Strategic Planning Best Practice 11 – One Priority List

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The cliche 'if everything is a priority, nothing is' couldn't describe a more damaging situation than when it occurs pervasively throughout an organization. All too often, organizations and their divisions, departments, and workgroups work from priority lists that have neither been reconciled nor aligned.

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Strategic Planning Warning Flag 2 – Near-Term Focus

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Executives and managers maximize their organization’s value through transformative change brought about by the effective execution of a long-range plan. Some executives and managers, by setting long-term goals, the achievement of which is supported by a tactically flexible long-range plan, establish the conditions necessary for their organization to realize the significant benefits of transformative change. In other organizations, executives and managers concern themselves with small incremental improvements, eliminating the possibility of attaining the breakaway successes of truly great organizations.

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Additional Information

The following StrategyDriven recommended best practices are designed to reduce the likelihood of near-term planning while simultaneously fostering mission-based planning.

StrategyDriven contributors have created several illustrations to visually depict the mission to programs, budgets, and procedures alignment. The Strategic Alignment Model highlights the alignment that should exist between an organization’s mission and its programs, budgets, and procedures. The Strategic Organizational Alignment Model reveals the typical executive and managerial responsibilities associated with identifying, reaffirming, and translating the organization’s mission into goals and objectives and then into programs, processes, and procedures.

Recommended Resource – The Welch Way

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The Welch Way
a weekly BusinessWeek column and podcast
by Jack and Suzy Welch

About the Reference

The Welch Way is a weekly BusinessWeek column and podcast authored by former GE CEO Jack Welch and his wife, the former editor of the Harvard Business Review, Suzy Welch. These articles cover a wide range of business and career topics offering readers the insights of one of America’s most respected Chief Executives.

Benefits of Using this Reference

Mr. and Mrs. Welch have both achieved unparalleled personal and business success and share their life’s lessons in an actionable way each week within their column. StrategyDriven contributors find great value in The Welch Way not only because it contains step-by-step methods to deal with today’s business and career challenges but because the topics addressed often focus on those areas important to organization’s aspiring to become more strategy driven.

Many of the best practice recommendations found on the StrategyDriven website compliment the actions prescribed in The Welch Way, making this column a StrategyDriven recommended read.

StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 4 – Prioritize the Mission, part 2 of 2

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StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles on the StrategyDriven website.

Episode 4 – Prioritize the Mission, part 2 of 2 elaborates on Strategic Planning Best Practice 2 – Prioritize the Mission. This discussion concludes the Prioritize the Mission series by examining in detail the quantitative and qualitative methods to differentiate important mission-based goals.

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About the Contributor

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal 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.

Strategic Planning Best Practice 10 – Future Focus

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Today’s rapidly changing business environment presents a daunting challenge to executives and managers. Gone are the days when a company’s competitive advantage could be leveraged to bring it untold riches year after year. Technology and the phenomenon of the flattening world have created a new market environment in which a company innovates one day only to see its unique creations commoditized the next.

To remain competitive in this new, flatter world, organization leaders must remain focused on the future. While crystal balls do not exist, corporate leaders must serve as the ultimate futurists; anticipating changes in both market demands as well as the availability of human, technological, and material resources. Strategic planning should incorporate these predictions while allowing for flexibility and adjustments to be made during tactical execution.

Additional information

Strategic Planning Warning Flag 2 – Near-Term Focus, highlights the process and behavioral signs of an organization that lacks a future focus. This article serves as a resource to those assessing their organization’s ability to maintain a future focus, thereby, enabling it to more easily adapt and excel in the ever increasingly competitive marketplace.

About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal 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.