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Strategic planning at the program or business unit,
level is fundamentally different than at the organization
level. This is especially true for the largest of our
government and corporate entities in today's disaggregated
organizational structures, where the programs can find
themselves out of sync with the purposes and mission
of the parent. Yet, to make a plan work well for the
entire organization, it is critical that the programs
or business units work effectively to assess, validate,
and understand their direction and what will make them
successful within a larger context.
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This article was published in the Winter
2003/2004 issue of Perspectives.
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of Use policy regarding acceptable use of
content on the ICF International Web site.
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Strategy development is about making choices
between options, each with its attendant levels of risk and
reward, investments and returns, likelihood and chance. Organizations
determine these choices by assessing external forces and conditions
(including competition) and making judgments regarding the
relative health and limitations of their internal capabilities.
They create maps and scorecards to evaluate and identify performance
measures across financial, customer, and other activities
that meet both the long- and short-term goals of the organization
(e.g., balanced scorecard). Many organizations also build
stories that consider cultural, social, demographic, economic,
or global trends impacting their organizations now and in
the distant future (e.g., scenario planning). Resulting strategy
can be transformative or conservative, offensive or defensive,
customer- or product-focused, or a hybrid of all.
In strategic planning, programs face more limited
resource options, narrower spans of control, and initial top
down guidance that creates additional boundaries. The most
significant difference between the organization and sub-unit
level planning is that the impact of external and internal
contingencies can have greater effect without the benefit
of offsetting results from elsewhere in the portfolio. A frequent
answer to core strategic questions about what direction to
take is: It depends. It depends on whether a primary customer
continues its current level of orders. It depends on whether
a competitor launches a new product. It depends on the budget
allocation. It depends on how many people call in sick next
week.
The following tips and techniques will help account for these
contingencies and keep strategy relevant at the program level:
Establish expectations for strategic
intelligence.
As a staff conducts its operations, it is gathering information
on what creates value for customers, competitive trends, new
services, the needs of other stakeholders,
and other information that can help inform the strategy. Create
an expectation that staff members will gather this information
by asking for it up front.
Limit the planning horizon.
One- to three-year plans are more effective for business
units than five- and ten-year plans. However, tracking and
updating long-term trends can help improve the short-term
effectiveness of planning efforts.
Watch for participant fatigue at the
program level.
Most participants in a strategic planning process have full-time
operational or staff jobs to perform. If the formal process
takes too long (more than one month) before implementation
or requires more time and resources than the group can afford
(more than a 25 percent increase in workload), participants
will begin to resist or bail out of the process.
Time the plan.
For the program plan to impact the larger organization, it
must be developed during the time the rest of the organization
engages in strategic planning or in projecting resource allocation.
The plan should be ready before the larger organization finishes
its process.
 Create
a deliberate, but flexible, purpose.
Establish why the unit is engaging in a strategic planning
process and clearly articulate its benefits to your group,
as well as the resources it will take to get the plan accomplished.
See the box at right for different ways to frame the plan.
Create a recrimination-free atmosphere.
As in brainstorming, strategic planning at the program level
requires openness to new ideas. It also requires a harsh,
unblinking evaluation of current conditions. In close business-unit
relationships, this frankness can only be accomplished if
participants can speak openly and free from recriminations.
Pick a model and definitions.
Arguing over the structure of the strategic plan or the definition
of a "goal" versus an "objective" can
kill a strategic planning process. Select a model and a set
of definitions and request that the participants suspend disbelief
for this planning cycle.
Some managers criticize organizations and their strategic
planning processes because they do not execute their plans
well. A benefit of a program's narrower focus, faster decision
times, proximity to value-creating customer transactions,
and accountability to the other members of the unit is that
is has a greater chance of executing its plan by keeping its
members engaged in constantly adapting the plan in response
to their environment. In this way, the business unit can keep
strategic planning fresh in a way that the larger organization
could only hope to achieve.
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