Strategic Planning: Superior Planning by Engaging People
I came across a quote from Dr. Denis Waitley today. It read: "The central secret of good communication is bringing the other person over to your side by satisfying one of every person's most fundamental emotional needs: Make him or her feel valued. With rare exceptions, people who feel valued – who are allowed to feel important in the sense that they are recognized – answer with openness, cooperation and reciprocated respect."
For organizations that have fallen off track (or perhaps have never gotten on track), I think this statement offers an important clue about how strategic planning needs to unfold. In far too many cases, businesses operate from a belief that strategic planning is the prerogative of management and executives. With this belief in place, they go about taking actions consistent with the belief. They have closed "strategic planning" meetings with the handful of individuals who have fancy titles or they hire consultants to come in and guide them through a planning process. Or worse, they hire consultants to come in, analyze the company, and tell the executives what to do - usually through a nice, glossy report that costs tens of thousands of dollars and which becomes a colorful paperweight). The result: an ineffective plan that costs dozens of people hours and thousands of dollars that does not produce any long-lasting change. (Ah, the BAR Formula© in action: a poor Belief producing the wrong Action and leading to an undesireable Result).
One of the key reasons that these efforts fail to achieve any long-lasting result is that they never connect with the people ultimately responsible for implementing them. Those folks typically are not included in the process or, if they are included, are asked to provide input with no real accountability associated with it (resulting in statements like: "We should....." or "The company really needs to...." rather than "I will...." and "Our team is committed to do [X] by [date]").
As Dr. Waitley points out, one of the most fundamental human needs is the need to feel valued. Organizations spend millions of dollars and most of their efforts focused on satisfying the "needs" of their external customers. All of that is well and good; after all, without customers, the organization would cease to exist. But with relatively few - and notable - exceptions (Southwest Airlines is one of the few publicly traded companies that comes to mind) businesses routinely ignore the need for employees to feel valued. They fail to tap into the basic human desire that each of us has to find meaning in our work. And meaning at work is tied directly to the degree to which each person feels a connection to the organization's purpose.
How can strategic planning make this happen? The concept is easy to grasp but often challenging to implement. In a nutshell, it means engaging your employees in every aspect of the strategic planning process. These are the folks who make it happen for you. They have FAR more to offer than the particular skill for which they receive their paycheck. Indeed, because the "will to meaning" (as Viktor Frankl put it) is so fundamental in every one of us, our employees WANT to contribute more. It's this sense of contribution that enables us to make the connection between what we do (for a living) and who we are (the sum total of our unique gifts and talents).
As Dr. Waitley points out, we human beings desire to feel valued. Tap into THAT basic human need and you will have a strategic plan that won't just sit on the shelf. It will be alive in each of your employees, every day. The results will astound you.
For organizations that have fallen off track (or perhaps have never gotten on track), I think this statement offers an important clue about how strategic planning needs to unfold. In far too many cases, businesses operate from a belief that strategic planning is the prerogative of management and executives. With this belief in place, they go about taking actions consistent with the belief. They have closed "strategic planning" meetings with the handful of individuals who have fancy titles or they hire consultants to come in and guide them through a planning process. Or worse, they hire consultants to come in, analyze the company, and tell the executives what to do - usually through a nice, glossy report that costs tens of thousands of dollars and which becomes a colorful paperweight). The result: an ineffective plan that costs dozens of people hours and thousands of dollars that does not produce any long-lasting change. (Ah, the BAR Formula© in action: a poor Belief producing the wrong Action and leading to an undesireable Result).
One of the key reasons that these efforts fail to achieve any long-lasting result is that they never connect with the people ultimately responsible for implementing them. Those folks typically are not included in the process or, if they are included, are asked to provide input with no real accountability associated with it (resulting in statements like: "We should....." or "The company really needs to...." rather than "I will...." and "Our team is committed to do [X] by [date]").
As Dr. Waitley points out, one of the most fundamental human needs is the need to feel valued. Organizations spend millions of dollars and most of their efforts focused on satisfying the "needs" of their external customers. All of that is well and good; after all, without customers, the organization would cease to exist. But with relatively few - and notable - exceptions (Southwest Airlines is one of the few publicly traded companies that comes to mind) businesses routinely ignore the need for employees to feel valued. They fail to tap into the basic human desire that each of us has to find meaning in our work. And meaning at work is tied directly to the degree to which each person feels a connection to the organization's purpose.
How can strategic planning make this happen? The concept is easy to grasp but often challenging to implement. In a nutshell, it means engaging your employees in every aspect of the strategic planning process. These are the folks who make it happen for you. They have FAR more to offer than the particular skill for which they receive their paycheck. Indeed, because the "will to meaning" (as Viktor Frankl put it) is so fundamental in every one of us, our employees WANT to contribute more. It's this sense of contribution that enables us to make the connection between what we do (for a living) and who we are (the sum total of our unique gifts and talents).
As Dr. Waitley points out, we human beings desire to feel valued. Tap into THAT basic human need and you will have a strategic plan that won't just sit on the shelf. It will be alive in each of your employees, every day. The results will astound you.
posted by Chris Kenny at
7:27 AM
