Wow, You Have a Strategic Plan!
So what? What does it actually do?
For the last 15 years, I’ve watched leaders approach strategic planning in the same way. Repeatedly.
They get pulled away from the work. Maybe they go off-site. Maybe they gather input from employees and other leaders. Maybe they hire a consultant to lead the process.
They spend hours—or days—talking, thinking, prioritizing, and eventually pulling it all together into a strategic plan.
Ta-da! Here’s our strategic plan.
Box checked.
Maybe they share it. Maybe they don’t.
Then they may or may not look at it again until next year. Or three years from now. Or five.
And I think we need to call this what it is.
If the measure of success is that you have a strategic plan, strategic planning has become an exercise.
You either have one or you don't.
You either completed the process or you didn't.
But before investing all that time, money, attention, and energy, I want leaders to ask a much more fundamental question:
For what purpose?
What Is the Plan Supposed to Do?
I ask leaders a question all the time:
What does a good job look like?
And when I ask that about strategic planning, I don't mean:
Does your plan have strategic objectives?
Did you identify your big rocks?
Do you have goals, tactics, initiatives, measures, or whatever other language you're using?
I'm asking:
If you're going to invest in creating this thing, how will you know it's doing what you intend it to do?
What is it supposed to make possible?
What are you actually solving for?
Because creating the plan is an activity.
Having a plan is a deliverable.
Neither tells us whether the plan is actually doing anything useful.
And too often, that's where we stop.
Do we have a strategic plan? Yep.
Did we complete strategic planning? Yep.
Great.
So what?
Strategic Planning Has More Potential Than That
I'm not against annual planning.
Or strategic planning retreats, employee input, consultants, or beautifully designed plans.
I'm against investing significant organizational resources in something without getting clear about what you expect it to actually do.
Strategic planning has a much bigger job.
If it's not creating clarity, alignment, energy, and momentum throughout the organization, it's significantly underperforming.
At its best, it's an operational tool that helps people make decisions, solve problems, prioritize work, allocate resources, and determine what deserves a yes—and what needs a no.
If it isn't doing those things, you're not getting the full potential from the work.
You're completing an exercise.
I Prefer Strategic Thinking + Execution Planning
This is why I prefer the language Strategic Thinking + Execution Planning (STEP).
It reminds us of the purpose.
Strategic thinking creates clarity about:
Purpose: Why do we exist?
Values: What matters to us and how do we agree to show up as we do the work?
Vision: Where are we going? What are we trying to create?
Strategic priorities: What matters most right now to move us toward that vision?
We don't need to reinvent all of these every year.
Purpose and values ought to remain relatively stable unless the organization has experienced a significant identity shift—a merger, acquisition, or major change in market position or offerings, for example.
Vision is the north star. Depending on the organization and environment, that might mean looking three to five years out, or revisiting it more frequently in a rapidly changing environment.
Strategic priorities answer a more immediate question:
Given where we're going, what matters most right now?
Then comes execution planning.
Create Clarity, Then Let People Contribute
Once leaders have created clarity about purpose, values, vision, and strategic priorities, they don't need to go into a room and figure out how everyone else should execute.
Let the people accountable for those priorities determine how they will contribute.
Then let the people accountable for the next level of work do the same.
Keep going until you reach the frontlines of the organization.
The connection should be clear:
Purpose → Values → Vision → Strategic Priorities → Goals → Individual Contribution
That's execution planning.
And it gives me a pretty simple way to determine whether all that strategic thinking is actually working.
Ask someone in your organization:
Why does this organization exist?
What are the two or three things we really value?
Where are we trying to go?
How are you contributing to getting us there?
They don't need to recite your purpose statement word for word.
They don't need to memorize the strategic plan.
They need to understand the organization well enough to locate themselves and their contribution within it.
If people throughout your organization can do that, that's a win.
If they can't, there's an opportunity to get a whole lot more value from the work you've already invested in.
This Is Part of a Leader's Purpose
At StartHuman, we believe leaders exist to be of service to the people they lead.
Their customers are their employees.
Their job is to create the conditions for people to do a good job.
And people need clarity to do that.
They need to understand why the organization exists, where it's going, what matters right now, what they're accountable for, and how their contribution connects to the bigger picture.
Strategic thinking and execution planning are one way leaders create that infrastructure.
That's why I don't think success can be measured by whether the executive team walked away with a plan.
The question is what that work made possible for everyone else.
The Plan Isn't the Point
If a board or investor requires a strategic plan and you're creating one simply to satisfy that requirement, fine.
Call it what it is.
Compliance.
Then decide how much time and energy that deliverable deserves.
But if you're investing days of leadership time, gathering input from employees, hiring consultants, holding retreats, and creating plans because you believe strategic planning is important, hold the work to a higher standard.
Don't ask only:
Do we have a strategic plan?
Ask:
What is it supposed to do?
Is it doing it?
Because the plan isn't the point.
The point is what becomes possible because you did the thinking—and whether it actually helps people execute.
Before You Plan Again
Before your next strategic planning session, get clear about the outcome you're actually trying to create.
Ask:
For what purpose are we doing this?
What are we actually solving for?
What does a good job look like?
How will we know this is doing what we intend it to do?
And then design your process around that.
Because if the only measure of success is that you can say, “Yep, we have a strategic plan,” you've completed an activity.
You've checked the box.
But you've missed most of what the work could actually do for the humans in your organization.