An Obstacle to Resolve or a Bona Fide Emerging Issue?

A measure of an organization's strategic thinking capability is how well its leadership team balances responding to market conditions with staying focused on achieving its long-range strategic plan.

While this may be strong during strategic planning, the real test starts in the early months of implementing a new strategic direction, as operational teams dig into new objectives.

"Plans are nothing; planning is everything."

This quote, attributed to Winston Churchill, perfectly captures the reality of implementing plans. Planning is iterative; issues arise as soon as the plan is presented. That is normal, and it strengthens implementation. It does not weaken the plan. Operational teams do more than drive action within organizations; they also serve as tacticians, working through messy details to bring great strategic thinking to life.

To implement strategy successfully, these brilliant tacticians need partnership from those who authored the strategic plan to distinguish emerging issues that could modify your strategy from obstacles they can resolve in their planning.

An Implementation Obstacle to Resolve

It may seem like a failure point when issues arise during the first few months of implementing a new strategic direction, but it is extremely common.

The truth is that although planning teams try to include data, insights, and perspectives, they can never have all the information needed to execute on their plans. They do their best to set a direction they can confidently lead with, but they know operational teams will raise issues they didn't see or fully understand. 

One issue that is raised early in implementation of a new strategic plan is capacity to execute. We ask our clients to stage and phase their planning goals to make the plan realistic and achievable, but even with this exercise, capacity to execute is almost always an obstacle to resolve once operational teams are introduced to the plan. 

Ways to resolve capacity obstacles include adding staff, hiring a consultant or contract worker for a period, reducing focus on legacy tasks, or eliminating poor-performing business lines or activities. The plan's goals don't change; the organization needs to shift and change to operationalize the new direction. 

A Bona Fide Emerging Issue

At times, these issues may require modifying the strategic plan. Changes to the timing of goals or how a strategy is executed do not mean the plan is bad or that the planning process was flawed. A strategic plan is direction; operational planning is specific. The purpose of a strategic plan is to set an organization's direction over many years. Operational plans align near-term actions and resources to deliver on that direction. When an issue emerges that can be integrated into the plan, it is an obstacle to resolve during implementation.

Take, for example, this real story of wrapping up a nine-month intensive strategic planning effort in October 2008. We conducted long-range planning through the start of the Great Recession, yet only spent a few moments during the planning session discussing the threat of a weakening economy.  Still, in the final planning meeting—when we integrated all the strategic thinking into one comprehensive plan—two board members had to leave to deal with crises in their business. Within a month,  strategic goals needed to be adjusted.

Because the leadership team deeply understood the long-term goals and ultimate vision, they made changes quickly and decisively. I was proud and amazed to see that when we returned just one year later, this organization was back on track and surpassing its strategic goals. Their strategic planning provided the strategic thinking foundation needed to regroup when needed and still stay focused during a year that left many crushed.

Recognizing An Obstacle from An Emerging Issue

A Plan Obstacle could be:

• Revisions to the timetable of strategic goals based on existing priorities, resource commitments, or customer/partnership dependencies.

The Strategic Plan calls for revisions to a product roadmap. Upon review, the investment committed to a new feature updated and the expectations already communicated to customers about when new products or features would be available could negatively impact the business in the short term. The plan obstacle is resolved by adjusting the scope of the feature update to minimum viable functionality so it can be delivered on time. Product development resources are allocated to the new product roadmap within six months.

• Staff changes that put the plan's goals or timing at risk.

The departure of a key team leader within a month of the plan's approval puts the initiative this team was to lead at risk. The senior management team convenes to review the plan and current commitments and consolidates two teams under one new executive position. A team member heavily involved in developing the strategic plan is promoted into this new executive role. 

To support this additional workload, two team members are promoted to leads and report directly to the new executive: one to run legacy operations and the other to lead the new initiative. This actually gives the organization leadership development opportunities at the executive and team leadership level.

Emerging Issues result from significant unknowns and should be escalated to the leadership team for further examination.

• Economic disruptions above and beyond those included in the plan.

The earlier example shared about completing a strategic plan just as the Great Recession of 2008 hit is a great example of an emerging issue that required updating the strategic plan.

• Unforeseen competitive maneuver.

During strategic planning, competitive pressures are typically explored in great detail. But no amount of market intelligence will catch everything. For example,  when a large corporation in a different market enters your market by purchasing one of your competitors, your competitive assumptions need review.

If your strategic thinking included building a map of your market, the planning team can convene and use it to quickly update your competitive assumptions and determine whether this new competitive reality changes your strategic goals or priorities.

• A regulatory change or legal barrier change that was unforeseen or significantly different than planned.

For example, changes to tax, compliance, or import tariffs will require the planning team to convene with experts to evaluate implications to both operational priorities and long-term plans.

How to provide guidance for implementation teams on identifying obstacles from emerging issues.

• Deepen the understanding of the plan's assumptions and the underlying strategic thinking behind each strategic goal. Spend at least an hour with each implementation team to ensure they understand the strategy. These discussions should kick off the implementation planning process with senior team members who authored the plan. Use a more informal working-group tone, and allow questions from the detailed planning team. Think of this step as an intensive orientation for each strategic objective or set of objectives.

• Monitor implementation planning by attending team meetings frequently to ensure emerging issues are not ignored or hijacking the strategic direction.

• Bring emerging issues into planning discussions. Every organization has some level of annual planning, even if it is limited to setting revenue goals. Highly successful organizations have both regular strategic planning AND a robust annual planning process. When teams raise bona fide emerging issues, bring those into the next annual or strategic planning meeting for broader discussion.

Need to align your organization's implementation and clarify whether the issues impeding your progress are plan obstacles or emerging issues?