"5 Steps to Successfully Incorporating New Strategies into Your Strategic Plan"

Most strategic plans are not actually very strategic. While they are well intended, they typically provide a detailed list of tactics and actions but don’t provide any clear direction as to what the organisations strategy is. One of the challenges with strategic planning is that there is often a tendency to fall into a trap of just planning without having a clear picture of what the organisations strategy is. Recognising that strategy and planning are not the same thing is critical.

My approach consulting with organisations on new strategic planning projects is in the initial phases to forget about the planning and to just focus on the strategy. What I mean by this is to not initially focus on working out the projects, timelines, deliverables, budgets and responsibilities – this can all be focussed on later in the process. In the first instance it is critical to come up with an integrated set of choices which describe how your organisation will create a sustainable competitive advantage and enable the organisation to succeed.

Strategy is a problem solving tool to enable you to overcome a gap between the outcomes we experience and the aspirations we hold. That gap is a product of the current set of choices (or lack of choices) that has guided our actions up to this point in time.

Strategy therefore requires choices about which things the organisation will do and which things it won’t, and then building the business around those choices. These choices should enable the organisation to create a sustainable advantage relative to competitors / other organisations within its industry.

Planning on the other hand, is the act of laying out projects with timelines, deliverables, budgets and responsibilities. While plans and tactics are important aspects required to support the strategy, on their own they don’t describe whether the organisation has made a set of integrated choices that will enable the organisation to succeed.

Why is so much strategic planning actually just planning without truly defining strategy? Partly because planning is quite comforting. As a manager or employee, planning details the things you are going to control and do – it details the resources you have available and how you are going to allocate them.

Strategy on the other hand is essentially a theory as to what you think will happen if our customers, members, stakeholders etc behave in a certain way – we can’t prove it in advance and we can’t guarantee it, but it is our theory of what we want to happen.

Strategy and planning should be complements – effective strategy needs effective planning but without having a well defined strategy, the value of detailed planning is limited.

‘Don’t be lulled into thinking that having a plan will save you from the fate of not having a strategy’ (Roger Martin)

The key questions to identify your organisations strategy

This section details the questions that should be at the heart of every strategic planning process. By answering these five questions, you will have a set of choices which provides you with clarity about the things you will do as well as the things that you won’t do. Undertaking this process will provide you with a significantly more powerful and impactful strategy than simply following the common planning day processes of trying to do the same things slightly differently or trying to make a 5% improvement to the way things are currently done.

The answers to these five questions will allow you to articulate your strategy clearly and concisely on less than a page and provide you with the foundations to develop more detailed plans around the things you need to do as an organisation on a day to basis to deliver on your strategy.

1. What is our Vision, Purpose or Winning Aspiration?

This is the first critical question that every organisation should answer as it commences its strategic planning journey. Whether you call it a vision, purpose or winning aspiration doesn’t really matter, what is important is that you articulate a clear goal that guide what the organisation is working towards at all times.

Some organisations might just have one statement, some might have a combination of both a vision or aspiration and a separate statement of purpose. There is no right or wrong – as long as the organisation has articulated why it exists and what its aspiration is for the future.

2. Where do we compete?

This question helps you narrow where you will focus your programs, services or products. It is impossible for any organisation to service everyone and be all things to all people. Often not-for-profits fall in the trap of wanting to help everyone but without a defined target market, geographic location, what programs, products or services, and clarity around how your organisation will reach and deliver to its customers, your run the risk of being able to suitably meet the needs of anyone.

3. How will we win?

Once you have established where you compete, the next step is to work out how you will win. In other words, how do we create unique value that makes our programs, services or products attractive to our customers, members and to those who fund and support us.

What key offerings differentiate us and provide superior value?

Answering How you will win is as equally important in the Association or not-for-profit sector as it is in the for profit sector. Many not-for-profits receive funding from government or other benefactors – winning in this context means doing something for the funder that is of greater value than the cost paid by the funder. Competitive funding processes also require not-for-profits to demonstrate they can deliver greater value than not only what the cost is to the funder but also a greater value than what other organisations can also deliver.

Its important at this stage to acknowledge that the Where do we compete and How will we win need to work hand in glove and should be complementary to deliver success. It is context specific as not every how we will win will work with every where do we compete.

4. What resources and capabilities do we utilise to deliver that value?

What critical skills and core capabilities must be performed at the highest level in order to achieve the advantage in each of our chosen spaces? These relate to the range and quality of activities and competencies that underpin specific where do we compete and how will we win choices.

Examples might be the need for a strong brand, deep customer insights, innovation or high level staff competency and expertise in a particular field.

5. What are our management systems that reinforce and provide an advantage in how we create value for our community.

This refers to the key systems, processes and structures that are essential to sustain our competitive capabilities and support our strategic choices. These are the systems that foster, support and measure the strategy. Communication, training and measurement systems are all examples of the managements systems that are required to continue to deliver sustainable value over time.

Summary

Once you have answers to these 5 key questions, you now have an integrated set of choices which of done correctly, provides you with a competitive advantage. With your strategy in hand, you can now incorporate the necessary planning elements such as actions, resource allocation, timelines, KPI’s / measures of success and responsibilities. It’s important that any strategy you develop can actually be implemented – as a strategy that can’t be executed is therefore not a realistic strategy.

Depending on your organisation, the type of business and size of your operations, it is useful to follow a similar decision making process across the five questions at both a whole of organisation level and at a business unit level. For example, a governing sporting association might have quite distinct business units related to high performance and participation. While they are connected under an overall organisation strategy, they have distinct outcomes and a winning aspiration will look quite different across these two areas of the business.

Peter Minchin is the Founder & Principal Consultant of Purpose Driven Performance, a consultancy firm dedicated to the not-for-profit, association and community sector, specialising in strategy development and governance improvement