Strategic Impact: A Leader’s Three-Step Framework for the Customized Vital Strategic Plan

PREFACE

TODAY, LEADERS NEED A QUICK, EASY, and reliable strategic planning model that will lead to a meaningful leadership experience. They also need a clear, vital strategic plan that gets implemented. They don’t have time to read complicated textbooks. They need an easy-to-understand approach, as well as tools, templates, and techniques they can use quickly to customize a strategic planning program that fits their unique organization.

I believe that vital strategic planning is a leadership experience that can be divided into three parts: your life-changing workshop, your compelling written plan, and your goal-tracking and communication system. For that reason I’ve created a three-part framework that will help you simplify the planning process while saving time and brainpower, so that you and your organization’s leaders can focus on what’s important:

•shaping an exceptional workshop without spending an exorbitant amount on consulting fees;

•customizing and communicating an engaging written plan, which can be further digitized and embellished in social media through storytelling; and

•tracking and communicating strategic goal progress.

Also, I share practical ways to incorporate virtual strategic planning into your program. Virtual planning helped mitigate the impact of chaos and mandatory social distancing required during the unprecedented COVID-19 global pandemic of 2020—considered by some as a disaster that defines our generation. The last global pandemic occurred in 1918 with the H1N1 influenza virus and was the deadliest pandemic of the twentieth century. Computer technology and the internet were nonexistent.

COVID-19 required emergency measures in the form of social distancing or sheltering at home to slow the devastating spread. Practically overnight, COVID-19, a virus with a mortality rate ten times that of seasonal flu, created an unprecedented culture of people working from home.

Across the world, as many lost jobs in sectors such as hospitality and the food and beverage business, others worked from home. Employees learned how to stay connected through virtual meetings, social media, and online technology. Courses were taught, church services were held, and meetings were convened online. Resources were shared through social media. Universities quickly pivoted from traditional classrooms to providing online classes through Zoom and other technologies.

Virtual meeting technology undoubtedly will continue to evolve as a result of the COVID-19 global pandemic. Through Strategic Impact I offer novel approaches to virtual strategic planning, including global panels, virtual discussions, war rooms, and big rooms for emergency strategy shaping, where employees can gather physically as well as remotely to address urgent situations requiring strategy and execution.

Unlike other strategic planning books, Strategic Impact declutters the process into a three-part framework or formula: the Strategic Planning Workshop (the shared leadership experience), the Written Strategic Plan (the shared story of strategic intent, shared digitally and with social media as well as in traditional print formats), and the System for Tracking and Communicating Results (the shared goal outcomes, or strategic impact).

Strategic Impact is a no-nonsense strategic planning how-to resource. The framework is time-tested and delivers results. You’ll find client-approved strategic planning tools, tips, and techniques that can be used in hundreds of settings including corporate, nonprofit, trade association, small business, and start-ups. You can customize my vital workshop, written plan, and tracking templates, as well as select from a variety of tools and techniques to enhance your strategic planning program.

Strategic Impact will be especially helpful to the more than 98 percent of all US and worldwide businesses considered as small—up to twenty employees, according to the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council.¹ Most of these organizations are unable to hire expensive consultants. Some are in dire financial stress where a strategic plan was needed yesterday.

Vital strategic plans are shaped by an organization’s vital leaders, through a vital process. You are creating a vital leadership experience leading to your organization’s future. Equally as important, you’re shaping the destiny of many lives impacted by your organization.

I offer you a life-changing, legacy-shaping strategic planning experience that gets implemented and delivers results. Let’s get started!

—Carol A. Poore, Ph.D., MBA

President, Poore & Associates Strategic Planning

Phoenix, Arizona

January 5, 2021

INTRODUCTION

STRATEGIC PLANNING AS A LIFE-CHANGING LEADERSHIP EXPERIENCE

I DEVELOPED MY STRATEGIC PLANNING MUSCLE as a senior analyst at Salt River Project in Arizona, one of the largest public power and water companies in the United States—and where I saw experts spend their entire careers building thirty-year water resource plans. Few businesses present the unique dichotomy of straddling both long-and short-term planning perspectives.

As the Phoenix metro area was predicted to more than double in size within three decades, the organization needed to forecast an adequate supply of water and power to meet long-term demand. Also, the utility needed to be nimble to compete with new energy competitors and the possibility of utility deregulation not seen in its century of operations. I was able to introduce innovative strategic planning techniques such as diverse thought leader forums. I developed skills in bringing together executive teams spanning organizational boundaries to examine industry trends, emerging threats, and competitive intelligence.

In this public utility environment, I discovered the thrill of witnessing leaders thinking deeply and collectively about the future of their organization. I saw firsthand how interdisciplinary brainpower became the most vital part of the strategic planning process. I learned how well-curated activities and important conversations could help the executive team put aside individual agendas and unify their focus on the future.

This valuable experience provided great insight as I moved into an executive position as vice provost at Arizona State University. The idea of including external strategic planning guest participants for the institutional advancement division was unheard of. I knew that candid constituent input was critically important to help the university’s institutional advancement department be attuned to community needs and hopes, and to use this valuable input to shape strategic goals. Within a few years, my assigned campus featuring four colleges doubled in student enrollment—and tripled in donor contributions.

A few years later, I served as a nonprofit healthcare president and CEO. The organization was in its second decade with many opportunities ahead, but it lacked a strategic plan. I worked closely with my board of directors to change that.

My first strategic plan served as a beacon of light for the agency’s survival during the chaotic financial downturn of 2008 through 2011. In 2013, my second strategic plan led to the successful development of a 55,000-square-foot community health and research center supported by private donor investments and a multimillion-dollar municipal bond. Both strategic plans began the same way—with an engaging board and executive planning workshop, followed by a well-written plan that was rigorously tracked, discussed with board and staff, and communicated externally.

My experience led to a success framework for many other planning projects resulting in strategic impact, including one for a city’s ten-year general plan approved by city voters. Leading up to the vote, hundreds of community engagement workshops and website interactions were hosted for input gathering. This was followed by writing and community vetting processes. The final written plan was managed and tracked by city planning department staff.

Through the years, I’ve learned that strategic planning is an intense human experience. And that’s why I wrote this book.

YOU ARE A LIFE CHANGER

So . . . you’re the one responsible for leading your organization’s strategic plan.

Whether you’re an executive, a consultant, an emerging leader, or a board member, if you are in charge of your organization’s strategic plan, I wrote this book for you—the strategic planning genius. The organization you’re planning for may be a client—or it may be the company where you work. No matter what type of organization it is, you’re going to be a life changer for it.

All types of organizations need strategic plans, but it’s crucial to be aware that there is a minefield of unsuccessful approaches to this planning. I’m a strategic planning executive and consultant who has worked for nearly three decades with corporate, nonprofit, governing, and trade-association clients. Along the way, I’ve heard my share of nightmare strategic planning stories. In today’s world, no organization can afford scenarios that give strategic planning a bad rap.

All-Too-Common Strategic Planning Nightmares

•The poorly facilitated workshop where leaders are brought together with unskilled facilitation and end up wasting time analyzing and arguing about operational tactics while the company forges ahead in the wrong direction.

•The hyped-up planning event filled with rhetoric but no follow-up. The workshop seemed too good to be true . . . and in fact, it was!

•The workshop where the CEO or members of the executive team arrive late or not at all. Or, they arrive but are constantly stepping out of the room to take phone calls.

•The grandiose strategic plan put together by a corporate planning department where goals may be gilded and set in stone but are never effectively communicated, tracked, or tied to departments, actions, dates, or people.

•The mystery plan, where a tight circle of executives meet in secret. Their covert mission ends with the plan being sprung on the employees. The planning team is justifiably stunned by management’s complete lack of transparency, and views the whole operation with a healthy dose of suspicion.

•The company that pursues a strategic plan as a formality, and assigns someone to go write the plan. The resulting plan is an isolated, inauthentic bunch of boring documents—read by no one—and quickly becomes a shelf ornament, just as it was designed to be.

•Finally, there’s the prolonged, stalled, or completely shut down strategic planning process that results in no plan but costs lots of time and money. This occurs when expensive strategic planning consultants drag out the process for months and charge outrageous fees as they conduct unproductive meetings.

If any of this sounds familiar, read on. My intent in writing this book is twofold.

First, I will offer you an exciting, three-part strategic planning framework for your organization in a way that will transform what is normally a dreaded obligation into a vital and unifying leadership team experience crucial to your company’s future.

Second, I will help you create a useful strategic plan that gets implemented and moves your company forward to great success.

I’ll do both of these things while debunking the myth that strategic planning requires expensive consultants and budget-breaking, complicated planning processes (seemingly led by the Wizard of Oz behind a curtain).

A THREE-PART FRAMEWORK FOR GOING FORWARD

Strategic Impact provides a three-part framework to guide your planning focus.

1. Customizable Structure for Your Strategic Planning Workshop

A customizable structure for a vibrant workshop will help you develop a meaningful strategic planning leadership experience that is expertly custom crafted for your organization. This workshop structure includes insights and new opportunities for a hybrid state of strategic planning, where meetings may be held virtually as well as in person, driven by our world’s distributed, work-from-home environment that became essential during the COVID-19 global pandemic.

2. Customizable Written Strategic Plan Framework

An easy-to-use-and-adapt written plan framework will aid in producing your organization’s unique and customized written strategic plan, both in hard copy and digital formats.

3. Practical and Customizable System for Tracking and Communicating Results

Strategic Impact covers what most strategic planning primers completely miss—support for your organization’s implementation program. Implementation includes the means to track, communicate, and celebrate your organization’s strategic planning results, and do it in a way that is meaningful and practical for your organization.

You are the strategic planning expert. Unlike complicated strategic planning textbooks, this book supports you—the person who is responsible and in the life-changing business—to guide your organization through each of the three critical parts of a vital strategic planning process: your workshop, your written plan, and your tracking and communication system.

And by doing this process well, you will help your organization simplify the process, save time, and cut unnecessary planning costs.

I believe that the genius of Strategic Impact is the part played by you, the curator or facilitator. Even more essential, your genius will help unlock the collective genius of your organization, or the client organizations you serve. I suggest reading chapter 1 and then jumping to the chapters that are most useful for you and your organization.

CHAPTER 1

IT’S TIME TO SIMPLIFY THE PROCESS

MOST EXECUTIVES SAY THEY DREAD STRATEGIC planning. Yet truly effective strategic planning should be life changing for the participants and life giving for the organization. Strategic planning studies during the past two decades have shown that more than half of global company executives are very dissatisfied with their organization’s strategic planning programs. Less than 20 percent of employees—one in five—have a good understanding of their company’s strategy and direction.¹ Leaders commonly describe strategic planning with words such as:

•being lost in a haze, with no way out

•boring

•too complicated

•creating a shelf ornament

•lofty, but no implementation

•a mysterious process

•paying more than $300,000 to a management consulting firm that didn’t know what it was doing.

So what do we need to do?

Most executives are excellent at running their organizations, but may not be quite sure how to develop an exciting leadership experience that will lead to a successful strategic plan and—most crucial—implementation. It’s important to consider your strategic plan as your company’s grand employee engagement tool leading to strategic impact for the organization, as well as for each individual employee.

Strategic impact is the ability to significantly and positively influence the future by achieving goals.

STRATEGIC IMPACT IS THE ABILITY OF: AN ORGANIZATION, BUSINESS UNIT, DEPARTMENT, AND EVERY EMPLOYEE TO SIGNIFICANTLY AND POSITIVELY INFLUENCE THE FUTURE BY ACHIEVING GOALS.

According to a recent employee mindset study, only one out of every ten employees says their overall work experience significantly exceeds their expectations. Only 38 percent would consider their employee experience as awesome or great.² With a clear and compelling strategic plan combined with management training to help those in supervisory roles be equipped to share, regularly discuss, and track the plan throughout the organization, leaders can help employees understand how their work connects to their organization’s purpose and creates strategic impact.

Employees want to know how their work connects to their organization’s future success. They not only want to be passionate about their work; they also want an employee experience that will move them toward a business partnership culture where each employee views their work as an entrepreneur does—as their own business. This kind of mindset creates loyalty and stronger partnerships with managers and team members.

Strategic planning should be a legacy-making, destiny-defining experience for company leaders and employees. It’s time to simplify the strategic planning process and, equally important, create richer, more meaningful strategic planning experiences.

WHAT IS STRATEGIC PLANNING?

The strategic planning process is a structured method of identifying and establishing a long-term vision for an organization to achieve its desired strategic goals. The process includes defining the organization’s vision and mission; developing strategic goals; crafting action steps to realize those goals; and developing plans for action, monitoring, and accountability.³ In addition, I believe vital strategic planning includes effectively communicating with—and celebrating results with—employees as well as with external audiences.

It’s been said that the twin hallmarks of strategic planning are the great size of the decisions, and their long-term significance over many years. Strategic planning should not be confused with business planning, annual operational planning, forecasting, or budgeting.⁴

What is strategy? Strategy is the process of making choices about the business you’re in, what you’re delivering, as well as what your organization has no intention of providing. Strategy is a framework for making decisions about how goals will be accomplished and deliver value and competitive edge, for which customers or service clients are willing to pay.

Strategic planning includes difficult strategy choices—choices about the how that drive market differentiation and competitive advantage, as well as choices that enable an organization to operate with revenue and profits. Difficult strategy choices could include capital investments, marketing methods defining how you will reach customers, and sales approaches such as how products, programs, and services will be delivered.

Clearly, strategic plans differ from operational plans, marketing plans, and business plans.

The most important difference between a written strategic plan and an operational plan is its time frame. Strategic plans feature longer-term goals than operational plans and are usually focused on a three-year time horizon. Some market sectors, such as information technology, may require shorter strategic plan time frames.

The essential elements of a strategic plan include a thorough review of the external environment impacting your organization, a description of the current state of your organization, a description of the desired future within a three-year period or time horizon appropriate for your industry and organization, and finally, specific and measurable goals to help your organization achieve that desired future.

An operational plan features annual goals. An operating plan, also known as annual operating plan, helps you look at the next year ahead and moves your organization toward achieving the strategic three-year goals. The strategy of how goals are achieved, including decisions about allocating resources to support the goals, such as expertise, funding, technology, and facilities, must be discussed with both strategic or longer-term and annual operating time frames in mind.

A marketing plan is a document that outlines promotional and advertising strategy that an organization will implement to generate customer leads and reach its target markets. A marketing plan spells out the promotional, communication,