3 ways to put your mission statement to work
A mission statement can inspire and fulfill a unique role in your strategic management toolkit, but they often play a boring role in the...
2 min read
Cecilia Lynch May 22, 2019 10:07:00 AM
Gaining a different perspective is enlightening. Embracing new influences can be transformational. However, integrating theseon success are ideal outcomes of a robust strategic planning process. However, they don’t have to be packed away as you document your plan and move into implementation. The teams that immediately work to change their operational planning to include newly discovered external influences are better able to sustain strategic focus and accelerate performance against strategic goals. What this comes down to is changing the order of how the business is managed (the management calendar) to align with external factors to better use them to your advantage.
If an organization is mature or if the management team is particularly disciplined, there will already be an executive management calendar that sets a schedule for addressing annual management priorities such as budgeting, performance reviews, and new product or program launches. However, even with this foundation, teams struggle to integrate new strategic planning priorities smoothly without interrupting their rhythm. When organizations lack the established cadence of an executive management calendar, acting on new priorities can be painfully chaotic. This poorly managed integration sets up an environment of frustration and doubt that ultimately leads to the failure of your strategic plan implementation.
However, it does not have to be hard to integrate new variables or chaotic to embrace and manage new priorities. It does require a brief, dedicated effort to identify the new variables you should incorporate and build a comprehensive calendar that leverages external cycles in the right order to influence your planning and managing deadlines. Here is how to start.
For many new to system thinking, this will sound overwhelming, if not impossible. I assure you it is not. It takes a few hours to lay out all the factors that are influencing your business and align your management calendar to accommodate using this influence to improve how you develop, decide, and manage the activities of your business. Once complete, the annual review and possible update will take much less time, and your entire organization will be humming to the rhythm of strategic management.
Next, Show Commitment by Making Tough Decisions. New thinking means change; don’t step back just when everyone is stepping ahead. Learn the three difficult decisions most frequently faced when implementing a new direction and how to work through them with the greatest confidence.
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