Strategic Planning, as a process for action, is an essential management tool, in many cases ignored with the excuse of being complex to put into practice. However, today, in all companies - regardless of their size and type - it is known that it is difficult to imagine the future of any organization if you do not think in strategic terms, in terms of “what are we doing in the company so that the things we want, happen ”.
For a long time, a large number of businessmen and managers believed that planning in times of uncertainty and constant change was a naive position that led to a confinement of the future. Others understood that, in such changing and unpredictable contexts, it was practically impossible to plan even a year from now and that this was a simple excuse for those who only wanted to exercise control.
Some believe that given the complexity of its implementation it takes too long to implement it, therefore it is not agile enough to accompany the management of companies today.
Many others wondered what other better alternative they had. Thus, instead of opposing it, they decided to put this instrument into practice and today they use it out of conviction and genuine utility in their business management. In fact, they discovered that it was not "the tool", the most important thing. They realized that the transcendental thing was "to be able to think strategically." The forms are then adapted.
They believe that working with strategic criteria and using a proven methodology in their company becomes a “binding” element of the action agreements established between the different managements and areas of the company. It reduces insecurity, changes the criterion of “seeing what to do when things happen”, for “knowing what to do to make things happen”, it commits all participants in “building” their own future, being able to prepare to take advantage of the risks as controlled opportunity factors. Managers who incorporate strategic thinking as a directive management routine, something that takes time and effort, develop the capacity and potential to know where they want to invest and put their efforts to build, step by step, their own future.
Una forma de comenzar: Mapa general del modelo
Like any process, this helps to organize ideas. Always thinking that the central thing is to learn to think strategically, let's see a way that can help any businessman to organize his ideas. To have, in principle, a broad vision of which are the parts that make up the process of a Strategic Plan, it is useful to see the “ general map ” of it (for practical purposes, I have presented here exclusively the essentials of planning). This is, in my experience, the best way to start the implementation. Then many other elements can be added, very important, but which will be incorporated as confidence and security grow in each one of those who participate in Strategic Planning. Let's then make a first approach to this "thought process ”seeing how its basic structure is composed:
1. The definition of Mission
As part of any logical sequence, which tends to achieve an action, one asks in the first instance: What business are we in? or what is our reason for being? By answering these questions, the first link in the chain is accomplished. What is now known as The Mission is defined within the process. This summarizes the raison d'être of your organization, that which, due to its power of attraction, mobilizes all the energies of those who accompany it and gathers all the available resources after an end.
Whatever the type of organization: large, medium or small, public or private, for profit or not, they do not exist for themselves. Companies are means created to obtain specific ends.
Kindergartens, schools, universities, religious orders, the church, industrial companies, unions, clubs, mutuals, foundations, at the moment of their creation, started from the tension that was established between the moment in which they were imagined and their subsequent realization. Defining the mission is to "bring down" the idea of its reason for being. If this purpose - the Mission - is not stated, it will be very difficult to explain and share with others the efforts to carry the organization forward.
2. The Situation Analysis
Once the Mission has been defined that will have clarified “why it is there”, then a task of “potential analysis” is originated to know in detail what is happening with:
a) Clients: Who are they, where are they? What do they expect?
b) The Organization: Who are we as a company?
c) The Environment: What impact can what happens outside of it have on the company?
a) Analysis of Clients. Due to the fact that "within the company there are only expenses, the benefits are outside of it", then it is worth asking yourself:
• Who are your Clients?
• Where are those customers?
• What are they like? What characteristics do they have?
• What are your needs? Are they permanent? Are they occasional?
• Do they all have the same characteristics?
• How will you relate to them?
• What resources do they have?
Pay special attention to this topic. There are many stories of failed ventures, where, once the mission was defined, the correct products were achieved with great work and determination… but for the wrong customers!
b) Analysis of the Organization. If the first figure of the business takes shape when relating the answers to: What is its reason for being and Who are its Clients; The next step to solve is to answer: Who are they as a company, to believe that they can enter or stay in this or that undertaking.
This analysis process will take you to review your company at three levels of situation, answering the following questions:
• What Strengths does your company have to be in business?
• What are the weaknesses of your company ?
• What do they lack to stay in business?
c) Analysis of the Environment. Once the analysis has been carried out to answer: who are, and what are the needs, of your customers as well as who you are as a company, you are in a position to continue with the process and move on to what is called Analysis of the Environment. This means determining how everything that happens in the scenario that surrounds your company impacts, or may have an impact. In other words: What impact does the environment have on your company? The technique, in this step, suggests reviewing the context on three levels:
• What opportunities can the context offer you?
• What problems can the environment present you?
• What Threats may be forming?
The whole context that surrounds it will be made up of different spheres and degrees of incidence (government orientation, economic definitions, legislation, competition, society, etc.), which I recommend taking into account.
Clarifying the mission, and then defining who you are as a company and what needs your customers have are the first steps. Then it is necessary to understand what strengths, weaknesses and gaps they have as an organization, while analyzing the opportunities, problems and threats in the environment. This will lead them to be in a position to consider the next step: What goals do you think they can achieve? And where do you think they can go?
3. The Objectives
Beware of the Goals! They are those that are distinguished from "desires", by their characteristics of being able to be measured in their fulfillment times and in their forms. They describe, in a concrete and measurable way, each of the desired results, establishing points of tension between what it is and what it is desired to achieve.
Some examples will help clarify the concept. It is common to raise “false objectives” by exposing them in the following way: Our Laboratory will have to reach a production capacity of 1,000,000 units per year of a certain drug. The case thus exposed is more of a “wish” than a specific objective proposal. The same company in a similar position, to conform to a "real objective" should write it as follows: During this year, our Laboratory will reach a production capacity of 1,000,000 units per year (a growth of 300,000 units over annual production current) that will be manufactured in processing plants 3 and 4 of Villa Soldati, at a rate of 40,000 per month in the first, and 43,333 in the second.For which it has been foreseen… (then define who will be responsible for each process, how they will do it, and what resources will be available to reach said volumes).
Many are the businessmen who, being clear about “where they are going”, quickly start off after the objectives and end up failing without finding the reasons for their mistake. It is likely that, in those cases, they have not taken the time necessary to build “the bridge” between the setting of the objectives and the action to achieve them. It is one thing to know where to go and another, quite different, is to also know who will take charge, how they will do it and what resources will be available to get there. That is the next step in defining the objectives.
4. The Action Plans
Resolving the Action Plans "on paper" is the best way to ensure the fulfillment of the objectives. These are outlined processes that need to be answered, for each proposed objective:
• What is going to be done
• Who is going to do it
• How it will be done
• When it will be done
• What resources are available to do it
Defining the Action Plans for each objective is a vital action of the process, since a high percentage of the failures in achieving the objectives is due to the fact of not having planned, coordinated and prepared the corresponding actions. Putting together the Action Plans takes time and effort since most of the objectives to be achieved, personal or of a sector, require additional agreements of complementary collaboration with other sectors or people who will have to be involved. In the practical order, completing the Action Plans not only involves your own team but also requires “ interdisciplinary plenary meetings ” in which each party expresses and negotiates how and when the other will need to achieve its objectives within the value chain.
The extraordinary thing about all this is that, as a final result, a “map” of the basic general operating agreements is achieved, where each and every one of the necessary actions that make up “the management network” is expressed, which in a moment everyone knows, to achieve the goal of the company.
5. The Budget. Control and correction of deviations
Although the Budget is an instrument that is not formally included within the Strategic Planning process, and on the other hand it will not be developed at this time, it is interesting to place it as a “ necessary extension and stage ” of this management.
The logical order of the sequence begins with the development and implementation of each of the steps indicated in the Strategic Planning protocol, so that later as a prolongation of all this, the establishment and execution of the Budget is put into practice as a synonym of the distribution and valuation of each commitment acquired. It will also be a very useful instrument for monitoring the progress of scheduled management. In short, it is the interaction between these two elements (Planning and Budgeting) which, once agreed, will allow managers and all staff to control whether they are on the right track, towards the site they set out to achieve as a goal. They do this by reviewing and controlling, correcting and asserting the deviations that may have occurred, and / or modifying the content of the different stages, according to what the circumstances require.
Think strategically
As you can see, the protocol of the Strategic Plan is nothing more than a sequence of very concrete actions that require dedication, commitment and, above all, perseverance. It is a protocol of thought for action. I always comment to my consulting clients that the Strategic Plan is nothing more than “the most complete expression of the will to arrive”. In other words, it is the statement of the commitment made to make the expected happen. From then on, everything consists of following each of the programmed action sequences, having as "action insurance" the alternative plans, in the face of unforeseen events that may arise.
Define the most convenient ways to walk
In the next few days I will propose a concrete way to put strategic thinking into action. That is to say, a simple methodology that, above all, seeks to help to think in an orderly fashion and define action plans with the intention of lowering the risk of going where circumstances lead.
