Getting out whiteboards and sticky notes isn't going to cut it any longer for strategic planning in the digital age.
Developing an effective strategy is essential for any organisation looking to navigate the complexities of the modern business landscape. This means having an aspirational vision and idea of how the organisation can be successful, a clear set of integrated choices that deal with the various tradeoffs that must be made, and a solid understanding of the management systems required to realise the strategy.
Part of the management system is the strategic planning process. This is where the strategy makes contact with reality and where the implications of the strategy must be worked out in detail. This is where the strategy is translated into specific actions and initiatives that will drive the organisation forward and to create pathways for updating or course corrections if needed. This is often confused for the strategy itself so it is important to remember that the plan is not the strategy.
Despite the digital transformation of other operational areas, strategy development and strategic planning have largely remained analog and manual. This is a missed opportunity, as digital tools and technologies can greatly enhance the strategic planning process and help develop more effective plans that are easier to implement, monitor and adjust to change. Often these tools are already present in the organisation, and it is just a matter of using these tools in different ways than normally considered.
In this article, I will explore some best practices for strategic planning in the digital age. I will discuss how digital tools and technologies can be used to enhance the strategic planning process, from research and analysis to scenario planning and implementation. I will also provide practical tips and examples to help you apply these best practices in your own organisation. I've selected some platforms or tools for these practical examples, but this is not an endorsement of those platforms nor is this list comprehensive or definitive, so take much of this as inspiration to chart your own path.
The first step in effective strategic planning is to understand the environment your organisation operates in. This means doing research to identify key trends, disruptions, and emerging technologies that could impact your industry or. It also involves looking at what your competitors are doing and identifying potential opportunities and threats. Finally, it's important to gather deep insights from stakeholders like customers, employees, and partners to get a well-rounded view.
Digital collaboration platforms are ideally suited for organising and working through this process. Often times this process takes the form of prepared reports that are emailed to the executive or planning group where each person then makes their own notes or processes the documents in their own way. An unfortunate consequence of this approach is that these notes are hard to share and also hard to recall or to synthesise into the "so what" easily. This approach also suggests that strategic analysis is a "once-off" or "once in a while" activity and does not scale to happen more frequently.
To allow more frequent and more indepth analysis, managing and developing insights digitally is key. Consider using tools like:
Let's look at a practical example. Say you're a retailer looking to update your strategic plan for the next 5 years. Some key trends to research might be:
In this frame of digitally transforming strategy development, this might look like:
The goal is to paint a comprehensive picture of the forces shaping your environment. This digital, data-driven approach allows you to cast a wider net and spot things you might have missed relying solely on traditional methods. It also allows you to quickly create and share insights across your team, ensuring everyone is on the same page.
It means you and your team can more quickly identify:
Of course, even the best digital tools are no substitute for human insight. It's critical to have frank discussions about what all this data means for your business. Schedule in-person and virtual workshops with cross-functional leaders to get diverse perspectives. Have your strategy team regularly share their analysis and get feedback. Use collaboration platforms to keep the dialogue going asynchronously.
The key is to leverage technology to continuously monitor your environment and derive actionable insights you can discuss as a team. That way, your strategic plan isn't built on a once-a-year understanding but a living, evolving knowledge base. You'll be able to optimise your plan in real-time as conditions change instead of scrambling to catch up.
Once you have a solid understanding of your operating environment, the next step is to engage stakeholders in strategic discussions. In the past, this usually involved in-person workshops, brainstorming sessions, and meetings. But in today's digital age, there are many more options for facilitating these important conversations.
One of the most effective ways to guide strategic discussions digitally is through virtual workshops and brainstorming sessions. Platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams make it easy to bring people together from different locations and time zones. These tools offer features like screen sharing, whiteboarding, and breakout rooms that can help structure and enhance the discussion.
Another useful approach is to use collaborative digital tools designed specifically for visual mapping and ideation. Miro and Mural are two popular options that allow teams to work together on virtual canvases. You can use these platforms to create mind maps, flowcharts, customer journey maps, and more. The visual nature of these tools can help stimulate creative thinking and make complex ideas easier to understand. They also have several features purpose built to facilitate remote meetings that can keep things fun and enjoyable.
Asynchronous communication channels like Slack or Microsoft Teams can also play a valuable role in strategic discussions. These tools allow for ongoing conversations and updates outside of scheduled meetings. You can create dedicated channels for specific topics or projects, share relevant files and links, and keep everyone in the loop. This can be especially useful for gathering input from stakeholders who may not be able to attend every live session. Also consider using simple automation to post trend scans or market intelligence into these channels to keep the team informed.
To ensure that your digital strategic discussions are productive, there are a few best practices to keep in mind:
Guiding strategic discussions digitally may require a bit of a learning curve, but the benefits are well worth it. By leveraging the right tools and approaches, you can foster rich conversations, generate innovative ideas, and ultimately make better strategic decisions. Also, these discussions go a long way to helping embed and ground the future strategic direction into the organisation. There is no need to "push the strategy down" if the strategy has been worked through at multiple levels of the organisation in the first place.
Once you have a solid understanding of your organisation's environment, it's time to start exploring various strategic options and future scenarios. This is a crucial step in the strategy development and strategic planning process, as it helps you identify the most promising paths forward and prepare for potential challenges. It's a step that many organisations skip over, as they tend to move directly to setting goals and objectives, but there is evidence that spending time developing future preparedness can have significant business impacts.
To begin, gather your team and stakeholders for a series of brainstorming sessions to start to uncover the most impactful trends or uncertainties. Use digital collaboration tools like Miro or Mural to create virtual whiteboards where everyone can contribute their ideas and insights. Encourage participants to think creatively and consider a wide range of possibilities, even if some seem far-fetched at first. There are lots of templates available for these tools that can help guide the discussion and structure the output.
Next, use the trends, disruptions, and emerging technologies you identified in your research to generate multiple future scenarios. Each scenario should represent a different potential future based on how these factors might evolve and interact over time. For example, you might create scenarios around the impact of AI on your industry, the rise of new competitors, or shifts in consumer behavior.
To streamline the scenario generation process, consider using AI-powered tools like Portage. These platforms can analyse vast amounts of data to identify patterns and trends, and then use that information to generate plausible future scenarios automatically. This not only saves time but also helps ensure that your scenarios are grounded in data and take into account a wide range of variables.
Once you have a set of scenarios, assess the risks and potential impacts of each one on your organisation. Consider factors such as:
Tools like Portage can also assist with risk and impact analysis, providing data-driven insights to help you better understand the implications of each scenario.
Armed with a clear understanding of potential future scenarios, you can now start developing strategic options to address each one. This might involve:
As you develop these options, use digital tools to map out the connections and dependencies between different strategic elements. Interactive strategy mapping tools can help you visualise how various initiatives, resources, and stakeholders fit together and identify potential synergies or conflicts.
Once you have a set of strategic options, evaluate each one based on criteria such as:
Use decision support tools to help prioritise and rank your options based on these criteria. These tools can provide objective, data-driven recommendations to complement your team's intuition and expertise. Finally, make conscious and deliberate choices about which options to pursue, making sure that these choices are compatible and coherent when looked at together. These choices then form your strategy.
Remember that in the fast-paced digital age, strategic planning is an ongoing process that can't wait for a yearly off-site. Your scenarios and options will likely need to evolve over time as new information emerges and circumstances change. Build in mechanisms for regular review and iteration, and be prepared to pivot quickly when necessary.
By embracing a continuous, agile approach to exploring options and scenarios, you can help your organisation stay ahead of the curve and thrive in an ever-changing digital landscape.
Once you've developed your strategic plan, it's time to put it into action. In the digital age, there are many tools and best practices that can help streamline the implementation process and ensure your plan stays on track.
Consider purpose-built strategy management platforms such as Cascade or Tability. These platforms help you describe your goals and objectives, key initiatives and then help break down activities across teams and individuals. There are also OKR and other goal or objective management platforms, such as Profit.co or SpiderStrategies which can help streamline management and reporting of progress, risks and issues.
Also consider using more general purpose digital task management tools like Trello, Asana or Jira. While they do not usually have the same structure or constructs as the purpose-built tools, their simpler approach may be easier to implement initially. These tools are also helpful with more specific team-focused tasks so might reduce tool overload to just keep to a core set of tools.
To keep your strategic plan implementation running smoothly, it's important to establish a clear development process. This should include regular check-ins with team members responsible for each workstream. Consider setting up recurring status update meetings, either in-person or through video conferencing tools like Zoom or Microsoft Teams. During these check-ins:
In addition to regular check-ins, using digital collaboration tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams can facilitate ongoing communication and updates. Create dedicated channels for each strategic workstream where team members can share progress, ask questions, and provide support to one another.
To track progress towards your strategic goals, leverage digital dashboards that display key performance indicators (KPIs). Tools like Google Data Studio, Tableau, or Power BI allow you to connect various data sources and create interactive visualisations of your most important metrics. Benefits of using digital dashboards include:
When setting up your dashboards, be sure to choose KPIs that directly align with your strategic objectives. This could include financial metrics like revenue growth or profitability, operational metrics like production efficiency or customer satisfaction scores, or people metrics like employee engagement or turnover rates.
Finally, consider using AI-powered tools to provide ongoing monitoring and alerts about changes in your operating environment that could impact your strategic plan. Market intelligence platforms can continuously scan internal and external data sources to identify emerging trends, potential disruptors, or new opportunities. Tools like Portage can integrate these insights and provide automated analysis of their impact and potential strategic responses
Implementing and monitoring your strategic plan in the digital age is an ongoing process. By leveraging digital tools and best practices, you can ensure your plan stays on track and continues to deliver value. Remember to regularly review and update your plan based on new information, changes in the environment, or shifts in your organisation's priorities. Look to the key assumptions that underpin your strategy - when they change, it's time to revisit things and maybe make an adjustment. Having all the strategy inputs digitally available will make this process easier.
Embracing a mindset of continuous improvement is key. Celebrate successes along the way, but also view setbacks as opportunities to learn and adapt. By staying agile and leveraging the power of digital tools, you can successfully navigate the complexities of strategy implementation in today's fast-paced world.
Strategic planning in the digital age requires a proactive, adaptable, and data-driven approach. By leveraging digital tools and best practices, business leaders can navigate complexity, identify opportunities, and make informed decisions to drive their organisations forward.
Remember, strategic planning is an ongoing process that requires continuous learning, iteration, and adaptation. It's not just about setting goals and objectives once a year. To be successful today, leaders must continuously evaluate their strategy, understand their environment, identify new opportunities and threats, and make informed decisions based on data and insights.
By embracing the power of technology and data, such as using AI-powered platforms like Portage for scenario generation, risk analysis, and ongoing monitoring, or leveraging collaborative digital tools for research, discussions, and execution, you can position your organisation for success in the ever-evolving landscape.
The key is to stay agile, open-minded, and committed to continuous improvement. With the right mindset, tools, and processes, you can lead your organisation through the challenges and opportunities of the digital age and achieve your strategic goals.
