Strategic Planning and Management Insights

The strategic planning process contains various steps, exercises and opportunities to develop a culture of alignment and follow-through within your organization. This resource will serve as a step-by-step overview for the strategic planning process. Whether you're gearing up to lead your own strategy session, or plan on attending and participating in one, this guide will help you through each stage of the planning process. 

• Getting Alignment

Without alignment among the departments and individuals within your organization, a strategic plan will not go far. It's important to foster that alignment early on in the strategic planning process, in order to generate buy-in from your team, and to ensure that everyone is moving towards the same organizational goals. 

Developing alignment is best done face-to-face, but can involve a combination of different strategies, including one-on-one interviews, questionnaires and team brainstorming sessions.

For more on how to generate alignment and buy-in:

While program management and project management are often related, there are key differences that set them apart. For organizations that run programs, it’s important to understand these differences so that their program leaders and project managers are working towards the same organizational goals, and are aligned on projects that support program initiatives and organizational strategic priorities. 

In this episode of the Strategy & Leadership Podcast, we were joined by the Principal of Apogee Public Relations and instructor at UBC's Sauder School of Business, Shawn Hall.

Shawn's vast experience, which includes time as the Director of Social and Media Relations for Telus, has led him to become an expert in reputation management and helping organizations manage change and crises.

When it comes to strategic planning, every organization will go about scheduling their meetings in a different way. Regardless, having scheduled strategy progress and project management meetings will remain essential to fulfill your organizational goals and objectives. For more on how to structure your meeting schedule following a strategic planning session: How to Improve Strategy Implementation with a Regular Meeting Schedule.

It’s no secret that time spent in unproductive meetings affects a company's bottom line. The problem is so prevalent that an entire cottage industry of meeting experts, productivity gurus and collaborative meeting tools has emerged to help teams run better meetings.

In this episode of our Strategy & Leadership Podcast, we're joined by Catherine Sherlock, the founder of Higher Mindfulness. Catherine developed Higher Mindfulness to help people take their awareness deeper in order to expand their self-expression, leadership skills and potential.  This is important for business leaders because emotional awareness is a positive skill that helps leaders with clarity and decision making, which can help with conflict management, team engagement and other situations.  

As we near the end of 2019, it’s a good time to reflect on the year that has come and gone. If you’re taking time off during the holiday season, this may be the perfect time to reflect on your highs and lows over the past year. Keeping in mind both your organization’s goals and personal goals: What were some of the successes and failures? 

Having a strategic planning meeting is important because it will help you generate two things among your team members: clarity and alignment.

Our Aligned Strategy Development methodology will take your team through all aspects of creating a strategic plan. You start by assessing where you are now, followed by looking at where you're going,  all while engaging your people throughout the process. This will foster greater clarity and alignment among your team members, leading to higher performance and goal achievement.