No matter what your industry or what your organization’s mission is, the end result of your strategy is the same…you need to achieve results.
Unfortunately, in too many organizations the strategy sessions end up being sessions that never end.
This can be driven by any number of reasons, but a few of the common ones I see include:
- Too little emphasis on feedback at all levels
- Too much focus on hot topics, buzz words, and other shiny objects
- No action plans that come directly out of the strategic planning efforts
The list could be much longer, but I think you get the point that turning strategy into actions which lead to results can get tripped up by any number of things present in an organization.
So, what is the key to making sure you get the results that you hope for?
Here are a few keys that I use when working with organizations:
1. Define ownership for an outcome:
Without ownership, you are likely to find that your strategic efforts are going to fizzle.
Why?
Because with any good plan, responsibility is required to ensure that lots of finger pointing and lack of action becomes the norm.
So to ensure that action occurs, you need to spend a few minutes at the end of your strategic planning stage to point out next steps, assign leadership or ownership, and come up with a plan of action to move forward.
2. Set some deadlines that have real triggers attached:
What this means is that you want to have the shadow of a real schedule and real impact hanging over the people that are in charge of actions related to your strategy.
That’s pretty simple, yeah?
3. Make sure that everything is tied to outcomes:
Outcomes are results.
Make them meaningful to your business, not just something that seems like a good idea.
If you don’t tie your results to specific outcomes, you are likely to find that you accept meaningless metrics as markers of success when that isn’t a credible sign of success.