Bottom-up feedback is key to get strategic planning started

Drat. This was going to be the year your strategic planning process worked: You brought senior staff and your most trusted advisers together; went to an off-site conference center where lunch would be catered and interruptions minimized; even popped for a facilitator.

But the strategic plan that looked so good then has less air today than a week-old birthday balloon.

"Several things" typically have happened when a strategic plan goes flat, says Bernard Liebowitz, a performance management consultant and psychologist who is president of Liebowitz & Associates PC, Chicago. High on his list: A lack of communication, top down and bottom up.

"When the strategy is not communicated to the rest of the company," Liebowitz says, "there's no commitment to goals, no commitment to the company. If management doesn't communicate the goals, employees feel no identification with the company" and the strategic plan goes nowhere.

Commitment comes through communication -- down first, then back up and down again -- which, Liebowitz says, should start before the plan is ever put together.

The business owner-CEO "must say to his (or her) direct reports, 'Go find out what's going on,' " Liebowitz says. "Senior management must get feedback from employees who know what's happening on the floor" and in the marketplace.

In fact, Liebowitz continues, "the CEO's job is to make certain senior people get feedback."

Once employee thoughts are fed into the process and goals and a strategy developed, communication must go back down again. Employees, Liebowitz says, must know and understand the company's goals if the plan is to have a chance.

People need "to know what's expected," Liebowitz says. "The supervisor can't say, 'This is your goal.' There has to be some discussion, feedback. When that happens, people identify with the company" and good things begin to happen.

Conversely, "If strategy is not committed to by the entire company, (the) various pieces start going in 50 different directions (and you have) arguments between sales, operations and IT."

In some ways worse off when the process doesn't work, Liebowitz says, are businesses "that leave money on the table. They make money, but they could make so much more."

A planning meeting takes some planning of its own. The process should be "more than just a discussion of how much we want to make this year," Liebowitz says. "Look two or three years out and create some scenarios."

Liebowitz suggests three different situations: The marketplace three years from now is dog-eat-dog; totally different than it is today; or the same as it currently is but the company is doing better.

"What will the company look like in each scenario?" Liebowitz asks. "Then bring the discussion back to now. How can we prepare for those scenarios? What milestones should we have to know that we're being successful?"

© 2008, 121 Marketing Resources Inc.