Do you feel like a zombie as you enter the annual strategic planning process – a member of the Apocalypse movie? Looking around, you will notice the enthusiasm absorbed from the group. Half-handed SWOT analysis revealed the exact list of laundry lists the group already knew was too long and no one actually did anything about it. Then there is a mix of “strategic requirements” or “strategic objectives” or other business plan terms that are forced to work together to play their authority. The meeting ended with those blank gazes, explaining everyone’s thoughts: except for the date, it looks as terrible as last year’s plan. After the meeting, people marched in conference rooms like Zombies, searching for brains that had been taken back from them three hours ago.
Before we solve the reasons for zombies in the conference room, let’s start with no strategic plan or any kind of formal strategy development process. McKinsey’s survey of more than 2,000 executives showed that only 19% of companies have a clear and unique strategic development process. For most organizations, this means that strategy development is a random, crisis-oriented event, if it happens.
Here’s what these guys have in common: “We’ve been in business for X years, have no plans and are very successful.” It’s similar to saying, “I’ve been parachuting for years, have no backup parachutes, and have been successful.” Yes, it’s good now, but what happens when the main parachute isn’t open, or when your flagship product is overtaken by a race? A study of 103 companies with a value of at least $1 billion shows that the first cause of shareholder value loss (about 81% of the time) lacks strategy.
For organizations that do adopt strategic processes, the research shows on average that 67% of managers think their company is good at developing strategies. To pour more salt into the wounded zombie head, only 40% of employees once developed strategies and their relationship with the work. These are the three main factors for poor strategic planning:
1. Arrogance and complacency. After Apple introduced the iPhone, Steve Ballmer, then CEO of Microsoft, said: “The iPhone won’t get any significant market share.” Alan Wurtzel, former CEO of the Bankruptcy Tour city, noted how their management team refused to acknowledge the rise of Best Buy: “When you think you have all the answers and aren’t ready and willing to challenge yourself and assumptions, that’s when you get in trouble.” In both cases, these successful companies think they’re at their best and their current success model will take on new challenges. They were wrong.
2. No translation strategy. One of the big problems I encountered during the strategic thinking workshops and keynote Q&A sessions is that leaders didn’t take the time to transform their company’s strategy into other levels. Leaders are simply revealing the supposed command “strategy now” strategy on the PowerPoint slide deck. A 60,000 manager survey found that the most important variable in successfully implementing a strategy is the ability of senior management to translate the strategy into departments and individuals.
3. The intention is unclear. Revelation: The purpose of the strategy-making process is not to create a peculiar PowerPoint deck for the dog and pee show, a performance that never sees the light of a day. The purpose of the strategic development process is to clearly and simply show how you can achieve some key goals in the context of current market trends, competitive landscapes and customers’ expected results. If your process does not generate a viable strategy through clear tradeoffs, it will not drive people’s daily decisions. And if these strategies don’t drive people’s daily activities, you’re wasting your time.
In fact, strategic planning has become a protective umbrella for strategy formulation, and this is only a step in the strategy formulation process. Taking the time to engage your organization in the entire strategic development process will ensure people are dynamic, focused and confident about their strategic direction. Without selection, the status quo strategic planning will continue to organize zombie-like parades through organizing it, making it a foul odor of unchallenged assumptions, with a decline in profitability, and a habitual way of thinking.
Five stages of strategy formulation
To make full use of the power of strategy, a continuous cycle of strategy development and calibration must be carried out, which must be composed of the following five stages:
Phase 1: Discovery. The discovery phase involves the designation of the strategic development team – the people responsible for collecting and providing input throughout the process. It includes an overview of the process used and work in advance to maximize the team’s meeting time. Working upfront involves gathering intelligence on the market, customers, competitors and the organization itself.
Stage 2: Strategic Thinking. The most common reason organizations make stable strategic plans is because they don’t have any strategic thinking. Strategic thinking is the emergence of new insights about the enterprise. The strategic thinking phase requires appropriate selection of more than sixty available models and a few areas of practice to ensure a comprehensive and organized approach: market; customers; competitors; and companies.
Phase 3: Strategic Planning. The strategic planning phase will transform the insights generated through strategic thinking into action plans to achieve organizational goals and goals. Creating a chunky three-ring plan that can also be used as a door stop is of no value to anyone. Make sure your business has a 1-2 page strategy print or blueprint that can be easily used every day. The reason why there aren’t so many plans used is because they are not updated and therefore are no longer relevant to that person’s business.
Phase 4: Strategy introduction. Unless everyone in the organization understands and applies it to their daily activities, a great strategy has nothing to do. The following steps can be used to support policy rollouts:
1. Development of strategic communication tools.
2. Continuing strategic dialogue on key business issues.
3. Collect and review feedback about this strategy.
4. Include employees’ daily activities and their corresponding indicators.
5. Pulse is performed regularly to monitor progress and evaluate effectiveness and relevance.
Phase V: Strategy adjustment. I use the word “adjustment” because no one in their right mind drives for a year without changing oil or doing brakes, tires, etc. However, countless organizations will do their entire year before reviewing their strategies. We prevent cars better than organizations. This strategy adjustment is an opportunity to regularly calibrate plans. Consisting of ½ to 1 day meetings per quarter, the team methodically reviews key areas of the business to identify major changes and make strategies and strategies adjustments.
If you are still unsure that the form of strategy development approach is suitable for your organization, consider three similarities between the Dead (Zombies) and the Unstrategic:
1. The Undead pursues and tries to eat a lot of people at once – they lack priorities. Not strategic pursuit and trying to achieve many opportunities at once – they lack priorities.
2. The undead lacks the discipline to say no – they will eat anyone. Unstrategic discipline lacks the discipline of saying no – they will try their best to be everything to all clients.
3. The undead don’t try anything new – they will only eat people’s brains. Not strategically trying nothing new – they do the same thing year after year.
Do you have a simple, concise and clear strategic plan that drives everyone’s daily activities to pursue some key goals? If not, pass that bowl of brain to the left.
