Strategic Planning Readiness Helps Boards and Leaders Make Better Strategy

April 5, 2023

Over the last five years, we’ve transitioned our focus from simply helping boards and leaders make and oversee strategy, to being more equipped to make productive strategy and to understanding the implications of the strategy they make. It makes for better strategists, better strategy and it makes for better outcomes in their organizations. Strategic Planning Readiness is exactly what it sounds like. It’s being more ready with the tools and the skills and the context to have productive conversations about strategy. And it’s being more ready to find real alignment among directors and leaders to make impactful strategy.

Examples of Strategic Planning Readiness range from helping boards, and leaders, in very general areas like making better assumptions or better strategic decisions…All the way through to, very specific and situational areas, like, actually practicing for consolidation, working through a scenario to buy a company, preparing the groundwork for a future government relations strategy, or working through scenario analysis to define a risk philosophy or growth principles. The intent of Strategic Planning Readiness is never to actually make strategic decisions. It’s to be prepared and equipped to make better decisions and to really find the landscape of possibilities related to a particular area of strategy, or a particular strategic decision. Although, we often develop, either some general guidelines, or specific guiding principles for instance related to growth or risk or a specific strategy.

We can also simply help participants discover the “strategic bookends” of what is in the realm of possibility for the strategic area under consideration. We help boards and senior leaders, first of all, by acknowledging that we’re not all born strategists and that most directors, particularly in non-profits are volunteers and they don’t think about our strategy on a day-⁠to-⁠day basis. So readiness helps us to open up the possibilities and get directors’ mental models flowing through scenario analysis and facilitated exercises.

We usually work with our clients to define the subject matter they want to be more ready for and ask questions like, what do you want to be more equipped for? What aspects of your strategy are going to be strategic dilemmas to this board and leadership team in the future? Where would you like this board to be equipped to ask more difficult and strategic questions of the leadership team? What are the specific dilemmas we will likely to face regarding growth or other situational areas? For example, in the consolidation of our industry, in the advent of new technologies, in disruptive market entrants; where will we be forced to make strategy? What are the areas we must be prepared for? That’s Strategic Planning Readiness in a nutshell. It’s a big part of what we do here at The Planning Group.