Once a strategic plan is created at the highest level of an organization, there is a great need to cascade the strategic plan throughout all areas of the business. With larger and mid-sized organizations, you have to work on bringing the plan down to the secondary, tertiary, and all other levels of the organization.
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To cascade the strategic plan from the top-down, the first step is having a strategic planning meeting to set the vision, mission, strategic priorities and goals at an organizational level. The next step is to cascade the plan throughout different departments, teams, and individuals. Start with the top level of the organization, and then have your departments and teams effectively create their strategic plans that align with the larger strategic plan.
This is important because it gives everyone an opportunity to share their own visions and measures of success. In terms where the organization is going, it's all about how the departments, teams, and individuals move the vision forward. In terms of mission or what the purpose of the organization is, it's all about how the departments, teams, and individuals help fulfill the mission. In terms of strategic priorities or the things the company is focused on, it's all about how the department, teams, and individuals move those goals and priorities forward.
When you do that successfully, whether through having one strategy meeting at the top and then communicating it all the way down, or having multiple strategic planning facilitation meetings across different departments and teams, that's when you have the opportunity to get everybody bought into the overall organizational strategy.
If you're on a leadership team, there might be five, ten, or fifteen of you, but if you successfully cascade your strategic plan, you go from having a dozen or so people working on strategic initiatives to dozens or hundreds or thousands of people all moving the needle forward in their own way.
Cascade your strategic plan by using our Aligned Strategy Development methodology to get everybody in your organization working together towards the same vision, mission and goals. Once you accomplish that, that's when you get huge dividends and huge returns on strategic planning.
>> Watch below: How to use strategy dashboards to track & monitor your strategic plan