Strategy That Moves Your Business Series: The Power of an Actionable Strategic Plan: Show Notes & Transcript

Post | Jul 01, 2025

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***Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business*: Strategy That Moves Your Business Series: The Power of an Actionable Strategic Plan**

Today, we’re kicking off our Strategy That Moves Your Business series with our 1st episode on The Power of an Actionable Strategic Plan. Many of you go through a strategic planning process yearly. It can be a lot of fun and hours of great brainstorming, but how much actually gets rolled out the way you planned? We’ve revamped the process to make strategic planning deliver on the real objective: an actionable strategy that moves your business. In this episode, you’ll hear what makes our strategic planning process different, how to go through the planning process, the value of continued progress checks, and common pitfalls. Let’s get planning! Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

How the Forthright Business strategic planning model is different
Not everyone gets a vote, but everyone wants to be heard
Having an iterative plan makes it easier for decision makers to say yes
Seeking out agreement and alignment without bowing to individual sensitivities
How to get the whole team bought into the plan

And as always, if you need Strategic Counsel, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at: ForthRight-People.com.

Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below:

Show Notes

Strategy That Moves Your Business Series: The Power of an Actionable Strategic Plan
- [0:00] Welcome to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business
- [0:34] Kicking off our Strategy That Moves Your Business Series!
- [1:18] The outdated way of planning
- [2:02] Making strategic planning actually actionable
- [3:14] How the ForthRight Business strategic planning model is different
- [4:54] It’s not a lead team exercise
- [8:09] What must be true?
- [9:59] Not everyone gets a vote, but everyone wants to be heard
- [13:00] Going through the process
- [14:05] Soliciting input and insight
- [17:25] The business needs a destination
- [19:15] The small group sessions should be with boots on the ground folk as well as some leaders
- [21:53] We need to facilitate the meeting AND who’s involved in the meeting
- [24:20] The Synthesizing Phase
- [28:42] Having an iterative plan makes it easier for decision makers to say yes
- [33:17] Doing the effort up front, makes the execution so much easier
- [34:02] Is there anything missing?
- [37:02] How to get the whole team bought into the plan
- [39:38] You MUST have consistent process checks
- [42:12] There’s not a science to the cadence, just make sure your team is supported
- [44:23] The common pitfalls of strategic planning
- [47:07] Use what must be true to get through barriers
- [48:43] What could this look like for your organization?
- [50:18] Make sure to follow Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business on your favorite podcast spot and leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts
- [50:32] Learn more at ForthRight-People.com and connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn

What is Strategic Counsel?

Thanks for listening Strategic Counsel. Get in touch here to become more strategic.

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

00:03
Welcome to the Strategic Councsel by Forthright Business Podcast. If you’re looking for honest, direct and unconventional conversations on how to successfully lead and operate in business, you are in the right place. In our discussions, we push on the status quo and traditional modes of thinking to reveal a fresh perspective. This unlocks opportunity for you, your team and your business. Now let’s get to it. Welcome to the Strategic Counsel Podcast. I’m Ann Candido.

00:32
And I am April Martini. And today is an exciting day because we’re kicking off our Strategy That Moves Your Business podcast series with our first episode on the power of an actionable strategic business plan. So many of you likely go through a strategic planning process yearly. I mean, we did this at P &G too. Generally for us, it consisted of a two-day offsite, which was part of some sort of boondoggle where you brainstormed all these great opportunities, many of which you knew you couldn’t do.

01:01
but weren’t allowed to say that at the time. Or you were just kind of refining your numbers or updating your numbers and just putting new numbers out there as business goals for next year. Then you put all this on a page and you call it your plan on a page, right? And then you leave feeling accomplished because you have achieved the objective. But for most of us, that is all it was because when we got back to the office, it was business as usual. So the plan got stuffed in a drawer never to be seen of again. That’s right, which is why this process gets such a

01:31
bad rap, if we’re being honest. It feels like a futile exercise. I I remember personally getting so excited and hopeful before these sessions, only to have all of that dash when we left. Because seeing the behavioral shift in people from open-minded to back to the status quo just baffled me every time. I mean, I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I always was, and I was disappointed.

01:52
So this is why we’ve revamped the process to make strategic planning deliver on the real objective, an actionable strategy that moves your business, a phrase you’re gonna hear us continue to say. Yeah, and I love this. Just what you said that April just reminded me of like when we used to go and we used to do inspirational sessions to get her surrounded in this and we used to go to Google and we’d go to Facebook. Oh yeah, we did that too. Yep, with you guys actually. then you’re like, hey, let’s be like Google. And then we’re like, oh, well, that means we have to like

02:21
totally redo our whole business structure and everything. We’re like, oh no, we can’t do that. So it’s like, okay, another one of those, right? So the whole point of this is to make your plan actionable, right? And it’s still good to get inspiration from other people, but only if it’s going to really inform your plan. So we’re gonna go pretty deep here and we’re going to really share our proprietary process, which we do believe you’ll get the most value out.

02:50
of if we actually facilitate it for you. But if you choose to go it alone, we want more than anything for it to be a worthwhile effort. So we’re not going to hold back. We’re going to give you everything that we possibly can here in our hour-ish podcast episode. But always know that you guys can reach out to us for further consultation and more customized approach for your business. So let’s jump in and get to the power of an actionable strategic plan. Now.

03:18
Let’s first talk about how are Mrs. Me and April’s strategic planning process is different. Cause I think this is really important to internalize how this is different than what we traditionally set up in the intro and why this is going to be so effective for you. So first it is done over the course of several meetings. This is not the two day boondoggle. Now the number of meetings depends on the complexity, but usually is around three to six. And that’s the complexity of your business, complexity of the plan.

03:48
any business complexity that you might be facing. Now this allows time for people to do homework in between. Yes, people have homework in between because we want to have informed sessions. And this also allows them to kind of get that thinking going in between the sessions and really come prepared to have really strong discussions. And then after the session, really have time to process and put it into practice a little bit and then refine it based on what they’re learning.

04:17
This is important to really socialize it because a lot of times people go to these processes with already preconceived notions, validations, assumptions. So you really want to have the opportunity to really think about those and question those. And we’re going to get to that in a second. So it also maximizes attendance as people are more apt to commit to one hour meeting every couple of weeks versus an all day session. So how many times have been to these sessions and people are stepping out to take calls or they can only come for a half a day and so you lose

04:46
the whole power of bringing everybody together in a room. Yes, exactly. And the next piece here is to understand that it’s not a lead team exercise. And in fact, with some of these that we run, obviously everyone is a little bit different, but sometimes leadership may not even be involved except to align on business goals and priorities after those are set by people that are really in it or doing the work or helping to really run the business.

05:12
So instead, the group going through the exercise and really we say we like to keep it to no more than five to eight. Another learning from our past experiences is when you’d, you know, bring 12 to 20 to 30 of your best friends to these sessions and then wonder why nothing got accomplished. That was why. Everybody has to go to the boondoggle. Yeah, exactly. No one wants to be left out. Look at that ego talking. Anyway, different topic for a different day.

05:37
So in any case, no more than five to eight is our rule of thumb and they should be strategically selected for their perspective, their willingness to think outside the box, influence they may have on others moving forward. I mean, that’s some of the criteria that we look for. And what this ends up doing is it brings a selection of folks from boots on the ground all the way up to management. And in some cases, leadership is also part of it. Like I said, it depends on the organization.

06:03
But really the reason we do this is it’s critical to get this broad exposure to ensure your plan is robust because you need the people that are actually doing the work to help everybody be really clear on how the sausage is made as much as I hate that description. But it does help ground the conversation so that you can see around corners. And then like Ann said up in the beginning, you have not just a plan on a page that goes in a drawer, but something that’s really workable and realistic and tangible.

06:32
Absolutely. And within that, it also encourages curiosity because you should be questioning everything. It doesn’t mean we change everything, but this is the time to work on your business versus in your business. We spend most of our time at work working in our business. So this is the time where you get to get out of that. You get to stand up. You get to take a look around. You get to do a landscape reality check, which we preach a lot through our Viginal Leadership work.

07:01
and you take a moment to really understand what has changed. What’s changed in your landscape, what is changed in yours that might be challenging some assumptions, what has changed in the need for the business. You’re looking at all of these assumptions that you’ve held to be true and you’re gonna question everything. And the reason why this is such a really powerful time to do this is because a lot of times too when we’re in it,

07:25
We’re operating on autopilot. We don’t even like think about like, hey, am I even doing the right thing? And there’s nothing wrong about that. I mean, we all kind of get stuck in that mentality or maybe we have questioned when that we’re doing the right thing, but it’s never seems to be the right time to bring it up. This is the right time to bring it up because this is also the time where you’re gonna really be looking at your business goals, your short-term and long-term business goals and seeing if what you’re doing, the actions you’re taking are really in pursuit of doing what’s right for the business.

07:54
Yes. And that leads to another point here, which is it encourages people to see opportunity through an actionable filter then. And the filter we use, which if you listen to us, you’ve heard us say this many times, is what must be true. And the reason for this is it gives permission to explore the opportunity, but also with respect for what it takes to realize that opportunity. So again, making it something that’s tangible and actionable, which

08:21
may or may not be feasible in some cases as you’re going through this conversation, right? You may go down that what must be true exercise and be like, oh yeah, shoot, that’s not gonna work. Or we’d have to totally change our business like the Google example and we’re really not ready to do that, right? So all of those conversations. What must be true also is used to drill down into broader goals and objectives so that the actionable steps can be activated immediately. So again, coming out of the session,

08:48
that energy is carried on and carried forward because there are things that you can go and do tomorrow if you want to in order to keep things moving. And that’s another really, really good reason why these are set up in a series of meetings because what must be true can’t necessarily be drilled down in a couple day meeting. You have to go and you have to investigate. You need to go and see are these things reality is possible or is there opportunity there?

09:17
A lot of times we have parking lot items and we can’t solve for them in a two day session, but there’s no vehicle for coming back and addressing parking lot items in these traditional ways of doing strategic planning. So this allows you to have those, to go and do that processing, go do that homework, like we said, and then come back and have a point of view. You can really make a really good decision about your business strategy and your business goals based on data.

09:44
in actual perspective and not just conjecture what we think it might be true, right? And within that then it elicits organizational alignment, but not decision making. So not everyone gets a vote. This is one of the most annoying things about sometimes these two day boondoggles where when you put all the ideas up there, you let people power dot. There’s no power dotting in strategic business planning guys. Everybody gets a voice, but not everyone gets a vote. That’s all the objective.

10:13
You have a specific group that gets to make the decisions, but what you want is people to feel heard. A lot of times when people don’t agree with a plan or refuse to get on a boat and row, it’s because they don’t feel like they were heard. Now, sometimes people have been heard and then they just don’t like the plan. Then you have to kind of think about whether or not you have the right people on the team, right? That’s the organizational development part. We’re going to get that to in another episode.

10:39
But really what we found is when people feel like they’ve been heard, really addresses 95 % of dissension when you’re talking about strategic plans. The opposite of this is what a lot of you guys do after the two-day boondoggle is you do a top-down directive that you basically just throw out the plan in front of people and say, is what we’re working against, which feels tone deaf and out of touch to a lot of those people who are on the ground or working in a different capacity. And when their voices aren’t heard, it’s like,

11:09
First of all, it’s not smart not to listen to your people who are on the ground working or working in a different capacity because they bring perspective, as April mentioned, that is important to the overall strategic planning process, but it makes you feel like they don’t matter. The organization that’s going to actually move your business forward has to be brought into the process. Well, and I mean, I think also it’s not just not mattering. It’s like there’s no rationale, right?

11:37
How did we get here? What, like, you guys need to walk us through. Yeah. And I feel like, like you said, it’s just kind of like, here, here it is. Here’s the directive, get on board or get out. And it’s like, well, but hold on. I, you know, I’ve been doing this day to day and now it’s changing and I don’t even understand why. So I think that’s a big part of it too. The why is a big, huge part of it. Yeah. Which, and then the final piece we’ll say here is ultimately it does set up accountability tracking. So progress throughout the plan.

12:06
can be monitored, evaluated and optimized on an ongoing basis. I think this is another reason why plans end up in a drawer is because there’s, when we go back to the why, right? It’s like, okay, great, we did that exercise, but I’m over here doing my day to day and nobody’s telling me otherwise with any sort of change in how I’m supposed to behave or how I’m gonna be measured and all of those things. Versus if you do the right thing, have the right people in the room, get the right plan, then those metrics serve in a really powerful way.

12:36
because you can objectively point back and say, oh, we all agree to this. Remember your role in this is X and therefore we need to see you be doing this and making progress against this accountability tracking that we set up together, which we all align to and we need to see progress continually. Yeah. I think that’s a really, really good point. So that gives you a snapshot about why and how this process is different. So with that, let’s go through the process.

13:04
And we’re going to take this from a vantage point of one of our clients that we’ve done this with. Now, we’re not going to name names here about who this is because you wouldn’t want us to do that if it was you. All that being said, this probably accounts for, I would say, to 80 % of what we would do for most of our clients with like 20 or 30 % of it being more customized based on your needs, based on your goals, based on the complexity again.

13:31
Take this and then if you guys are thinking about like, but we have this, yes, we would accommodate for that. And there’s accommodations for that where you just can’t have every single permeation as we’re kind of going through this plan. But this will give you like the 70 for the 30, 80 for the 20. Is that fair for all you think? Yeah. I mean, think otherwise it’ll just get too muddled. We have to have an example so that you can see what we mean about these things. But yeah, we can’t include everybody in the conversation, which is why you should reach out one to one. Look at me being the sales pitch. It’s usually you.

13:59
Really good job, April. I didn’t even prompt you for that. All right, so let’s jump into the strategic planning process. So the first phase is soliciting input and insight. And the best way that I can really baseline this is talking about what you guys have heard us talk about before in our Vigilant Leadership episodes, and that’s Landscape Reality Check. This is really about getting very, very grounded in where you are and where you want to go.

14:27
or as we say, or tend to say, what do you want to be when you grow up? And that might sound trite, but we like that context because it gives a sense of a continued evolution of the business as well as a destination. So it helps you think very aspirationally to some extent of like, what do we really want out of our business? And what do we think we are capable of delivering? So as we go through this phase, we’re really looking at, we take these small group sessions.

14:56
And we’re really asking for everybody to start to share some of their insights about things like, what are projects that they feel are building the business? What are the reputation these projects are instilling? What projects do we want to do more of? What projects do we want to get rid of? And again, projects I’m using as a proxy, but you can put whatever word in there that makes sense for you and your business. What kind of capability and performance limiters do we have? Like, what’s going to get in our way?

15:23
or what is our sources of growth and opportunity? All these things we ask you to take a look at at your landscape reality check, because what we want to start applying the filter to in this, in the mindset, is trying to think about the opportunity versus the limiting behavior, which is generally prevalent when we go through strategic planning. So what we tend to see when we go through strategic planning is we want to do more of the same, or we want to do things that are less risky, or we want to do things that we know we can go do.

15:53
This applies that filter that April talked about, which is what must be true in order to start realizing opportunity that we might be totally capable of, but we just haven’t put the forethought into really thinking about what it would take to get there. Like for example, a lot of times when we talk about growth and we talk about lead generation, we would put a goal out, like what do we really want? If we really want to be a category leader, let’s just say.

16:17
What does that really take? And we could put some numbers on the board about what kind of market share we would need or what kind of leads we would have to generate or how much incremental leads we would need. And then the first thing somebody says is like, well, we can’t do that. We can’t do that with our current scope. We can’t do that with our current business plan. We can’t do that with the current number of people we have. And generally, that’s where everything would stop then. And so what we want you guys to get into the practice of is the mindset of like, OK, I get that’s our current reality.

16:45
but what must be true in order to go and deliver that? And that starts getting the process and the mindset going and thinking differently like, well, I guess if we wanted to go do that, maybe we need somebody who can help us redefine our business plan. Is that possible? A thousand percent is possible. Now, do we want to spend the money to go do that? That’s a different question. What must be true then in order to have the right funding in order to go do that? So you can still using that as a criteria for how to…

17:11
really open up your mind and start thinking more opportunistic versus we’re stuck where we are and this is all we got. But within doing that, you really, really, really, really needed to find what does success look like? And that’s really getting that true picture of what do we want to be when we grow up? What does that look like when we get there? And being very, very clear about that because you need a destination. And that’s the other thing that a lot of people don’t put down. They don’t put the destination. That’s like my favorite Yogi Bear quote.

17:41
We don’t know where we’re going, but we’re making good time. So if you want to continue to be busy and you just want to continue to grind, continue to do that. But it’s always good to have a know our star in order to start to really focus your work. So you know how to orient your strategic planning. You know how to provide the guidance to your people about how to focus their time and how to prioritize. Yes, all of that.

18:05
The reason that we feel like this part is so important as that foundation that Anne just outlined is because it kicks you off by identifying the business goal and then like Anne said, what it takes to actually get there and then what must be true in order to make sure that happens or you make the decision not to go there. And the key here is really to articulate the goal so the entire company feels invested in it and motivated by it. So again, the reason that you have cross-functional teams

18:32
The reason it’s not just leadership, the reason you work through it in this session as you’re hearing us say, so that you’re realistic about what it’s going to take. And then making sure on the other side that you’re bringing people on board. If you do it this way, you have the ability to work in the room to solve for it and then go back and educate everybody else on the why this is important and why we’re doing this. In order to do this entire process and Ann set this up at the beginning, people need to feel heard.

18:58
and they need to know that their leadership has their best interests in mind. People are always gonna ask first, what’s in it for me? What changes about my day to day? How does this impact my career? All of those things. And if that doesn’t happen to the point of some of the discussion we had previously about leadership going off and coming back and kind of just dropping the plan on everybody and saying, here you go, starting today, this is how everything looks with no rationale.

19:25
That is how leadership ends up coming off sounding tone deaf, which then results in people feeling the allowance to just opt out. Like I said before in some of my example, right? It’s like, well, I wasn’t part of it. I’ve got this job to do over here. I’m not being told any reason why I should have to buy into it. So great that you had that session, but I’m just going to ignore it. Right. And I think again, to reiterate, and I didn’t make this point really, really clear in this phase, these small group sessions are that the swath of people from people who have boots on the ground.

19:55
all the way up to people who are more strategically leading, whether they be managers, supervisors, they could be C-suite people, but this is not just a leadership team or executive team exercise. Right, good to bring that up again. Yes, if you isolate that to just your leadership team, you are missing like 80 % of the information and data you need in order to put together a very robust strategic plan. And as April just pointed out, you’re going to struggle

20:23
to get people aligned to it because they’re going to feel like they were not considered in that plan. So you might say, well, why should I have to consider them? I’m supposed to be the leader. Well, yes, but a leader is supposed to lead. A leader is supposed to elicit the engagement of their team in order to do what’s best for the business. So we have to set aside our egos a little bit and realize that the people that work for us have insight that we don’t have because they’re in it every day. That is the whole point.

20:52
really tap into that, don’t ignore that, and don’t feel like this is an exercise that you need to be part of as a leader if you are not the right person to be a part of it. And that’s why it’s so important to have a facilitator to facilitate it, because they hold the team accountable. It is very hard to self-facilitate a strategic planning process because you have nobody there that’s there that’s not invested in your specific business. And it’s so important to have that third party kind of like outside point of view to be like, hey, wait, what?

21:21
I just heard this and I heard this and these are conflicting because a lot of times nobody wants to bring up the conflict that happens when this starts to come up. They want to be very polite. They understand that there is a hierarchy and so you start to kind of get stuck in, nobody really says what needs to be said. So, facilitator really helps to bring that out, helps to connect dots and because you’re in your business every day that you may not see and it really helps them to establish new patterns, new ways of thinking.

21:50
And think that’s very, really important. Yeah. Well, and the other piece I’ll say is it’s not just about the facilitation of the session, but it’s the facilitation of who should be in those rooms, right? Because how many times have we been in situations where the list comes back and it is just the leadership team, all the leadership team, and that’s it, right? Or as we start asking probing questions, there can be some missing people at the table too. So even if we give the directive of like,

22:15
all levels and representation of all the different departments and whatever, there’s some nuances even within that directive, meaning that it might come back and we might ask, well, like, who’s the person that has the pulse on the whole organization? Right? Like, who’s the person you go to when you say, the culture feels off, those types of people. And then it’s like, oh shoot, we’re missing so and so. Right. So that’s another place where I think that having someone like us that is outside the organization,

22:44
it’s going to be a different lens. And those are the patterns that we see regularly, which is why it’s so important to have a partner to facilitate all the way through where we can be like, we hear something, we just pick up differently because we’ve done this multiple times and we’re not in the doing within the organization spending 40 plus hours of our time every week there. Yeah, I think that’s really a really, really good point. And I think what I like to say, and I know you say the same thing, April, is like, we don’t necessarily tell you what to go do, but we teach you how to think.

23:13
Yes. And that’s really, really important in the strategic planning exercise because we get stuck and we get mired down by our current frames of thought. And sometimes we just need somebody to break us out of that, break us out of that cycle and help us to think in different ways. So I think that’s really, really important. Although if we see it, we do tell people what to do. I was say, was like, she going to call herself out or not? I do.

23:40
I do, but I’m very clear. I’m like, this is not my facilitation hat. This is my coaching hat or my whatever strategic council hat where I’m like, okay, you guys, we need to take a timeout because let me tell you how to do marketing campaigns for real or something to that effect. Well, and I find myself saying, would you like to know how I would do it? Yeah.

24:03
Especially when I get kind of the like, can tell there’s a processing phase or a blank phase. You give it and then you’re like, would you like to know how I would do it? That is perfect. I’m going to start using that. And you know what, you guys, that comes for free, you know? So we don’t even charge extra for that.

24:19
I love that. All right, so our next phase is the synthesizing phase. And this is really where the rubber meets the road. So now you went at, since you have that landscape reality check, you’ve really assessed where you are, where you want to go. You know what success looks like. You’ve been thinking about what must be true to achieve it. You’re going to start putting that down on paper, not a plan on the page, but on paper so that you can start to have something that’s very tangible that allows you to.

24:47
go back and reflect and have something that’s gonna roadmap you through this process, okay? So as you’re synthesizing, you really want to think about what is your business goal? And this is really starting to get very, very clear again about what do you wanna be when you grow up and what does that mean then? What does that translate then in terms of business goals? Then what is each group’s role in achieving it? This is so, so, so important. And April is gonna get into this and again in the next episode really deeply about organizational development.

25:15
but this is important to realize that everybody is a piece of the pie. So it’s really important that everybody understands what their role is in achieving this business goal because a lot of people will sit there and be going like, well, if we’re really about new business development, I don’t know how I play a role in that. Now, everybody plays a role in new business development. You could be the people who are cleaning the building and they play a role in new business development because they need to maintain a clean environment for people to work in order to do new business development.

25:44
Everybody plays a role and it’s really, really important. If you want to empower people towards a business goal, that you’re very clear about how their contribution is going to impact the success of the business. And within that, you start to get into what needs to start, stop and continue in order to enable success. So this is the meat of the plan. As you’re starting to think about your strategic plan, you’re going to be thinking about what are your strategic choices? And so those become pillars of activation.

26:13
And then you’re going to be thinking about what enables those strategic pillars. So what do you need to put in place in order for you to be able to activate against those pillars? And you do all this thinking in the context of the actionable, real, like tangible things of start, stop and continue. And that’s what drives the actability of the plan, because a lot of times people will just put, for example, we need to up our marketing effort, or we’re going to have two or three marketing campaigns.

26:42
Then people are like, I don’t even know what that looks like. I don’t know how to start that. I don’t know what the next step of that is. And so therefore I’m not even going to pay any attention to it because it’s too hard. It’s too much for my brain to have to think and process through that. When you’re going to start, think about start, stopping and continuing, you would think about what must be true in that context in order to activate a marketing plan.

27:06
So if it’s like, well, I need the idea for the marketing plan. Okay, what must we do to get the idea? Well, maybe I need to hire an agency to help me conceive of what that marketing plan is. There you go. Now you have an action plan that you can go do today, right? Or you have an action step that you can go do today. So the whole point is to use these pieces and put them all together in order to start to really develop a step-by-step roadmap that’ll get you to these bigger goals.

27:32
but you can put something in place now and everything that you’re doing kind of ladders up to that. Then within that, you start to articulate what’s the timing, the budget, the personnel needs. So you start to really like put all that support behind it and start articulating what that support looks like so that you can be actioning against that right away. Initially, you may not have the budget, the personnel, and you might be like, I don’t know what the timing is. That’s fine. You put something on paper and maybe what must be true is,

28:00
I need to determine how, you know, if I can get another person. In the meantime, what must be true in order for me to continue this work? So you could see the power of what must be true. And I think it’s really important to understand too that guys, this is an iterative process. Again, I’m hoping you guys understand, like when you think about this, this is not something you can do in two and a half days. This is something you do over the course of sometimes four to six to eight weeks, depending on the complexity of your organization, because you want it to be iterative. You want it to make sure that

28:29
right thought process is going in, you want to make sure you’re checking it and socializing it. And I’ll tell you guys, this is really, really important because now when you have this, when you go ask for more money, more personnel, more time, leadership isn’t sitting there going, I don’t know why they need it. You have a plan and you put it in front of them and say, I need it because it’s going to give me this, it’s going to give me that, which is going to lead to this business goal. And then all of a sudden your leadership is like, oh, I get it.

28:57
Now we can have a conversation about this is not some sort of esoterical or theoretical ass. This is a real tangible ass based on thinking that you’ve done that makes total sense for the business. Yeah. And the piece that I love about this piece and I think is so important is that the iterative nature allows you to be really thoughtful and pragmatic at the same time. And it takes the pressure on us off of the people in that room.

29:28
to come back with like magic, right? I think that when I look back on how we used to do strategic planning and why I think it failed, I don’t think it was ever an ill intentioned thing, but it was an ask that was impossible to deliver on if you wanted it to actually work like our process does. And so whether we’re talking about, you know, the mix of people, the non-executive piece,

29:58
or in particular, you the different perspectives in the room, who’s working through it, then it also becomes important to say, and when we go back, what don’t we know based on this session? Who might have been missing from the conversation? Not necessarily that you want to add people to the team. Or maybe you have to get a digital perspective or input. Yeah, but like, oh, that person works really deep in that and none of us know enough detail to make that call, right? Or

30:26
Hmm, this is really going to change a lot on X team. Maybe we better go get their input on one if we have everything right or to what other concerns we may not even be thinking about. Right. Again, not that they get a vote on whether it happens, but just that you don’t have all the information to work with. And I think allowing for the grace, especially at this part of the process for it to work in this way, takes a lot of the pressure off because that’s really how you work within your day to day to.

30:55
Right? Like you don’t assign a project on Monday morning and say, okay, this team of nine or like I said, 20 or 30 people have the next two days and I want it all done and back to me and perfect. Right? So it’s unreasonable to even think about it that way, which is why I think this is so much more powerful. And when I put on my people hat, I remember

31:16
the anxiety of people coming into that room because it was expensive. You felt like you had to really show up because you got a seat at that table. You were in some ways often egos got in the way and you were competing with other people. When you spend that much time, people get tired or arguments break out like those like fatigue behaviors start to happen. Right? So this is almost like it mirrors a business as usual, but on steroids because of the content that you’re working through and talking about when you’re doing this.

31:46
And you’re not taxing people so much that they just feel like they have nothing left to give or there’s other things they should be out there doing when it’s just short iterative sessions with the flexibility to go and do other things in between. I think that’s really, really important. Like I said, there’s just something about giving people space to process and think that makes this process work so much more effectively because you’re workshopping it.

32:13
to some extent over a period of time to make sure it is the right thing for the business, which makes it a whole lot stickier and build a whole lot more traction because people have been part of the process. The key people have been part of the process and then they help socialize it to others in a way that says, I mean, I’ve been part of this process. put a lot of thought into it. so, yes, this is why we think this is going to work.

32:38
Because at the end of the day, strategy is just choices. That’s really what it is. It’s just about making choices. And so if you wanna make the best possible choices for your business, you have to have a really well-informed plan or roadmap by which to make those choices. It helps make everything more efficient, more productive, it keeps your team focused. And those are really, really important pieces for all of us who are dealing especially with lean teams, lean budgets.

33:06
Aggressive goals. mean, all of those things are so like, like as we said in the trailer, such a big part of how a lot of you guys are living right now. So doing the effort upfront is going to help make all the work that you’re doing subsequently so much more productive. Yeah. Well, and you’re building ownership and ambassadorship as you go to, right? A thousand percent. just within that room. I mean, the people in that room definitely own it, but if they’re going out and socializing and asking for feedback,

33:35
that builds and then people become ambassadors because they say, you know, this was intentional. We worked hard. We thought about this. We did our due diligence this time around and therefore we’re bought in and you should be too. a thousand percent, which then actually leads to the third phase, which is the refinement and alignment. And this is really where you’re auditing your strategic plan or your strategic roadmap. And you’re looking for things like

34:00
Is there anything missing? is it complete and comprehensive, but possibly can be? Which means you’ve made strategic choices. It doesn’t mean it’s a catch-all for every single thing that you’re doing. Is there anything you fundamentally disagree with? And when we’re poising these questions, we’re poising them in order for you to actually socialize this with the rest of your organization. Do you feel compelled to get in the boat and row, which is the most important part of agreement?

34:26
where you’re trying to seek out agreement or alignment, not necessarily getting people a vote again. But if you can, you should be posing these questions to the whole entire organization. know that feels daunting, but I will tell you from our experience, only about 10 % of people will respond with any kind of feedback, any kind of input, any kind of, I don’t feel like part of this. And it gives you so much insight when you do this that it’s worth

34:56
little bit of the the risk because You’re gonna find out who you’re be your biggest dissenters who you’re gonna be your problem child in some cases Who are gonna be your advocates? Maybe who is gonna be like really on board and you’re gonna be able to leverage them to really push this out Maybe somebody will have something that you didn’t even think about it’s worth considering again. These people don’t necessarily get a boat, but they do help in making sure that

35:21
whatever you’re doing feels collectively bought in, that they understand the why, that they understand where the business is going, and it helps to drive that insight. And then it also helps you to kind of reflect upon, do you have the right talent? Are these gonna be the right people that are gonna get you to success? So all of those things are the reason why you do this step. Yeah, and I mean, I think the important part here, and where I think sensitivities, let’s just say, sometimes happen.

35:48
when you do it in the couple day thing and then you try to come back and convince people, right? Is that if anybody wants to poke holes in anything, you get defensive, right? Versus if you build it more as an iterative thing, everybody gets more comfortable, yes, but it’s way more intentional and it becomes more objective.

36:12
And so even though I am the one that loves all the intricacies of the right people and the right roles and all of those types of things, I’m a firm believer that this kind of work needs to live in an objective space. And there really is not any room for emotional reactions. And I think what Anne said is really good about you can see people’s behaviors and kind of watch as you’re going through it because you have the time and space to do so.

36:38
to identify like, this person’s always a squeaky wheel. So we need to be ready that something’s gonna come back, right? That’s an objective reaction. It’s not, oh shoot, I don’t wanna go put that in front of that person, cause I’m gonna have to hear about why they think it’s not good. And then like it ratchets up all that emotion, right? The plan at this point also should be baked enough and strong enough to withstand people poking at it.

37:06
and for it to be seen as a constructive exercise. Because I think in the previous way that we’ve both been a part of and seen organizations do, it’s like when you go away and you come back and you’re just like, ta-da, here it is, people get upset and angry and feel left out and all those emotions come into everything. And that’s why I think you get a lot of the pushback where even like, I’ve been part of some of those sessions where we actually did a good job.

37:34
of identifying stuff, right? But it was dead before it arrived because those reactions weren’t gonna come from a place of objectivity and making it better and participating and being part of the team and all of those things we’ve talked about already in the episode. It was gonna come from a strong arm, not interested, wasn’t included, don’t wanna do it. And the people in the session know that that’s the response they’re gonna get. So it just sets it up for a really emotionally charged discussion instead of the objective one, it should be.

38:03
with the intent of making it better. Yeah, I mean, think what you say is so, so critically important because this is not an invitation to blow up the plan. Exactly. Right. You’re getting a confirmation of where the squeaky wheels might be or where there could be potential challenges or issues. And this doesn’t mean you have to take all the feedback either. No, of course not. But it is an opportunity to reiterate that people have been heard and to say,

38:29
I heard you guys when you said you wanted this, unfortunately, we’re not going to be able to accommodate that in this plan and here’s why. And again, like a lot of our leaders will say, well, why should I have to do that? And I’m like, because you want to have the whole team on board and rowing in order to deliver the plan. And this is how you make sure that they are. So yes, does it take a little bit more work? It does. Is it well worth it in the end? It is. So it takes a little more work in the short term. In the short term, exactly. How’s the saying go? We’re going to

38:57
We’ll do what people won’t do now so we can do what people can’t do later or something. That’s good. that’s right. Yeah. So, I mean, that’s kind what you’re doing, guys. You’re investing the time upfront so that you can do more later that you wouldn’t have been able to do if you didn’t invest this time upfront. All right. So that is the three phases. There is a, me and April have our proprietary also format for how you actually

39:22
depict this and although there’s not one right way of doing it, but we have found a way that actually helps. So if you guys are interested in that, like reach out to us and we’re more than happy to share that with you and talk you through how do you apply this process to that format. But that being said, we want to get to give you a couple more points that we think are really, really important to make sure that you have a successful process here. The first thing is that you have to have to have to have continued progress checks.

39:50
depending on the urgency of the actions, we recommend that these checks are done at least quarterly, if not more frequently than that. Initially, you may be doing it every week. You may be doing it every two weeks until you’re able to put things into practice that allow you to be able to kind of release people onto their own accord. But recognize that you might have to have some change management because a lot of these things that require people, as you had mentioned, April,

40:18
to shift from what they were doing before to what they need to do now. And that takes a mindset shift. takes a work process shift that might take a, I mean, it could be involved in a lot of things that somebody is day to day is gonna look different. And you need to take the time to put that in place. Sometimes it’s new skills too. Sometimes it’s new skills. You need to build new capability, right? I mean, and so you have to be very cognizant of the fact that you have to build all of that in as you’re actioning the plan. So these checks consist of monitoring progress.

40:47
validating assumptions, optimizing where needed and making the appropriate shifts. You need to be in it enough to be able to assess these things. So maybe that requires you to do a dashboard in order to be looking at results. Again, the results that lead to the business goals, not every single KPI you can think of, right? It may mean that you need to have one-on-ones with certain people, right April, in order to like double check and make sure that they are really understanding the new world, this new reality.

41:16
Now, and I think it’s also important to note that it could take months, if not years, to operate a strategic plan to success. So again, you can’t expect that you’re going to change it overnight. It’s going to take the organization a little while to shift. And so you need to really make sure that you’re setting the expectations appropriately with the fine timelines and milestones. Yeah, I mean, this is some of the grace and the patience that I was alluding to before. And that you can’t it’s unrealistic to expect people to just change overnight. Now, if you get people that are

41:45
fundamentally just at every turn roadblocking, resisting, all of that, then you need to have a different conversation. Is that the right person for the organization? And also a lot of times I’m known for saying, they may have been a right fit perfectly for the previous version of this organization, but where we’re going now is not that. So it’s okay if they’re not, and it’s okay for them to opt out or you to opt them out if that’s case. But I think it is important also to know that there’s not really a science to the cadence.

42:14
And really that there shouldn’t be, because this is another place where people can get in trouble, right? If you say, well, we’re only going to check in quarterly on this. What do you think happens? It falls off, right? Especially in the beginning when people are like, I don’t know what this looks like differently. Or I piped in before to say there might need to be new skills taught, right? If you’re having regular check-ins.

42:35
then people know one that it’s serious, but two, they feel supported in it. And it makes it easier to raise your hand if you’re, two weeks in and you’re like, Oh man, I really don’t know how to do that. Then have it come up a quarter later and be like, well, where is this? And why didn’t it happen? Why didn’t know how to do it? Well, where were you saying you didn’t know how to do it for the past 90 days? Right. So it actually, I look at this as like a human kindness kind of where it’s like, we’re meeting everybody where they are.

43:03
And we’re supporting them with these progress checks. Again, not to ding people or say you’re doing it badly, but to understand what’s missing if it’s not working or what’s going really well and what can we learn from that? And maybe we speed this up or slow this down and make those changes real time on the fly so that it just keeps getting better and better and better and tighter and tighter and tighter as you go. And then the progress, that’s where it gets really fast, right? When you make these little optimizations over and over.

43:29
to where it becomes a well-oiled machine and then it’s just humming along and that’s where you see all that investment on the front end pay off in the back end. Yeah, a thousand percent, a thousand percent, which is you as kind of outlining too, some of the common pitfalls. I mean, you were just like articulating one of the pitfalls that we see a lot and I think that is another thing that we want to make sure that people really internalize is where did this kind of fall off? And so people understand and can watch out.

43:58
and not be part of the problem of why these things get stuffed in a drawer or they quote unquote, what we hear it’s like, oh yeah, we went through the strategic planning process, but it just didn’t work for us. like, it works for everybody, everybody. Just so you know, the strategic planning process works if it’s done correctly, it’s done with intention, it’s driven down to an activation phase. Where it falls off and reason why it doesn’t work is because of usually one of really four key things. One is,

44:25
Roles and responsibilities aren’t redefined to accommodate the new plan. Everybody just goes back as business as usual and they don’t decide to do the work in order to really put these into, put these actions in the expectation of these actions into everybody’s day to day. So April’s going to get into organizational development to support your strategic plan in the next episode. So we’ll, we’ll leave that one for, for that episode. The other one is nobody’s overseeing the plan. And that’s what April’s like.

44:55
Pitfall is what leads to what April was just talking about, is that when nobody’s overseeing the plan and nobody is paying attention to, are these actions really the right actions? Are they progressing the plan as we expected? They’re not checking in frequently enough to make sure that people are actually doing their steps. So let me tell you leaders, if you aren’t checking in, your people are not gonna do the work. No. 99 % of the time, they’re not gonna be sitting there going, oh,

45:22
my leader isn’t asking me or my manager isn’t asking me about this, but I’m going to go do it anyway. No, they’re going to go do the stuff that they think is important to you. So if you don’t find this important, if you don’t hold people accountable to their deliverables according to the milestones and really like hold them to that, then you’re going to get what April said. They’re going to be people like 90 days later, you’re going be like, so how did that go? And they’re going to be like, well, I didn’t really know how to do that. So I didn’t do that.

45:49
And since you didn’t check on it for 90 days, they put it to the bottom of their priority list. And so then you just delayed being able to activate your strategic plan by 90 days. Which is the other part of this, which is like the double-edged sword. If you don’t hold people accountable and let deadlights sip without recalibration, you’re going to be constantly behind the eight ball because it’s okay if somebody slips once in a while, it’s gonna happen. But if you don’t say, hey,

46:15
My expectation was this was going to be done. And since you don’t have this done, all these other people can’t do their work. Then again, you’re going to just kind of people continually slip and they’re going to tell you to drag out timelines, especially if it’s a new thing for them and they don’t understand exactly what they’re going to go do. If they can get away with not having to ask questions and make them feel uncomfortable, sometimes they won’t. Sometimes you’ll just kind of let it slide and hope that you got you that you don’t ask them about it again. I mean, I’m guilty of that. Have you done that April?

46:42
I think it’s human behavior. think it’s natural. For me, it’s always, don’t want to look stupid. So I just pretend it’s not there. Yeah. Well, my boss like sometimes he’d be asking me to do something. I’m like, I really don’t know what this looks like or what she wants here. So, or he, and I’m like, so just not going to do it and hope they forget about it. I mean, I’ve it a gazillion times, right? So take that lesson. And if you’re like me and April, don’t make that mistake. And then the other one is they get stuck by a challenge and then stop.

47:10
And this is going to happen, you guys, you’re going to get stuck. You’re going to hit a roadblock. You’re going to hit a barrier. Use what must be true in order to get through that. So when it happens, if your challenge comes up, like a lot of things are happening in the world right now. And then we know it’s going to getting you stuck. It’s opposed to just letting that get you stuck and kind of sitting there and worried about when is it going to right itself or when are we going to get through it? Think, use the what must be true action planning and really think about.

47:40
What must be true for me to thrive or to overcome this challenge or to break down this barrier or this roadblock so that I can continue my progress, right? And so use that, it’s so, so powerful. When you start getting your organization used to that thinking, you are going to be unstoppable really when it comes down to it, okay? So those are the four common pitfalls. April, did I miss any there?

48:06
No, and I just realized I totally preempted your point. just jumped right in here with my commentary on the last one. So one is first time or the last time that happens. So no, my short answer would be, I think you got it. Well, that’s good then. All right. So that was a lot. So your master class in strategic action planning and the power of it. April, is there anything I missed or anything you would add? I mean, I would just say based on what you just said, Anne, like it is a lot.

48:32
Right. And in addition to it being a lot, it’s a mindset shift entirely about the way that strategic planning can and should honestly be done. So this may be one where you need to go back and listen to it a couple of times. You might need to take some notes. You might need to even like Ann said, you know, we contextually thought about all of our clients and tried to give you some little nuggets of anecdotes of things so that you could feel the examples of how it might work. But, you know, go back through and listen again and think about

49:03
What would this be for my organization? Or could I see us here? Like it’s okay if it takes you a little bit to really internalize this to my point about like, I never want to look dumb. Don’t ignore it. Don’t ignore it because it feels hard because what we truly have seen with every client we’ve done this with is that the progress and the strength of the work and the engagement of the people gets so much better. So it is worth it if you stick with it. Yes.

49:33
And it’s okay if you need to like take it in bites and pieces in order to get yourself over the hump of investing in this. It’s why we say, you know, and I made the joke about plugs for us. I mean, this is why we have a job in doing this type of work, right? Because it’s not easy and it does require facilitation and you do need help from the outside. So just be patient with it and be patient with yourself and take the time with this episode to help it sit in addition to the ones that are coming because they’re all going to have a level of

50:02
depth and complexity to them that doesn’t have to be that way if you spend enough time with it. Right. So this is very doable for anybody in any organization and we know it works. Yeah. We’ve seen it work and it does have a very fast ramp up for people who are willing to invest the time and the effort in really going through the process. So I’m glad you said that. All right. And with that, we encourage you all to take at least one powerful insight you heard and put into practice. There’s a lot today.

50:32
Because remember, Strategic Counsel is only effective if you put it into action!