 | Planning Process Redesign & Improvement
Planning can be painful. As the size and complexity of organizations increase, their strategy and planning processes either develop unwieldy, and often bizarre layers, or they simply do not keep pace. We have seen many problems with the planning processes of North American companies:
- The budgeting process has not only become unwieldy, highly detailed, and often politically charged, but it has largely supplanted any real strategy and planning efforts.
- Annual planning processes have become too much of an event, or a season that suck valuable resources, and are too slow and cumbersome to provide any value.
- Companies are planning for the wrong reasons, usually to satisfy a corporate requirement, rather than to actually improve the business condition.
- Companies have not made the necessary investment in leaders and managers to develop the skills necessary for true strategic thinking. Even firms that set the operational standards in their industry do not take the time to truly understand their business as a basis for innovation and growth.
We fundamentally believe that any new planning process should meet the following objectives:
- Consume less organizational effort than the existing process
- Increase the strategic ability of leaders and managers
- Provide a well defined relationship between vision, strategy and actions to all employees to improve morale, and the drive for common good
- Provide detailed, actionable deliverables in the short term, with diminishing detail as the planning horizon increases
- Entrench planning as part of the leadership toolkit
- Operate effectively regardless of the quarter, not be limited by calendar dates such as December 31
If your planning process is not working, we can help. Go to our interest finder form or call for an initial consultation.
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