Many companies frequently embark on strategic planning and business change processes, but unfortunately after a few years the results are not seen and far from evaluating what aspects of planning failed, and investigating why the expected results were not produced, they are heading for a new planning attributing their deficient results to the planning carried out previously and not to the steps and processes of instrumentation and operationalization that must be carried out to bring these plans to the ground.
Many times, the plans that companies project are correct, but there are huge gaps for their implementation, the way to carry out these schedules and the good plan ends up failing due to the lack of people who execute it correctly. On this occasion, I would like to cite three management habits that are fundamental when implementing a strategic planning process and that are of great value in the daily practice of management:
Results habit
Setting clear goals, defining precise indicators of the objectives set and evaluating people by results is a habit that makes management and employees more productive. Frequently, the application of this habit is minimized and affected by the commitment and work of the managers, generating a dilemma between the intense work loaded with long hours versus the inefficiency of the management. Many times managers are not able to clearly define a group of objectives for their staff to meet them, causing the false idea that defining three to five objectives is little work activity and is usually seen by managers themselves as little demand. However, reality shows that many managers deliver poor results despite the great labor sacrifices they make.This ends up generating a situation of complicity among senior management that ends up accepting poor work from their managers in terms of meeting objectives, at the expense of a managerial sacrifice that really rewards unproductivity. In other words, hard-working workers (in working time and loyalty) benefit but without tangible results.
Delegation habit
The action of delegating consists of empowering a subordinate to carry out tasks of lower hierarchy and responsibility and in this way not only is developing staff empowered, testing and supporting them so that they are trained in making decisions of greater responsibility, but also It allows the manager to allocate time for tasks that add more value to the company and are more strategic. Unfortunately, the idea that the manager must control everything directly in an effort to make himself indispensable and to take care of the position conspire against this practice, fearing that if he delegates the operational aspects, the company may provide its services.
It is on this thought that many managers spend much of their time in repetitive, bureaucratic tasks with little added value that impede the progress of the plans due to the limited time that managers have to develop the plans defined in the strategic planning. It is common to see how the important plans of companies stop or advance very slowly because managers are trapped in the day to day, in countless irrelevant aspects of great operability and that they have not been able to delegate by the paradigms that dominate companies.
Habit of priorities
Defining priorities is a key habit for improvement and achieving results in the business world. Having a culture of keeping data and attacking the vital aspects and not the trivial ones is an excellent practice that will help management to become more efficient and not be distracted by the irrelevant aspects of the business.
Dr. Edwards Deming, an important consultant of total quality, said: "take the facts to data" this expression that tried to value the decision making on data that would allow not to mistake the course, has a common expression that is the famous "Pareto diagram ”. Explain that few causes cause most of the effects, the famous 80/20 or what is frequently found in businesses that for example 80% of the turnover is the product of only 20% of the customers or for example that 80 % of failures are caused by 20% of causes, etc. Many times the defined plans do not go at the expected pace because the management does not work with the appropriate priorities and there is no culture of information and data that support the priorities. The habit of priorities every day recovers more importance,when time is scarce as well as resources and consequently it is very important to focus on vital aspects that allow us to move forward at a greater speed and to be able to comply with the established plans.
Finally, for a company to face new directions, not only is a strategic plan necessary that evaluates the market and all its opportunities and threats, but it will be as important as the first thing that the management performs the specific activities, executes the tasks and focus on progress toward goals. It is to this extent that these three managerial habits regain special interest in order to go beyond words and fulfill the programs designed in strategic planning.
