SME Strategy is a strategy consulting company that specializes in aligning teams around their vision, mission, values, goals and action plans. Learn more about how we can help you and your team create a strategic plan with our strategic planning and implementation services.
The strategic planning process is much more than a document that lays out your organization's strategic plan. The process itself begins with your people. By including your team in the process early on, they will better understand your organization's vision, mission and goals. Team buy-in will increase, and your team can effectively execute the strategy.
Rather than looking at the strategic planning process an event that takes place during set intervals of time, say every year, or every four months for example, it's a better idea to see it as a cyclical and agile process. The strategic plan provides a framework, but your team should be nurtured along the way, and ongoing communication will help align your people and strategy.
The following articles have great information about understanding team dynamics and motivators, as well as helpful information for anyone who is leading a team.
- Do You Know How Each Person on Your Team Likes to Work? - HBR
Understanding your people and culture is an important part of managing a team. This article shares ways to help new managers (whether new to the organization, or new to management entirely) understand their team's strengths, culture, values, and working styles. The author also shares a great exercise that any manager can use to better understand their team.
- The 5 Remarkable Secrets of Team Success - Inc
This article shares five ways to avoid miscommunication and to create a positive environment for team success. Setting standards, understanding that mistakes are ok, Rewarding desirable behaviours, granting autonomy, and offering feedback are five ways to foster an effective team environment.
Need help with your strategic planning process? A facilitator can help:
- Using Behaviour Styles to Get Alignment for Your Strategic Goals - SME Strategy
Our newest team member, Grace Lu discussed the use of business chemistry in understanding team dynamics and behaviour styles. By understanding what motivates and drives your team, you can balance different people and styles to help avoid (unhealthy) conflict and tailor your management style to each of the different behaviour styles.
- 10 Tools to Make Your Sales Team Communication and Collaboration Geniuses - Entrepreneur
While it is important to understand that communication and team development is an important part of leading teams, it is also important to provide your team with the right environment and tools to collaborate to get the job done. This article lists 10 tools that can help your team collaborate and increase their engagement. While this specific article focuses on sales teams, many of these tools can be implemented in virtually any sector. In fact, we use many of them to help our own team communicate on a daily basis!