The Strategic Plan

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010 at 9:02 am

Leadership Workshop (3 of 12) – Sharpen the Focus

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.

Indifferent leaders often aim their focus at too broad a spectrum, forgetting the importance of maintaining one priority at a time. This dulls people’s energies and saps the focus. One CEO had 14 goals for her company. After being questioned on her less than refined goals, she truthfully stated that; “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 you perceive the expansion of your organization, be sure to implement goals that will reflect this. Incorporate related objectives that will help to open new offices or introduce new products in order to ultimately attract more 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 seek to define the initiatives and developmental points you need to reach in order to achieve your goals. Actions capture the specific steps, timetables and responsibilities for achieving the objectives.

The senior leaders of an organization need to pay close attention to defining and articulating their 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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