April 2006

There’s nothing more intimidating than hearing for the first time the question "Have you done any Strategic Planning?" Most people’s eyes glaze over or a shudder wiggles up their spine when they hear that they are to attend a meeting with a consultant and create a strategic plan for the company.

Just the sound of "strategic planning" conjures up ideas of a mystical science more complicated than organic chemistry or advanced calculus and expectations that it will be just about as useful for the work that really needs to get done right now.

It all starts with a question

What if you were told to plan a trip? What would you do? Most likely, you’d begin by asking basic, relevant questions like: Where to? When? For how long? For whom? Why? That would be enough to get you started.

Later, you might ask more questions like: What do we need to take? How much can we spend? What will the weather be like? Are there any special events? Are there better or more interesting ways to get there? Where do you want to stay? If plans change, what will you do?

You get the idea. And you haven’t even begun to plan the trip!

Getting answers to the questions

Where do you go to get the answers to these questions? For the first set of questions, you’d probably go to the people who are in charge of the trip or who are going on the trip. For the second set of questions, you would need to find people with special knowledge or relevant experience and other resources. Only then could the people involved in the trip make the decisions required to actually start planning the trip.

That is what strategic planning is like.

Win Win Workplace Solutions helps you ask the right questions, bring the right people together, and create an environment where people work collaboratively to discover and implement the actions that will lead your organization successfully into the future.

To your business success,

Gail Schaper-Gordon, Ph.D.
President, Win Win Workplace Solutions