How to Make Strategic Planning Work; Hate HR?

How to Make Strategic Planning Work; Hate HR? From Susan M. Heathfield, your Guide to Human Resources Vol. 13 No. 75 - ISSN: 1533-3698 June 26, 2012 Dear People: When you make changes in your organization, certain factors are critically important for successful change. These are the big five when successful change management is achieved. effective communication, full and active executive support, employee involvement, organizational planning and analysis, and widespread perceived need for the change. Implementing your change in an organizational environment that is already employee-oriented, with a high level of trust, is a huge plus. See more about managing change. Do you know that I write a new blog post every day? Check out the blog in the center column on my home page. Comments, questions, suggestions? Email Me. Please forward this newsletter, in its entirety, to your colleagues, coworkers and friends, because you want to add value to their work and lives. Regards and wishing you and yours the best this week, Susan =================================================================== Think Strategically First: Make Strategic Planning Work By Susan M. Heathfield, About.com GuideJune 25, 2012 Depending upon your experience of strategic planning, you either hate strategic planning and think it is a waste of your time or you think it's a great tool for organizational alignment and goal setting. I've seen both and I've participated, unfortunately, in both. Strategic Planning Story: Priorities In my consulting experience, for example, I facilitated a manufacturing team that had goals - way too many goals, in fact - to prioritize their goals into "A," "B," and "C" categories based on their strategic importance in relation to their overall plan. The team spent a day on this activity and left the meeting feeling like they really had a handle on their "A" priorities. I returned for a follow up meeting a few weeks later to find bad news. Within days of the session, participants were informed that, even though the "A" goals were the most important, they had to accomplish all of the "B" and "C" goals, too. Ever feel like you just got kicked back from first base to the dugout? The leaders of this team asked persistently why their team never made progress. Huh? When the team champion is giving this kind of direction to their strategic thinking and strategic planning, the outcome is predictable. Strategic Planning Story: Convoluted Process On another occasion, as part of an executive group, not the planner, I participated in a series of strategic planning sessions that required so much research in between meetings that no other work was accomplished while we planned. The product of the strategic planning was pages and pages of documentation that I figured would never be used. Colorful charts and beautifully bound documents in such detail that they made my head spin. I don't know the end of this story. But, I was skeptical. The team identified its preferred management style as flying by the seat of their pants. The cultural side of the organization was not addressed during the strategic planning. The side of the organization change process that dealt with how the team valued strategic planning and systematic actions as opposed to flying by the seat of their pants was talked about, but not aligned with or addressed in the detailed strategic plan. Make Strategic Planning Work Baldwin H. Tom CMC® (pictured) is a former instructor in Strategic Thinking and Planning for the United Way of America and is the past National Chair of the Institute of Management Consultants U.S. (IMC). He encourages organizations to schedule strategic thinking time prior to the actual strategic planning sessions. You'll want to find out why in this article that adds another layer to the complexity of the strategic planning resources on the site: Thinking Strategically First Makes Strategic Planning Work. http://humanresources.about.com/b/2012/06/25/think-strategically-first-make-strategic-planning-work.htm?nl=1