For over 34 years, I’ve worked to make strategic planning more effective. I had my very first experience with strategic planning in 1976, and the effect was literally life-changing. Eleven of us entered the process a team in name only. Sales didn’t trust development and production to deliver. Production didn’t trust sales and development to tell us the truth. Finance – well, you get the picture.
We left the planning meetings as a team with a clarified and unified sense of where we actually were and where we wanted to be in the future. Even more significantly, we left with substantially greater respect and trust for each other. We immediately focused on the things we needed to do to create the future we all agreed on. I left both physically exhausted and mentally energized with a belief in the power of strategic planning.
Since then I’ve devoted myself to refining and promoting strategic planning for companies in the two million to one hundred million dollar range. The original strategic planning program I followed was designed for companies hundreds to thousands of times larger than my employer was. While that strategic planning process had a profound impact, meetings alone consumed over two weeks — just to create the plan. (We invested all our time in creating the plan rather than implementing it.) Even with the two weeks, there was a huge gap between the strategic plan and the tactical action steps required to implement it. The process we’ve since developed at Myrna Associates requires only two days to create a plan, complete from Vision to 90-day Action Steps. It is a process that can be sustained by a company of any size.
Since 1991, all I’ve done is facilitate the creation and execution of strategic plans. As an engineer, I’m committed to continuous improvement. Through facilitating the development and implementation of every plan, we have learned something that has enabled us to make the process a little faster, cheaper, and better. We have also developed field-proven solutions to the common issues with our hundreds of clients.
This blog is another vehicle for sharing the myriad insights we’ve gained through over 10,000 hours of helping companies create their future. We’d love to help your company create its future, and welcome your comments and questions about strategic planning.
Take a look at a summary of what strategic planning can do for you.
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