Build a Plan You Can Execute (3 mins)

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For more resources on building your strategic plan, view the Essentials Guide to Strategic Planning.

Video Transcript

“Hi, My name is Kim Perkins. The topic of today’s white board session is, how to build a plan you can execute. Let’s look at the strategic management process to see where we’re at. You’ve had a meeting to develop your strategy, the next thing you need to do after that meeting is refine your plan; build a plan you can actually put into action. This is our focus for today, These critical steps that need to be taken to move your plan towards successful implementation. Lets take a look at that checklist. First and foremost, coming out of that strategy meeting, you’re going to have a lot of information, a lot of notes. Synthesize that information; pare it down to the nuts and bolts of the components that make up a strategic plan. Once you’ve synthesized, you feel good about your mission vision, there’s one to 10 goals a few bullet points. Prioritize those goals, pull out the top three to five ask your team to vote, so that you all feel like you’ve got a sense of direction and prioritization.

Accountability, make sure that every goal on that piece of paper is assigned to someone. Who is responsible for driving this goal, and tracking progress against it. There’s going to be contributors, working as a team is important, but without that responsible person driving this action, it’s not likely to move off that piece of paper. And, of course we want to make our goals smart. We want to make sure that they have got a measure, the target, as well as a start and end date. We need to be able to track our progress on our plan, in order to that that we’ve got to make sure every plan has a measure and a target.

Lastly, once you’ve gone through all of these steps, you’ve got to bring your team back together to take a look at that draft document, and confirm it. Everyone needs to feel good about the plan, and this is a really good opportunity for communication, and to refine the plan so that you’ve got a final document that everyone can buy into. Once you feel good about that final document, you’re ready to move into that next step of strategic planning. You’re ready to roll out your plan, and communicate your strategy as well setup the implementation process and systems to launch into putting your plan into action.

For more information on this step, check our video on How To Communicate your Strategy Effectively.