To recap: when setting a strategic plan for a company, certain fundamental building blocks are needed:

Not only do these building blocks have to be in the mind of the management, they need to be communicated to the staff and then be actually made to work.  As all businesses are different, the way the leadership’s plans will be implemented will be subtly different.  It is also important to recognise that no one size fits all, though there are guidelines and principles which can be applied across all companies.

 

In previous articles, I covered the requirement to know where the company is going – otherwise how will a company ever make REAL progress?  Also I suggested a leadership methodology – a way to get the team to do what you want them to do, because they want to do it.  Now we need to look at how to achieve the CEO/MD’s actual aspirations. 

 

A good starting point is Napoleon’s dictum: “a plan itself is often useless but the act of planning is invaluable” and from that I observe that many companies create a plan for the future, set some targets (often just Sales targets) and expect the company to make progress simply because the plan exists.  This is unlikely to happen, and though the company might well continue to trade successfully it is very unlikely to achieve the aspirations of the senior leadership.  Why?  The answer lies in the ‘how’ piece.

 

It is relatively straightforward in any organisation to set tasks, goals and objectives but if there is no unified purpose or an ‘implementable’ set of actions - then one has to ask: “to what end?”   The key to successful achievement of an Implementation Plan is to create a coherent, consistent and time-based set of linking tasks. This is essentially a summary of who must do what by when. It is an arrangement which everyone knows about, ind in which progress is monitored, whilst at regular intervals informing all the staff as to how much progress in being made.  In the military world this is summarised as a “Synchronisation Matrix”, somewhat akin to a Gant chart but very much based on concurrent, contiguous and consecutive actions all being linked towards the same end goal.

 

So how to create a Synchronisation Matrix?  The first requirement is to define very clearly the company’s objectives in 4 areas: Finance, Process, Learning & Growth and most importantly the Customer.  These must all be linked to and consistent with the Vision & Strategy.

 

 

Finally, it is necessary to pull all this together in a coherent implementable ‘arrangement’ - the Synchronization Matrix, whose purpose is to ensure that everyone involved can see - at a glance - who is doing what, when, where and towards what deadline.  Essentially a table is created with Time as the horizontal axis and Activity the vertical axis, but each ‘event’ is linked to the desired output or result from a previous event.  Concurrent activity is as vital as consecutive activity but the key is to provide very clear “output” timelines.

 

In summary, creating a business plan for the future is of no value unless it is implemented.  The act of implementation is arguably the hardest endeavour for a CEO/MD to carry out as it requires drive, determination, vision, dynamic leadership and above all clear communication with all those involved in the change process.  SPS has a history in successfully helping CEOs/MDs define their aspirations for the future and through the SPS mentoring process actively help the company management achieve their desired objectives.