Great strategic plans have been written on the backs of envelopes and on napkins. Honestly, they aren't that hard to come up with. There are a lot of smart people with great insights on how to serve customers. Putting those ideas down and calling it a plan isn't rocket science.
And your employees could care less about it.
Seriously. Your employees see your strategic plan as a stack of papers that is meant for the Board and investors and will sit in a drawer without being looked at again. It has little relevance to them and their every day.
If your strategic plan was created to outline what the organization should focus their time on, and it's a centerpiece - along with your Mission and Vision - to what the organization believes in, can you afford to have this indifference continue?
To paraphrase Field of Dreams, build it and they won't necessarily come.
Alignment is KEY
The real power of a strategic plan is in how it lives and breathes within an organization and how employees are aligned to it and your Mission with their actions and behaviors.
Your ego and expectation that the plan should be revered or blindly followed doesn't matter to employees. Unless you have developed such a level of trust because of your, and your other leaders', authenticity you need to sell your plan. You must sell it ALL THE TIME. Most would agree that execution of the strategic plan is at, or near, the top of a leader's list of priorities.
Structures to help in the alignment effort
As you developing the plan, create a launch and long-term sales strategy to go with it. This isn't just a marcom function. This can't be simply an organization-wide communication, a meeting to present to management and expectations for them to cascade the plan down through their teams. ONly doing this is just your ego believing that effort should be enough.
You are developing a service product here with the strategic plan. In order for your service to be adopted, you need to understand:
- your internal customer bases,
- how the service addresses their needs and trigger points to act in a way you want them to,
- the channels that will most effectively sell this product through the organization,
- what your customer strategy is to make certain employees regularly understand its value, to the organization as well as to them, as this service is to be used over the long term
Customer Segmentation and Understanding Their Needs
Your customers are easy to identify, but a more nuanced approach could reveal key, hidden segments that could help you reach the masses.
There's a company called Key Hubs, run by a friend of mine named Vikas Narula. Vikas has a tool that identifies the internal networks within an organization. It uncovers who people look to when they have a question. Who people listen to because they are in the know and they have credibility in the office. It is important to learn who those people are in an organization and sell them to get them on board with the plan, have them provide feedback so they can feel part of the process and, eventually, help sell the service.
In addition, you need to work with leadership to understand what will help sell the plan within various segments. The issue with this is that you don't have the luxury to say there's a customer segment that isn't really a prospect; every employee is a customer you need on board.
Develop plans as you are starting your process. You can bring in key strategic players and influencers to help in development of the plan as well as its adoption and alignment later on.
Channel Strategy
Just like you would for any product launch and lifecycle plan, you need to develop a channel strategy to outline how you will deliver the message and receive feedback. Most of the time with Strategic Plans, the channel strategy consists of a cascading set of presentations from the top to upper management, to their management teams and, in some form, to employees. This is usually done once at launch and then at some time interval to communicate how well the organization is doing against that plan. That's not enough. Each communication only reinforces how irrelevant the plan is to the employees because there's not connection made to them.
For the plan to live and breathe, it needs to have regular account management to make certain the service is getting used, used well, and that feedback is obtained to help enhance the service. Identifying standard and non-standard channels, getting them bought in and aligned and then working with them over time to ensure success will help your cause.
Customer and Plan Life Cycle Management
The selling of your plan doesn't stop when you launch it. If you do, the plan goes in the drawer. You need to have a program whereby you and your channels are regularly selling the plan. How does it apply to teams and individuals? Why should they care and what would the impact be with employee alignment to that plan, and the Mission? How can you empower employees to find ways to make the plan work or get it adjusted if something was missed?
Cycle Management doesn't mean telling people how the organization is doing according to plan. It's woven with stories on how employees are living up to the plan and the impact those actions are serving customers. It's about how teams and departments are working together for the common goal and the fun they are having doing it. It's how the plan has gotten better because of the creative ideas of people in the organization.
This process takes, for many, a change in perspective. Organizations have been set up with the idea that leadership ideas and plans are the gospel and they direct how actions and tasks are handled throughout. There's been enough evidence that such a command and control structure, even in command and control structures such as law enforcement, don't maximize potential. They don't value the capabilities of the organization and they treat people like machines to get tasks done.
Leaders sell their plans. They listen and stay humble to help align the organization. They let the power and capability of the group propel the organization forward.