Unlock your Strategic Plan: Moving from Strategic Planning to Strategic Actions

How many organizations have a strategic plan that is currently serving as a very expensive decoration on a shelf or simply a poster on the wall?

It’s a common scene in leadership: A room full of sticky notes, high-level visioning by a leadership team, and the energy of a retreat to retool or reorganize. It often happens at this time of year; sort of like a delayed New Year’s resolution; organization style. We walk away with a thick binder, a poster to hang on the wall, and a sense of accomplishment. But then, Monday morning hits along with all the work you missed while at the retreat. The emails pile up, the fires start, and by mid-summer, that brilliant initiative is buried under the weight of daily operations.

The majority of strategic plans fail to produce actual intended results. It’s rarely because the logic was flawed; it’s because the execution failed. Too much energy is often put into ideas or vision, rather than actionable steps to get the job done. To move your organization forward, you have to learn how to bridge the gap between the conference room and the grind of the daily job.

In my work as a lifelong educator and now an executive coach, I’ve seen one consistent enemy of progress: The Whirlwind. This is the day-to-day work required just to keep the lights on. It is urgent, it is loud, and it is relentless. Strategy, on the other hand, is important but rarely urgent. 

Unless you fight the whirlwind intentionally, the urgent will always crowd out the important. To win, you don't need a longer to-do list; you need to implement the Urgent/Important matrix otherwise known as the Eisenhower Matrix. This matrix helps you to determine what you should Do, Decide, Delegate, Delegate, or Delete.

Urgent and Important = Do: Do it now. You get it done and off your schedule.

Not Urgent and Important = Decide: Schedule a time to decide by with input, if needed.

Urgent and Not Important = Delegate: Who can do it for you or with limited support.

Not Urgent and Not Important= Delete: Eliminate it. If it wasn’t important, get it off the list. 

Most strategic plans suffer from Initiative Fatigue. They have four to five pillars, multiple objectives and action items. Here is the truth. If you have 2-3 goals, you will likely achieve 2-3. If you have 4-5 goals, you will maybe achieve 2-3. If you have several goals, you will achieve 0-2. 

To execute at a high level, you must identify what really matters and define a narrow plan, with action steps, to make it happen. Make the actions steps simple, clear, and repeatable. The strategic actions not only support the plan, they support what you should not be spending time on. Giving yourself or your organization the freedom to Delete: Not Urgent and Not Important items frees up the opportunity to focus on what really matters.

If you need help identifying what truly matters in your organization, let’s connect to make high impact changes for long-term success.