In an early Cornerstone of Growth article, we looked at the need to plan strategically for your business on a regular basis and how it was easier than you might think – if you keep it simple and focus on “big strategic boulders” that the business needs to address and conquer for future growth.

Well, now comes the trickier, but still achievable, part. Once your people know where the organisation is headed, then it’s time to show them how to get there and to continually monitor and assess how you are going on that journey.  This means demonstrating how people, money and other resources will come together to achieve the plan, including:

• Developing schedules of action and making sure that all parts of the business, including financial resources, are focused on implementing the plan.
• Linking people’s goals and job descriptions with the blueprint for action.
• Making the blueprint the yardstick for performance. If people implement it well, reward them accordingly. If they don’t . . . well, that’s another story.
• Putting in place effective monitoring procedures to track how everything is going.

Regular board and senior management meetings are vital to achieving this and keeping an eye on how you are progressing towards your strategic plan – and you don’t have to be BHP or Woodside to hold a board meeting (although some clients still think this is the case!).

The critical thing is to stay focussed on the strategy – it helps if your strategic planning exercise created a few simple graphics, tables and diagrams that show what you are trying to achieve – remember, a picture is worth a thousand words and can be a compelling call to action if used well. Most of all, don’t allow the discussion to get side-tracked into operational matters and hence become boring (from a strategic viewpoint!!).

And finally, remember that no strategy should ever be set in concrete because things change (both internally and external to your business) all the time – so allow for creativity when you meet to review your strategy progress and you never know what might pop up for consideration….and it will stop the meeting from getting too boring!