Business Management Articles
Minding your Business Strategic Planning:
Keys to Successful Implementation
Joe Melisek
January 2010
How do businesses and organizations increase the likelihood of success in whatever they do? Like anything in life, setting goals and planning to reach those goals increases one’s chance for success. Adopting a strategic planning process at all levels of the organization can assist. Typically, strategic planning is for the entire organization, but what if your organization has not adopted a strategic planning process? The answer quite simply is that you have to adopt the process within your own department or in your own job or set the expectation for your superiors. The term process is appropriate, since strategic planning is more than a one day feel good brainstorming session.
The website www.managementhelp.org says “simply put strategic planning determines where an organization is going, how it's going to get there and how it'll know if it got there or not”. It is a disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, what it does, and why it does it, with a focus on the future or in other words “increasing the likelihood of success”.
Over the years as a consultant to management and also a member of a large national firm, I have been a part of many strategic plans and business plans. Many of these plans had participation from all the stakeholders, were well thought out and the intentions were good, but sadly most of these plans sit on the shelf or in a folder on the organization’s computer network. So today, as you scroll through that folder and see strat plan 2003 or S/P 2005 or Biz plan 2007 ask yourself … What went wrong? From my experience, the answer to that is simple, it is implementation. However, the execution of the answer is much more difficult.
The dictionary defines implementation as “the carrying out, execution, or practice of a plan, a method, or any design for doing something”. As such, implementation is the actions that must follow any preliminary thinking in order for that thought to come to fruition. In short, this boils down to somebody doing something to make the plan actually happen. Are or were you that person? Are you the CEO, Director of Operations or Manager responsible for the implementation? The fact is that all aspects of the organization are responsible for the implementation in some way.
What can you do to make the plan actually happen? Critical to success is that every plan needs a champion. Typically, that champion is a leader or Board that ensures the plan is initiated, monitored, revised and evaluated. More so, if the champion creates a team of champions at the management and staff level, the likelihood for success increases.
A well designed plan is composed of smaller action plans with key deliverables. Those deliverables have resources and responsibilities assigned to them. The key is ongoing communication. If you as a leader can ensure that each employee at the action plan level champions their own deliverable or action item, then the likelihood of success is even greater.
What if this isn’t the case? What if you are proponent of planning and those around you are not? You should continue to plan regardless of the situation, it can be contagious. Planning breeds success and all too often one hears “they have a plan … maybe we need a plan?” As a manager or employee why not act as the catalyst for planning? Usually, it is the financial information that stimulates the planning process often from a negative standpoint. We are in deficit, we need a plan. Also during the budget process, as the upcoming year’s projected revenue and expenditures land on your desk at the eleventh hour, here is your opportunity to ask … Where is the plan and champion to go with it? How does it meet our mission, vision and philosophies? How does it address the situation we find ourselves in now and in the years to come? What are the actions to be implemented and how do we measure them? If you set these expectations within your organization, you will be surprised at the results.
Joe Melisek B.Sc., B.A, CMC is a Certified Management Consultant and Senior Manager with BDO in Sault Ste. Marie. Joe can be reached at (705) 945-0990 or e-mail at jmelisek@bdo.ca. BDO is a national chartered accounting and consulting firm primarily concentrating on the special needs of Canada’s not-for-profit organizations, independent businesses, corporations, local governments, credit unions and aboriginal sector clients and is located at 747 Queen Street East in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.
