The real value of strategic planning

By Rick Johnson -- Industrial Distribution, 4/5/2007

I know some of you are so involved in fighting fires that you think there’s no time to develop a strategic plan. Some of you may consider long term planning a waste of time.

Others believe long-term planning is what you are going to do after lunch, and some may even believe there is no value in strategic planning because, as the owner/CEO, you know what it takes to be successful and all your employees need to do is listen to you.

Hello! You may be wrong. You may need to join this century. Times have changed, leadership has evolved. The days of the lone wolf leader at the top who dominates with power are gone.

Successful privately held organizations have gone through the leadership evolutionary process. They understand that today’s leader must create change in the organization to meet the needs of their customers, employees and vendors. It involves a particular life cycle change.

Strategic planning is a key process that adjusts an organization's direction in response to a changing environment. It supports the fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide an organization.
A sound strategic plan can help define and focus a distributor's efforts to move the company in the right direction, using the best methods.

Show me the value
The true value of a strategic plan is not in the document itself. It is in the process of creating it, involving many of your employees from the bottom up. This empowers them to be more effective and better-informed leaders, managers and decision makers.

Creating a culture that embraces empowerment and working together as a team is probably the most effective way to create success. The more people work together and take ownership of the long-term objectives, the more frequently unity and teamwork become a direct route to success.

Time after time I am told by prior clients that the real value they received from the strategic planning process was in the personal development of the strategy team members and the involvement of the entire company working in a team atmosphere.

Strategic planning creates a team culture that is necessary for success. Working together effectively is not automatic. It takes a specific effort and the development of a culture that is supported by executive management. Shared experiences can create this unity and value.

More importantly, without the strategic planning experience it is much more difficult for employees to function together in a way that brings out the best in each other and the entire management team.

It is not a natural occurrence for employees to stop thinking of each other as competitors and start working as a team. It is much more difficult to accomplish than it sounds. However, it is a natural by-product of the strategic planning process itself. More importantly, it fills a vital need if you want to create or maintain competitive advantage in your business.

Strategic planning values can include:
 
1. More direct success in executing action plans and initiatives. This will allow the team to tackle more complex projects more efficiently than just individual managers.
 
2. The strategic planning process allows the development of more creative solutions because it leverages the creativity and innovation of all the strategy team members. When team members bounce ideas off of each other, they arrive at solutions that may never have emerged alone. Seeing things from different perspectives can be invaluable when it comes to personal leadership development.
 
3. Commitment to ideas and plans become an exciting part of the process as employees take ownership of the initiatives. When employees are involved in a project from the start, they are more likely to be committed to the ideals it represents. They also develop the unique ability to pass that excitement, that commitment and that ownership on to the entire organization.

Ideally, the fundamental benefit of the planning process includes the development of the following:

• A framework and a clearly defined direction with unified support;
• A clear vision and purpose owned by all employees;
• Enhanced employee commitment to the firm and its goals;
• A set of priorities that matches company resources;
• A trend analysis that generates the confidence to take risks
• Accountability built in to a control process.

Rick Johnson is the founder of CEO Strategist LLC., a firm specializing in leadership and the creation of competitive advantage in wholesale distribution. Contact him at rick@ceostrategist.com.