Preparing for Your Strategic Planning Meetings

All too often, managers give insufficient thought to preparing for their strategic planning meetings. So they arrive at their meetings without the needed information to make necessary strategic decisions. Or they discover, far too late, that their planning team members are unfamiliar with the strategic planning process. Or, because they haven't used a pre-planning survey, they suffer from a terribly slow start to their strategy discussions.
Also because they've not used a pre-planning survey, they fail to discuss some important, though somewhat sensitive issues - so those issues remain not-discussed and unresolved. Such faulty preparation invariably leads to unproductive strategic planning meetings and to serious problems with the implementation of the plan's resultant strategies. Clearly, a well thought out process of pre-planning would be beneficial.
A well thought out process of pre-planning is exactly what strategy consultant Bill Birnbaum presents in this book. Based on his three decades of experience helping client management teams prepare for, as well as conduct, their strategic planning meetings, he shares his "Ten Steps to Success."Birnbaum clearly explains:1. The criteria for selecting the "right" planning team members.2. How best to educate your planning team to the strategic planning process.3.
How to develop the planning assumptions you'll need.4. Gathering of information you'll need to make sound, strategic decisions.5. Why, when and how to conduct a pre-planning information sharing meeting.6. How to decide on the time span for your plan - three year? Five year? Or ten year strategic plan? And which is best for your organization?7. Using pre-planning surveys - Why? How? Who? Specific questions to ask.
And how the surveys will bring benefit to your strategic planning meetings.8. What location for your planning meeting? Away from the office, but why? Far away vs. nearby. Pros and cons of each choice.9. Should you meet on consecutive days? Or in a series of one-day meetings? Determining which is best for your organization.10. Facilities required for your strategy meetings. Space, equipment, supplies.
Nitty gritty stuff that's easy to forget. If your organization would benefit from thoughtful preparation for its strategy meetings, then you and your planning team would benefit from reading this book. Your time invested in such preparation would pay back many fold in the form of a sound strategic plan and in the success of the strategies within that plan.