SME Strategy is a strategy consulting firm that specializes in helping organizations align their teams and operations around a shared vision, mission, values, goals, and action plans. Our strategic planning services offer guidance on how a strategic planning facilitator can provide support in constructing an effective strategic plan that ensures your strategy is communicated and implemented across your entire organization.
Your organization's success depends on its ability to execute on your strategic plan.
Implementing your strategic plan on your own can be difficult.
Why?
Because you are busy working in the business that it's hard to make time to work on the business.
Because you've never done this before and strategic work is more complicated and unknown compared to operational work that is familiar.
Finally, because there are people involved and most of them don't like change. Even if the change is good for them.
But, if you can overcome all the above, your organization will be in a much better place operationally, you'll have a more focused team and you should achieve your most important goals.
Here are 8 additional benefits to partnering with a strategic planning facilitator to support your strategy execution.
So, You've done it! Your organization has developed a strategic plan that will guide your organization towards its most important goals over the next several years. Now comes the next step: Implementing your strategic plan.
Before you do anything else.
Ask yourself: "How much is the plan worth to me/us?"
"What's the opportunity cost of not accomplishing our plan?"
Then ask yourself: Do you want to leave that number to chance? Is it worth increasing the likelihood of success by engaging some professional support?
Here are 8 ways we can help you realize the benefits of your strategic plan.
- More capacity to drive change forward
Every strategic plan has elements of change within them. New processes, new systems, new work products, new communication. Driving those changes forward takes people power. Having a team behind you to support that change helps it happen faster without having to add a new FTE. - Provide a neutral perspective
Biases creep in when using internal resources to accomplish a strategic plan. An external strategy facilitator can support objectivity and can help bring a neutral perspective to challenging conversations. This will help support productive conflict and ultimately drive greater progress. - Keep the focus on strategic priorities
Your team is busy, and the day-to-day work can easily consume the focus of your team. By having a resource dedicated to balancing the strategic and operational your team will be able to work ON the business not just IN the business. And those are the things that truly move your business forward. - Support Accountability
There's a reason there are things called "Shelf plans". It's because teams forget to follow up on the work that came out of that "Great retreat".
If it's not top of mind your team will forget about it, so part of the accountability builds that strategic muscle to focus both on the strategic tasks, and also to track, monitor and report on the progress of the goals within the plan. - Continued Alignment
When a facilitator works with a leadership team to facilitate strategy implementation, there is constant outside support to guide dispute resolution, provide clarity about strategic procedures and objectives, and aid the leaders in steering the metaphorical ship in the same direction. - Skill Development
To implement a strategic plan, leadership teams require alignment, accountability, communication, values and culture, KPI monitoring, and change management.
Most leaders excel in some areas more than others. A strategic planning facilitator with expertise in these areas can help your leadership team develop the internal capacity to achieve your vision, mission, goals, and objectives.
We'll also help your team create a common language and understanding of all the important strategy and team-building tools.
We can help you align your team around a clear vision, mission, values, goals and action plans,
so you can lead your organization more effectively and get better results.
- Executive Coaching & Sounding Board
Leaders struggle with balancing strategy and operations. A leadership coach assists with tactics, processes, and educational materials throughout strategic plan implementation. By asking insightful questions, identifying problem sources, and assessing leadership strengths and weaknesses, executive coaches can help leaders overcome operational and strategic challenges (such as cultural clashes, lack of accountability, resistance to change, etc.). - Pose challenging questions in a safe environment
Let's face it, no one likes to be challenged or questioned. Even if it's valid, the natural response is to become defensive, and when you're in a room with a bunch of defensive people it's impossible to improve on existing systems.
Our job is to challenge, question, probe, and nudge people so that your organization can elevate how it does things. Since everyone knows that's our role, it's more welcomed and appreciated because we don't have any other vested interest other than elevating your team's performance.
If accomplishing your strategic plan is important and valuable to you and your organization, you need to put sufficient resources behind it to make it happen.
Many leaders don't know that resources like SME Strategy exists.
By having us coach, train, and keep your team accountable. We can help increase the speed, success, and ease of your strategic plan implementation. So that 50-100k investment in us will create millions of dollars of greater outcomes for your team.
If you think the investment in strategy execution is expensive, what's the cost of not accomplishing your strategic plan?
Contact us today to learn more about getting your team aligned around your strategic plan, and about putting the right resources around your team to make it a reality.
Why gamble on something so important?
