Strategic Planning

Leadership Team Planning

Our consultants collaborate with the client leadership team to create a program tailored to the organization's needs. Each stage of the Planning to Action Framework is reviewed to determine what planning steps are required, what analysis is needed, where Strategy Arts' support and analysis is appropriate and where clients themselves will take the planning stage actions.

Individual Stakeholder Input

Individual stakeholders are interviewed before planning begins, helping participants develop their own thoughts on critical issues and preparing them for their role in the planning process. The key points of all discussions are accurately documented using our information mapping tools and are submitted to the stakeholder in convenient PDF form for feedback and study during planning.

Prepare Internal and External Experts

We help organizations identify and use the best available expert resources. Working together with clients we identify the internal and external sources for needed information. We then work with those sources to help develop their input to specifically address the relevant strategic questions. This ensures that expert information is efficiently integrated into the planning process and that it can support effective decision-making.

Research and Analysis

Strategic decisions require information that is accurate, understandable and actionable. We help clients develop the foundation for important decisions by guiding internally-conducted research or conducting it using our team of experts. Strategy Arts’ experience ensures that clients look below the surface to find the drivers most relevant to the questions they face. Research results are communicated using informative graphic and analytic tools that support understanding across the organization.

Develop Leadership's Perspectives on the Current Situation

A shared leadership perspective on the current situation is essential to effective planning. To accomplish this important stage we work with leadership teams in facilitated planning meetings with direct dialogue between participants. Our facilitation ensures that all opinions are heard, important options are considered, and a shared leadership perspective is developed. Relevant information is kept visible and accessible at all times using large format charts that are either pre-printed or developed in the meetings to help guide the discussion and record agreements.

Creating a Time-Based Vision

Creating a well-articulated, time-based vision that is owned by the leadership team and shared by their organization lays the groundwork for success. To accomplish this stage we facilitate leadership teams in creating a vision that describes what success really looks like. We push teams beyond the comfortable, fuzzy words so often used in a vision to identify what tangible and specific things need to be in place if their vision were a reality. The resulting detail enables more meaningful critique and dialogue with the wider organization and creates a framework to guide ongoing decisions. We then help the leadership team determine the important and immediate strategic initiatives that will set the organization in action.

Feedback with Next Level Managers

Extending ownership of the vision beyond the leadership team drives organizational commitment. Feedback from those not immediately involved in creating the vision improves the clarity of the vision. In larger organizations we facilitate feedback meetings between the leadership team and next level managers. The feedback collected in these meetings further improves the robustness of the vision. Engagement of these managers in cross-functional planning for agreed strategic initiatives fosters ownership and accountability.

Organization-Wide Communication

Organization-wide understanding of strategy is important to align the informal, daily decisions that organizations make with their overall vision. We believe strategy is best communicated directly by the leadership team. To support this stage we provide a variety of custom graphic services that enable leadership team members to present the vision, strategic initiatives, and supporting information with the same kind of rich interaction they experience in our planning meetings.

Strategic Initiative Planning

Successful execution begins with good project planning. Planning for each strategic initiative is conducted by the cross-functional managers accountable for delivering them. In facilitated sessions, we help define clear objectives, key project activities, resource requirements, and project tracking milestones. Large format graphics are used in planning meetings to support process and record planning agreements. Planning is done in sufficient detail to support conversion to common project management systems once top-level agreements have been reached.

Resource & Accountability Decisions

Strategic initiatives cannot be effectively pursued, nor is planning complete, before resources are allocated and accountability has been decided. We facilitate and support self-directed meetings that review plans for strategic initiatives and make resource decisions to support their execution. To support organizations in pursuit of strategic initiatives, we evaluate existing low-priority activities and examine whether they should be discontinued. We also offer services to improve the efficiency of other business activities to free up important resources for new initiatives.

Ongoing Review and Adjustment

Ongoing strategic management requires regular review of initiatives and adjustment as the organization's operating environment evolves. We encourage our clients to review strategic initiatives regularly against clearly defined measures of success. Strategy Arts and our partners also offer strategic management measurement and tracking systems to support organizations’ ongoing strategic management.

Implementation Support

Strategy Arts' collaborative approach is designed to help organizations develop their own strategic management capabilities. We offer a range of additional services to help clients successfully execute their strategies, including custom graphics to support organizational communication, and market entry planning services and leadership development programs to support the ongoing development of senior management capabilities.