Over the past few years, the team at X5 Management has facilitated many strategic planning sessions. We work with organizations and companies looking to reflect on the previous year, share information with their teams, and plan for the upcoming quarter and year. They want to know, among other things, how to do strategic planning. And we’re going to share with you the top five tips we offer them in these planning sessions with you today.
How to Do Strategic Planning
Several themes exist for these sessions including strategic growth planning, team goal setting, succession planning, and leadership or communication management.
One of the key items in planning for these meetings is first understanding what a company’s expectations are for their planning session. A consistent challenge is that organizations rarely take the time to:
- Collaborate
- Gather input from all organization members
- Share important information with their teams
Strategic planning should represent an opportunity to discuss current issues, reflect on successes and challenges, as well as ensuring your team knows what to do to move forward.
Tips for How to Do Strategic Planning
Get your organization’s next planning session started using a few quick tips.
Go off-site
An off-site planning session will allow your team an opportunity to avoid workplace distractions and spend quality, focused time together. To facilitate this, pick a location that participants will feel excited about.
Stick to key themes
There are always many challenges and key areas to discuss during any planning meeting. Depending on your timeframe, pick two or three key areas to focus on and stick to the time allocated in the agenda.
Get input from everyone
It is easy to spend the majority of the time presenting information during a strategic planning session. However, making time to collect team members’ input is equally as important. Carve time for questions after any presentations and make sessions interactive.
Break the silence with breakout sessions
Small group discussions and activities allow everyone in attendance to involve themselves. Have activities start with small group discussions, where group highlights are brought to the attention of all participants upon completion of the activity.
Narrow your priority list
Lastly, action items are a significant final step to any strategic planning session. However, if this list is too daunting, many items may fail to materialize. Select your critical few items and set timelines for execution.
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