Strategic planning processes must end in results, not just in a document that adorns the shelves of upper management offices.
It is very often that we run into incomplete planning processes. Even a client told us when we were in the process of submitting an offer: »again a planning process? That never ends in anything concrete! " Fortunately, we were able to demonstrate not only during one but two planning processes, that well conceived, these must actually originate in the search for a north, but must culminate in the achievement of the defined vision.
No matter what type of strategic planning we are doing, whether it is for the whole business or one of the areas such as marketing, or even information technology, everyone must follow the same steps for the process to be effective, and it really goes from saying to done.
Traditionally, three specific stages are handled in the development of planning processes: a strategic, a tactical and an operational one.
The purpose of strategic planning is to identify in the long term (usually 3 to 5 years) where you want to go, specifying your vision of the future, in measurable terms. This vision of the future is accompanied by the courses of action to reach them, that is, the strategies.
Tactical planning is the structuring of the resources required to achieve these strategies and the structure of a plan for their consumption and functional application. This tactical plan usually covers a couple of years.
From here we go to the operational plan, to the list of projects with assigned resources, execution metrics to monitor, and a clear definition of the scope of each project. In most cases it is what we know as the budget.
Many of the companies start with the budget, with little or no formal coherence (because it is implicit!) Towards the tactical and strategic plan. It is the main reason why these budgets have a high level of uncertainty.
Although planning goes this far, you have to go from said to fact, you have to implement all these plans, because otherwise the impact on the business is zero.
The execution of the plans implies starting the activities that allow the consumption of the resources to achieve the objectives. However, the use of resources is not enough, it is necessary to permanently monitor that these applied resources are generating the expected results, in such a way that it allows to adjust the path to guarantee the achievement of objectives, and even exceed them.
This continuous monitoring then constitutes the fundamental point of a quality cycle applied to planning processes, if that famous quality cycle of planning, doing, verifying and acting that since the eighties gave us a tool for continuous improvement.
Without goals, it is difficult to measure and even harder to say what to do, and without planning there are no goals. The cycle is very simple but complete for the achievement of the purpose of driving the business, the marketing area, technology, production, or wherever we are applying planning, towards success.
Your plans must then go from strategic, to tactical and operational, with an execution plan, metrics for monitoring and a quality cycle, it is no longer just a document on a shelf!
