How often do you review your strategic plan and update it?
For many, particularly long-established, companies this a process that takes place every 3-5 years…
But can you afford to take this approach?
Setting the overall strategy and monitoring performance are key responsibilities of a company’s board, and the plan needs to be a living document, especially in these fast-paced times of new models of business with new competitors from different fields and geographies.
To be effective, strategy plans should not just be kept at board level. Circulate them throughout the organisation, with different levels of detail for the different audiences. Ideally, these should be on a single page, showing where the company is now (generally, the mission), where it is going (the vision) and a list of objectives and goals which show how this vision is to be achieved – these being appropriate for each audience/department – with a monthly dashboard to monitor performance.
Every board meeting should spend time on strategy, looking at whether it is still appropriate or needs tweaking, updating the plans accordingly and circulating them.
This visible leadership and participation will greatly increase the success of implementation and encourage feedback, improving the strategy process further.
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