"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."

 

                              -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Strategic Planning Why? No one disagrees that teams should be “proactive instead of reactive,” but too often strategic planning is a top-down process that remains too abstract to direct the daily activities of individuals. Team members become pessimistic and jaded when, time after time, their strategic planning offsites produce attractive binders of information that do no more than occupy shelf space. We believe that strategic planning should be a collaborative effort, achieving maximum buy-in from all team members, and that it is not complete until it produces measurable targets and specific, visible plans of action for each individual, with specific timelines. We prepare for your strategic planning offsite by learning as much as we can about your organization, your team’s specific mission within the organization, and the current challenges it faces. Then, over a two-day period, we take your team through a “funneling” process that helps you refine your mission; your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats; the key priorities crucial to your success; specific initiatives to drive those priorities; and a concrete plan of action for your initiatives, with specific accountabilities for each team member. We also recommend specific “Rules of Engagement” for your team, to ensure it will remained focused and effective as it re-enters the chaos of daily life in the business world. Tools: Structured interviews with leader, team members, and internal customers. Time: 2-3 days.