Strategic Planning Best Practice 3 - Strategic Discipline

Executives seeking to focus their organization on mission achievement act with strategic discipline. By committing a significant portion their time and attention to the long-term direction of the organization, executives are more likely to recognize and properly respond to marketplace changes in a way that fully harnesses and focuses their organization’s energy on mission achievement.

Strategic discipline is demonstrated by managerial behavior that consistently and deliberately supports performance of a combination of planning, execution, and monitoring and control programs. Executives exhibit strategic discipline by maintaining awareness of marketplace trends, preparing for planning activities, reinforcing program execution, and making decisions and directing actions that drive the organization to appropriately respond to market factors. Through these behaviors, executives focus the organization’s attention and activities on mission achievement.

About the Author

Nathan Ives is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.