Exec planning: What is the point?
Somewhere between board planning, executive planning, division alignment, team alignment and personal performance planning, a fuzziness of what to focus on in your planning can at times emerge. The surface issue that seems to distract a lot of people is the operational challenge of the day. For many companies, they never really get to the place where their strategy is well defined so this describes the extent of their discussions. There are, however, more challenging sticking points.
For most organizations, planning is cyclical but even that cycle falls within a higher or macro level strategy renewal cycle. Progress within this macro cycle or the realization of the declination of the relevance of your strategy can also confuse the question of “What to focus on now” in terms of planning at each stage of the cycle.
Regardless of where you fall in the immediate strategy management cycle as well as the macro level cycle of relevance, don’t forget the essentials. If you ever get to the point where you can’t see the forest through the trees, take it back down to this level and make sure the basics are solid. This provides all the context you need to make sure the wheels within your cycle are moving in the right direction. In the mean time, you should constantly be able to define why you’re relevant, to whom and what you’re doing to make that more true tomorrow than it is today.
Strategy is about maintaining the relevance of your value proposition to a target customer group. It’s also about managing, changing and creating markets. It’s about understanding and shaping the competitive forces acting on your organization. It’s about taking control of your positioning.