Don't Let Your Strategic Plan Be an Hallucination!

At this point, we’ve discussed how to determine your action plan’s areas of strategic priority, measure your teams’ successes, and communicate effectively. The final step in the process is to figure out how to follow up, celebrate successes, and course correct . In this post, you’ll learn to accomplish all of this in order to move forward with your plan.

There will need to be regular and consistent progress tracking on the team dashboard and on the milestones in meetings. This needs to be an area of focus, employing a genuine, problem-solving mode. In addition, it’s good to plan at least one half- to full-day session after three months, and again after six months.

As I am sure you well know, what gets measured gets done. The purpose of these sessions is for the leader to keep everyone, including themselves, focused on the right things. Making it clear that these sessions are on the calendar and will not be canceled ensures that everyone understands the high priority of executing the plan.

The team should accomplish the following critical undertakings during these sessions:

Celebrate success. One of the chief complaints I hear from team members is that they don’t stop to truly rejoice in what they have accomplished together. Engage the team in figuring out how to really reward and recognize what they have done. Your team might celebrate with company-bought pizza in the conference room for a Friday lunch, or perhaps everyone takes off for a team outing at a bowling alley or for putt-putt golf. Remember to keep the focus on a team celebration—not everyone simply getting off early for the day and going their separate ways; you want to reinforce the excitement and reward of a true team accomplishment.

Identify where the reality is falling short of plan, and why. If you don’t know what got you here, you won’t be able to course correct. Were the assumptions too conservative or too extreme? Was the data faulty, or was the wrong data used? Have there been unforeseen circumstances that negatively impacted the plan? Has it been a case of bad execution? If so, what was the cause? This is not a time to assign blame, but rather to truly learn from what has occurred and agree on a course of action to make sure that the same mistakes aren’t repeated again.

Replan as required . You must keep the plan real, or people lose the motivation to carry it out. Neglecting to openly acknowledge the changes that need to be made is a slippery slope down to a disengaged team that will not be so quick to participate the next time you want to hold another off-site!

And your work doesn't stop there. Imagine you are on the shoreline of the beach, watching the waves come in. You see a big one approach, and crash to shore. And then . . . nothing. Calm waters behind it. This illustration can be used to explain that as soon as you are getting close to the end of your vision horizon, you must begin to plan for the next one. If there is too much time between one big wave and the next, you can grow complacent and get bored. Keep the team engaged and always focused forward.