By now you may recognize that planning is an essential component of successful business. Perhaps you've read the entry "Moving Beyond 'Plan' as a Four-Letter Word."
Perhaps you've even decided as to how you might kick off the process. The previous post "Strategic Business Planning: In-house or Outsource?" covers both options (including pros and cons) in great detail.
In
order to bring planning to your organization as a discipline, you must
commit to operationalizing it. This means making it part and parcel of
periodic business operations, just like payroll or inventory audits.
While this may seem daunting initially, it will only take a few
instances before it becomes a part of business as usual.
Beginning the planning process without commitment from key stakeholders, your organization runs the risk of investing time and money upfront only to find that the process fizzles out. Remember: it doesn't have to be a major undertaking and clog your productivity with weekly meetings. The frequency and duration should correspond with the objectives. And depending on how early you start, the process can simply rolled into all the other activities which correspond to your business objectives.
Operationalizing Components
Following are key components you'll need to take into account, with practical notes on each. Please note that these suggestions apply whether you are conducting strictly in-house planning or working with an outside agent or agency.
- The Planning Team: You may be initially tempted to pull in one person from each major department or discipline. Resist this urge in favor of recruiting people with good general business background and who are known around the office for proposing new ideas. You want visionaries who can think beyond their area of expertise. Keep it manageable...a small focused team of 3-7 people is ideal.
- Planning Structure: You want to have a meeting structure in place before you begin your planning. Try to keep to the same structure each meeting so you get into an efficient groove. A good sample agenda includes: meeting objectives, ideas proposed, discussion, decisions, and next action assignments.
- Planning Venue: Don't worry...you don't have to go choreograph a full-day retreat. You certainly can, but needn't. A two-hour in-office getaway is fine, so long as you really do disconnect and give the planning exercises your full attention.
- Frequency: In order to make it stick, you do need to put planning on the calendar, and the frequency will depend on your planning objectives. If you are about to have a momentous product or service rollout, or major reorganization, this clearly merits planning sessions at least every two weeks to make adequate traction. If you have a huge peak season during the year (say, winter holiday), then your planning sessions may only happen in anticipation of the big event by about 6-9 months.
- Success Metrics: Decide up front how you will measure success for your planning efforts. This could be as simple as including a venue for all key stakeholders to provide feedback at the end of each planning meeting. Or, you can get more sophisticated and identify key milestones along the way, such as increased funding, executive-level support, or shortening your go-to-market runway.
The Good News
Integrating planning as part of the organizational processes, indeed even weaving it into the fabric of the corporate culture, is not something that happens overnight. Like a product rollout, a national promotional campaign, or even the web site, it is an evolutionary process, with course correction and improvements along the way.
But starting somewhere is better than postponing indefinitely, so the good news is that you now have some key information on taking that first step, deciding how you will begin planning, and implementing it as a true discipline in your organization.
I leave you with a quote that reminds us just how important it is to plan:
Ms. Garza publishes this information to help companies and non-profit organizations market more successfully. If you find it helpful, please share.
And if you would like to include this article on your blog as a guest post, we'd be honored. Please write to us here: info AT apexinsights DOT com.
