Measure twice... Cut once...

From Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland:

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" asked Alice.

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.

"I don't much care where ," said Alice.

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.

"so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.

"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

“But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."

"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.

"You must be," said the Cat, "otherwise you wouldn't have come here."

I am sure that we all have read and thoroughly enjoyed reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland when we were young; however, in my case, it was read to me by my father which was another experience altogether as he would change his voice and his tone a little different for each character.

But, why am I sharing an excerpt from this child's fairytale?

Because, the first 6 lines deal directly with the concept of Strategic Planning or the lack thereof I should add in this case as Alice does not seem to care where she goes as long as it is somewhere and the Cat assures her that will happen if she walks long enough.

This is exactly what American businesses have been typically doing for decades: Walking... but, they still don't appear to have gotten anywhere with that process.

The Strategic Planning Process

Create Vision/Mission Statements

List Core Values/Principles

List Key Success Factors

SWOT Analysis

Internal Assessment

Strengths

Weaknesses

External Assessment

Opportunities

Threats

Assess current situation

Analysis of competition

Assess where we would like to be

List Goals to achieve Vision

Identify Risks

Identify financial needs for each goal

List Strategies to achieve each goal

List Objectives to achieve each strategy

Identify resources

Develop measurable plan of action

Implement and Follow-through

The strategic planning process is tedious but not all that complicated; however, it does take some analysis, research, collaboration, and soul searching.

Creating a Vision is nothing more than “what would we like to become?” It needs to be brief, to the point and easy to remember like We want to be the supplier of choice for whatever in a state, or a country or in the world. However, it must be achievable and realistic.

Visions MUST be shared otherwise not all employees are in the same boat pulling the oars in the same direction to move the boat forward. Shared Visions are not easily accomplished but are vital.

For instance, during my last 3 years of work teaching, I had no real incentive to “buying into” any Vision that the university wanted me to share with them because I had a “hidden agenda” that I was going to retire at a certain age.

A real threat to all organizations in the creation of strategic plans and shared visions is not the person who is completely against it because they can be easily identified and removed; it is the people who simply do not openly support it.

Unfortunately, these people are always around and in every organization and can oftentimes be your best employees in terms of productivity.

The Mission is how are we going to act on our way getting there which brings in core value, principles, ethics, etc. and can very unique to a specific company. Everyone acts this way and all new employees are hired based upon their correlation to the mission statement.

Key Success Factors are simply what do we have to do well or better than our competition in order to be successful and gain marketshare? This again lays the foundation for hiring because you would not want to hire someone who does not contribute to those factors.

SWOT analysis is next is this is where the rubber hits the road so to speak and is also the most difficult to accomplish. Why is that? Because, employees will easily and quickly tell you their strengths but will be reluctant to admit their weaknesses. Without a clear articulation of the weakness of employee one will not have any baseline data for improvement. This could also become a threat as well as risk.

SWOT also pertains to the organization and/or departments not just people but oftentimes companies look at employees and overlook the organization or look at the organization and overlook the employees. Successful plans look at both.

Strengths and Weakness are components of the internal assessment.

Opportunities are self-evident as well and looks primarily at markets, marketshare, competition. Some plans do not address the competitive environment here but have a separate section for it but in actuality it does not matter where it is located in the plan as long as it is addressed somewhere. Many of your strategies and action plans will be targeting your competition.

Threats are restraining forces that might stand in the way of completing your plan and oftentimes include a risk assessment as well. Whether it is included here or in a separate section does not really matter as long as it is covered.

Threats could come from competition, government regulations, the environment, the economy, employee training or employ turnover just to give you a few ideas.

In all risk discoveries and plans, one must be sure to develop a contingency plan or PLAN B as a work-around for each risk uncovered. Risks should never be ignored unless they do not pose a big enough threat.

Assessing the current situation is a meaningful and accurate realization of where we are now and not where we think we are or ought to be.

Assessing where we want to be should not be “pie in the sky” hope and dreams but high probability and realistic and measurable accomplishments of where we would like to be at some point-in-time in the near and distant future. This is why many strategic plans are done in increments of 12-18 months,

3-5 years, and 10-15 years.

These Goals must align with the Vision/Mission Statements, the SWOT analysis, Risks, Budgets, Resources otherwise what was the point of gathering all that meaningful data? Most companies develop a Spreadsheet MATRIX because it is easier to visually see the correlations. Goals are prioritized relative to how many of the necessarily variables they address and the rest are discarded no matter how good you thought they were.

Typically, 2-3 strategies are developed for each goal along with objectives, action plans, and who is going to do what by when.

The strategic plan is implement and follow-through MUST take place are whatever intervals that you think are appropriate. It is not unheard of to follow-through weekly, monthly, and quarterly and using Project Management techniques, you can develop MILESTONES for each one of those intervals.

Once each Goal/Strategic has baseline data collected, it will be relatively easy to measure progress and make whatever course corrections that you think are appropriate.

I really admire your persistence if you have read this far and if you have, you must surely still be wondering somewhere in the deep, dark recesses of your mind, where does the title of the article fit in to all of this?

Good question.

It is commonplace (rule of thumb if you will) among competent carpenters to measure twice and only cut once and this characteristic relates directly to the importance of planning in the Strategic Planning Process.