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Getting value from your strategic plan Here are some tips to get the most out of your strategic plan and realize your firm’s aspirational goals. O P I N I O N
H ow much does a strategic plan cost? If you hire a consultant, pull your senior- leadership away from business and team leadership for a couple of days, conduct the session off-site, and pay for hotel rooms, meals, and transportation, it can be an expensive proposition.
Ed Friedrichs
With that kind of investment of time, talent, and resources, it can be painful to realize that so many carefully written, beautifully bound plans end up on a shelf, rarely referenced. Maybe it’s time to take this time-worn process apart and focus on practical ways to achieve meaningful change in your enterprise in support of that valuable planning exercise. Having trodden this path many times over the years with my own firm and with clients since I retired, I’d like to share my observations and advice. “A well facilitated and carefully thought-through strategic planning process can yield a treasure trove of ideas about what you want your firm to be. It can guide you and your team on how you want people to act and collaborate, what markets you want to serve, and what talent ‘holes’ you have that need to be filled.” A well facilitated and carefully thought-through strategic planning process can yield a treasure trove of ideas about what you want your firm to be. It can guide you and your team on how you want people to act and collaborate, what markets you want to serve, and what talent “holes” you have that need to be filled. It can specify desired relationships with the stakeholders you rely on to accomplish client work. But a document sitting on a shelf won’t make any of this happen. From experience, I can tell you your strategic plan only gains value when its objectives are understood and acted upon. That will only happen if you’re able to instill your objectives deeply into your firm’s culture such that it changes the actions
and attitudes of your people. Here are a couple of ideas about how to put your plan in motion: ❚ ❚ Client Service. A dominant indicator of your suc- cess appears when your clients are deliriously happy about the way they’re being treated. Is “delirious” too grand a word to use? Not at all. When your teams are listening to your clients, responsive to their needs and wants, consistently checking with them to ensure they feel cared for, they will ask you to do more work for them and recommend you to their friends and colleagues. You can track client satisfaction through all sorts of metrics. Certainly, you can keep a log of repeat and referral business, but nothing is more valuable than a culture in which everyone is expected to have a cup of coffee with a client frequently to find out if all is going well. And this is not just at the principal level, but with all of your team members who have a relationship with a member of the client team. ❚ ❚ Innovation. Innovation is a common goal of most strategic plans. Nice idea, but how does innovation come about? The best creativity occurs when people from different points of view and areas of expertise collaborate and come at a problem from different di- rections. Sparks fly, and an idea for something never tried before appears. So, how do you keep people from building walls and hesitating to share knowl- edge, expertise, and ideas? Encouraging people to reach out to someone with a different point of view can be intimidating. Encouraging people to reach out to someone with a different point of view can be intimidating: “What if they don’t want to talk to me?” “What if they look at what I’m doing and say, ‘That’s really dumb’?” ❚ ❚ Collaboration. Collaboration requires an open and trusting culture, one in which everyone feels they “own” every project in the office. Anyone that feels anything less than innovative and thoughtful reflects negatively on the firm and you personally. Employees should be willing, at all times, to pitch in and brainstorm a problem with a colleague. Instilling that attitude and culture is not a result of writing about it in a strategic plan. It happens when
See ED FRIEDRICHS, page 4
THE ZWEIG LETTER January 25, 2016, ISSUE 1136
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