Great Organizations Start By Defining A Sound Strategy And SMART Goals
Do you wonder why some organizations are stronger, have more and happier customers, better return on investment dollars, higher profits and attract better talent? It is never an accident. You can become a good organization through hard work, a solid team and good luck but you can only become a great organization when you preface your efforts with thoughtful, ongoing strategic planning and relentless follow-up on your strategy.
In an ever more competitive market and global economy, organizations excel by getting clear about their purpose, the clients they want more of, the services and products they want to sell, and their strategy to get there. Strategy happens annually, and good strategy follows five tried and true principles:
1. Strategy is tied to your organization’s vision.
To have an effective plan to move from point A to point B, you have to know where your starting point is. Your starting point is your organization’s vision including answers to these and other relevant questions:
Why does your organization exist?
What is your value proposition?
Who are your competitors?
What do you do better than anyone else?
Who would benefit from your offerings?
Why would professionals want to work at your organization?
2. Strategy is a team sport.
Depending on the size of your organization, you can obtain input from various team members in a variety of ways and varying levels of involvement. At the end of the process, you want each person who works for you to have some opportunity to communicate her ideas and engage in the strategic process. Collect initial ideas via an anonymous survey, focus groups, or divide into functional areas. The hard crunching of data and setting of goals need to involve your key firm leaders. Shortly after finalizing the strategic plan, the senior team needs to communicate the goals, decisions, tactics and lay out the plan to the entire organization, as well as answer team members’ questions.
3. Strategy needs to be written down.
Document all decisions, so everyone is clear on where the organization plans to head in the coming year. These are internal documents with enough detail to outline the goal, the steps, the milestones, and a calendar.
4. Strategy needs SMART goals and a champion for each goal.
SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-Sensitive. Compare the two versions of the same goal below, how you will know you’ve reached each goal, and the likelihood of accomplishing each goal.
Goal Version A: Improve our organization’s success rate for obtaining new clients/jobs.
Goal Version B: Increase our organization’s win rate with municipal clients from 22% to 40% by the fiscal year ending December 2019.
Champion: John Smith
Tactics:
Develop a Go/No Go Form by March 1 that will be discussed and used before every new 2019 Request For Proposal (RFP). Respond to RFPs only when a 75% score on the Go/No Go form is achieved.
Institute a new process for internal team strategy discussions during the proposal stage by April 1.
Arrange for presentation coaching of five key team members who attend the most interviews. Set the budget and notify participants by March 1, select consultant by April 1, and conduct three practice sessions, one per quarter for the remainder of the year, before an actual job opportunity.
Develop a job opportunity debriefing form by April 1 to be used on all subsequent 2019 won or lost opportunities. Select individuals qualified to conduct debriefs by April 1, set one training session by May 1, and create a written feedback form for information collected.
5. Strategy makes progress with regular check-in meetings.
Most employees like to be part of critical organization decision-making. Participants exhibit high energy during the setting of the strategic plan, yet with client deadlines looming, enthusiasm for accomplishing strategic business goals can wane. Besides writing out highly specific goals, the most important step you can take is assembling your key team regularly (bi-monthly or quarterly) to ask the champion of each goal to report on the team’s progress on the goal, questions, stumbling blocks, or new developments.
The real energy for a strategic plan comes in its repetition. The more you engage in the activity and the more success you have in relentless follow through, the more goals you will accomplish and in turn the more successful your organization and motivated your team. Success breeds success.
