Is Strategic Planning for you becoming more of annual get together ?

A few days back ,an old colleague of mine was sharing about coming from his organization's strategic planning event.He was feeling more lost after the event .I wondered if organizations have forgotten the purpose of same and it has become more of a annual get together.

Running Operations without Strategic Planning is like steering a boat without a rudder.Everyone who is leading an organization will agree to this but very few leverage the strategic planning exercise as much as they should.

In my conversation with them most of the leaders agree to the need but they as well admit that they have not leveraged their last strategic planning exercise as much as they should .With my own experience ,I can tell you that the most difficult thing to admit is leadership failure.Most of the times it's too late to fix the cause A effective Strategic Planning can help you fix that cause well in time .

When I started my corporate career ,Strategic Planning used to be done on a time horizon of at least 3 to 5 years.But let me admit that with changing times ,I have seen many times the need to revisit this on  a annual basis.The competition many times now even does not come within the industry.Who could have think phones or rather cellphones eating up market of cameras.

I thought of sharing with you the seven symptoms -Dirty Seven as I call them which can give you enough hint that it's time to go back to drawing board with your Strategic Planning Process before it's too late -

1    You are not getting the results  

2    When you feel you see different teams operating in SILOS

3    When you feel you are loosing out your customers or listening to customer complains as usual

4    Work is no longer fun,exciting or inspiring 

5    Leaders feel confused or stressed most of the times

6    Merger or Acquisition or a New team in place

7    When you are complaining about your own organization's culture

 It helps to have a "facilitator" who is "neutral" , knowledgeable about the process and preferably an outsider.Do invite us for your next strategic planning meet.I bet you will get more out of the event.

Read more about our  Transformation Coach Workshop which is the missing link between your present and the future you want to create along with your team.