Strategy Planning – While You Wait
The whole concept of strategic planning has become too complicated, in my opinion. It’s reached the point where developing a strategy, as espoused by many consultants, is simply too time-consuming, too divisive, and too frustrating a process. It’s dreaded at many organizations.
Years ago, I had a business partner, the late Jon Phelps, who, like me, always looked for practical solutions to assist clients with fast results. Most of all, we shared a dislike for the overly complicated style of strategic planning that’s taught in many business schools, an approach that requires weeks, wastes valuable time, and results in a plan that people either hate or never understand because it is so wordy and complicated.
So, we created the S-O-S approach to strategic planning, a way to keep it clear, easy, straight-forward, and, most of all, actually fun. It’s a method for developing a plan that gets people excited and delivers meaningful results, and on-time. Jon called it, strategy planning, while-you-wait.
The S-O-S approach to strategic planning is detailed in my new book, The Media Savvy Leader, and it is the style I use today with clients.
In summary, it means Situation-Objectives-Strategies. Add to that the components of identifying audiences, developing messages that resonate favorably with those audiences, tactics that bring the strategies to life, a timeline, and a measurement matrix … and an S-O-S results in an action-packed business plan that can be developed in a few days, builds consensus, and delivers.
The key is to use common sense, plain language, and never getting wrapped-up in silly things that don’t matter, like whether something is a goal or an objective (because it’s all the same).
Filed Under: Featured • Strategic Communications
About the Author: David is a veteran communications strategist ... writer ... blogger ... online publisher ... and Emmy Award winning former CBS Network News correspondent. He lives in the Washington, D. C., area, and works worldwide.
Useful for small businesses, which do not have the resources or the time for long drawn out planning processes.
Thanks, David, for some good tips. One of the things I do is called the 10% rule. Most people are 10% behind schedule. But in order to think strategically, you have to get ahead of the curve so you can see things from the 30,000 foot level. If you put in a little effort, you can get 10% ahead of schedule, which gives you a chance to see the big picture. Strategy is all about the big picture. Just a thought. Best, Jamie Turner
Jamie,
You are absolutely correct – strategy planning starts with that 30k perspective. I call it a Situation Overview, and it must be stated in not more than a couple of paragraphs – incisive, concise but nails the big picture. The alternative is that a strategy planning session turnsinto discussing Tactics, which is planning in reverse and ultimately never produces anything meaningful.
Thanks,
David