Don’t Be Left in the Dust During COVID: Develop Your Strategy Virtually
For many executives the annual strategic planning process sets the course for the new year and gives management a sense of direction for years to come. Typically, strategic planning conjures up images of senior leaders gathered in large conference rooms or retreat centers for days on end, actively engaged in discussions about the future of their business.
Although these strategic dialogues are crucial to ensuring future growth, many leaders have put strategic planning on hold. They are focusing on the operational challenges related to COVID-19 or preferring to wait until they can get together in person. Meanwhile, other companies are forging ahead, willing to take the leap and develop their growth strategies virtually.
Our advice: Don’t wait; the time is now. Although your senior team may not be down the hall or flying in regularly for global meetings, strategic planning remains as vital as ever and can be done successfully in a virtual world. Planning for the future during challenging times is essential for a company’s future growth and makes it possible to take advantage of opportunities that may be right in front of you.
There are a number of our client businesses that are already experiencing the positive effects of embarking on a virtual strategic planning process. Their leaders are better able to balance short-term operational needs with a continued view of the long game. In some cases, lighter workloads have freed up senior leaders to think more creatively about the future they want for their business. Work forces are energized rather than overwhelmed by a renewed confidence in the path forward. Others are seeing acquisitions and new strategic opportunities emerge in their markets.
When COVID hit, one of our clients, a $7B transportation services company, was faced with a dilemma – do we put our planning on hold or find another way to create our future? The senior leaders chose the latter, pivoting their strategic planning process to a virtual one almost overnight. They created a Strategy and Opportunity Team, along with a parallel Business Recovery Team, and they started down the path of virtual strategic planning.
Through virtual working sessions, background analysis and benchmarking, and surveying techniques they examined strategic questions such as where they wanted to play in their markets and how they wanted to win. They boiled down more than 300 potential opportunities to 15 they wanted to explore in more depth.
Through two 4-week sprints, the team developed and assessed the high-priority opportunities. They ranged from internal strategic initiatives to radically improve the business to starting whole new businesses. The recommendations were reviewed with the board over multiple days – virtually. The board approved the strategic opportunities and categorized them into one of three buckets – 1) start immediately, 2) get going after some preparation, and 3) do more in-depth analysis before full alignment to proceed.
The executive team and board were energized by their ability to paint a future for their company and their work force that was about more than surviving COVID. They were also amazed that they got more done in that 8 weeks than they had been able to for years previously.
Lessons Learned
Here are a few of the lessons we have learned from our client work to make virtual strategic planning processes successful:
Conduct interviews first to find out where the senior team is already aligned on the strategy and where there are gaps
Use a structured strategic planning model to create clarity and continuity across multiple working sessions so everyone always knows where you are in the process
Organize working sessions around key strategic conversations that need to happen versus a set of tasks
Increase the work product development and pre-reading before each session to increase the productivity of the discussion
Use at least one facilitator to manage the technology, keep the conversational flow going, ensure everyone has a chance to contribute, and capture key decisions and actions
Use the virtual strategy planning process as a demonstration lab for ways to ultimately engage employees virtually on the strategy
Remember, the most important part of strategic planning is not the plan. It is the quality of the conversations, the depth of thinking, and the shared commitment among senior leaders that lead to successful execution of a strategy. Don’t wait!