The Strategic Plan
Leading at Light Speed is a must-have leadership book by Eric Douglas highlighting the 10 Quantum Leaps to build trust, spark innovation, and create a high-performing organization. Chapter 2 is all about Sharpening the Strategic Focus.
A strategic plan shows how to implement your vision and is divided into three parts: goals, objectives and actions.
Once you’ve defined the vision, you need to define the priorities for the organization in the form of goals and objectives. The desired amount of goals is approximately three or four. Any more than four goals can greatly decreases the probability of reaching them. Once the organization has successfully executed on those priorities, then you can introduce more.
Less professional leaders tend to have too many goals and priorities. This dulls people’s energies and saps the focus. One CEO had 14 goals for her company. When asked about her lack of focus, she promptly replied: "It is important that we have a goal that reflects everything we do.Sharpening the focus of an organization relies on the establishment of priorities, rather than the satisfaction of everyone's pet project.
How do you define priorities? If your vision is to expand into new markets, then your goals should reflect that, with related objectives of opening new offices or introducing products that will attract sales in that market. If your vision is to become more vertically integrated in the sources of production, then one goal might be to buy a manufacturing plant. It is greatly important to clarify the priorities. It is important to keep in mind the fact that a priority should stand alone, not alongside other supposed priorities.
Objectives define the initiatives and milestones you need to hit in order to achieve the goals. Actions capture the specific steps, timetables and responsibilities for achieving the objectives.
The senior leaders of the organization should take responsibility to articulate the goals. Leaders should be given responsibility to work with their departments and units to refine the goals and tie them to specific objectives and tie them to a coherent set of action steps. This “cascade” effect enables every manager – and ultimately every employee – to connect what they do to the strategic plan.
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