often, the clients I work with say they want the brainstorming session to be very broad because they want to “empower” the participants.  In fact the opposite tends to happen.   When the “creativity canvas” is too wide, it actually either leads to too many ideas that are off the mark and not actionable or too many ideas that do not address the most critical challenges. 

As Brown says above, with just the right ending to the sentence – “How might we…” – you too can catch your team on fire with creativty aimed in the right direction!

Now research also shows that employee engagement is a powerful factor in catalyzing “outside-the-box” thinking to improve management and business processes as well as customer service.  This Gallup survey of US workers showed:

• 59% of engaged employees strongly agreed with the statement that their current job “brings out their most creative ideas” – vs only 3% of actively disengaged employees

• Engaged workers are much more likely (6 out of 10) to react positively to creative ideas offered by fellow team members.  Thus, higher levels of employee engagement not only increases the likelihood individual employees will generate new ideas, but also that idea generation among engaged employees can be amplified when it occurs in a team setting. 

What are you doing today to drive employee engagement in your organization?  What if you simply took 20 minutes from your routine staff meeting and used that for brainstorming time?  What tough business challenges is your team facing today that couldn’t be improved by tapping into the creativity of your team members?

Next post…great brainstorming tips and tools!