Number 80 – Tools to Set Strategy

Use Planning Tools to Set Strategy and Direction

Practitioners: tactical, integrative, and strategic

The dictionary definition of planning is an important starting point to better understand what using planning tools to set strategy and direction is encouraging from us. 

Planning – the act or process of making a plan (that is from the dictionary, using a root to define?)
Plan – a scheme or method of acting, doing, proceeding developed in advance.

If we slow down for a moment, we might get to a more succinct idea like this; the act or process of defining a method to establish a specific outcome, goal, or result by implementing a specific action, inclination, or tendency.

Now there is something we can better unpack?!  You want me to what?!?!

The three agreements that I speak of most with my executive clients include perceived market value, resource allocation, and culture.  It is from these three agreements that everything else we do in the organization gets it direction or at least it should.  This is the function of strategy deployment. 

Tools to Set Strategy

The interpretation of strategy into action is the purpose and objective of planning.  So many organizations get these concepts convoluted and confused.  To simplify further.  Strategy is an outcome; planning creates the methods to achieve that outcome.  To create a condition of readiness we must have both pieces clearly defined, communicated, understood, and the next level of agreements reached.  This process is iterated across all organizational levels until everyone has achieved a condition of readiness in every process in every function.

If you have never experienced such a thorough state of readiness, is it no wonder that you have been frustrated with your team’s performance in the past.  Oh, you have been frustrated with your team’s performance, we all have.  What might have been avoiding is accepting responsibility for their failure.  What we need to accept is their failure to preform is our failure to execute the strategy deployment process.  Do you see now how planning tools are required to set strategy and direction in motion. 

Success is waiting for you.  We’ve got some work to do!

Questions For Your Consideration

How would you say your strategy deployment process has failed in the past?

Now that you have a new perspective of strategy deployment being a process, how would you go about improving your methods?

How would you measure the condition of readiness across your organizational structure?

What would you change in your communication process to raise the level of clarity with your own teams?

What process do you use to create clarity in your own annual vision and mission statement?

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