SME Strategy Leadership, Management and Strategy

10 Things You Can Do Today to Improve Your Strategic Planning and Alignment

Written by Anthony Taylor | March 13

SME Strategy is a strategy consulting firm that specializes in helping organizations align their teams and operations around a shared vision, mission, values, goals, and action plans. Our strategic planning services offer guidance on how a strategic planning facilitator can provide support in constructing an effective strategic plan that ensures your strategy is communicated and implemented across your entire organization.

Developing your team , creating your strategic plan, and building your culture are all moving targets. There’s no "final result", but rather endless opportunities for growth and development, and benchmarks to measure success along the way. 

As your organization grows both in size and in complexity and as your staff changes over and your strategic priories evolve, you and your team will be required to adjust how you approach your strategy and people development.

> Watch below: Strategic Alignment in 5 Slides

 

Need help with your strategic planning process? A facilitator can help:

 

Regardless of where you are at in your strategic maturity, here are 10 things you can do to improve your strategic planning and execution:

  1. Talk to your employees. Get their perspectives on what's working and what's not working for them both within the organization and the leadership team.
  2. Check in to see if your team is living their values and how those match with the organizational values. 
  3. Ask your managers what the vision of your organization is and how this compares with their own individual visions. 
  4. Do an environmental scan: What will your industry look like in 5 to 10 years? What sort of trends are happening now that might affect, change, or shape the future of your sector? 
  5. Does your mission statement accurately describe what you do as an organization?
  6. What are your top three strategic priorities for this quarter or year? Do your managers know what they are? Do they have different strategic priorities?
  7. Ask your team if they know what the KPIs are that support each priority area. Do they know which specific action items they (or their team) are accountable for? 
  8. Ask your people if they know where they can review the strategic plan and the current progress of it.
  9. What are the current risks and uncertainties for your organization?
  10. Have a meeting to share the thoughts and feedback from all the above (or, quarterly strategic planning team meetings!)