STRATEGIC PLAN DEVELOPMENT: PROCESS, TOOLS AND TRAPS
Strategic plan development is intensive, iterative and integrative. Many students and scholars of strategy know it by theory, few can lead the process. The analysis phase is a dense forest and can paralyze the amateurs. The formulation phase appears easy, but many times it is disconnected from the analysis. Many strategists still treat vision statements as dreams; we contend they are not. A significant number are copy-paste visions; majority not even know by organizational employees. The core values are rarely upheld, but even more importantly the results, strategic objectives and KPIs make the strategic plans a mockery to strategy gurus. The implementation phase suffers from barriers – vision barrier, management barrier, resource barrier and communication barrier. The top echelon cascades the strategy in a muddled up manner, and the implementers retreat to here and now as opposed to the future we are moving to; with many meetings focusing on the past and not designing the future. The evaluation is data blind and void of evidence. What are the dilemmas that characterize the strategy development process and how do you navigate through them? What are the tools that can lead you to analyze strategic issues, develop a robust strategy, implement it and evaluate how well you have done? What are the traps? What are the tested ways of aligning the strategy, structure, people and process in order to have superior strategy execution?