Adapting to change has become the most important attribute for organizations seeking competitive advantage. But how do organizations adapt to change strategically?
The answer lies in the agility and regularity of the strategic planning process, coupled with a “living” strategic roadmap.
Traditionally, organizations undertake their strategic planning and roadmapping process on an annual basis. More progressive organizations may do this bi-annually; fewer still undertake a quarterly review. However, in today’s ever-changing digital world this isn’t always enough. The speed and rate of change occurring means that the traditional cadence of strategic planning may be too infrequent to make a difference.
Organizations must establish a different “drumbeat” into their planning culture; one which adopts a more frequent assessment of what is happening in their environment. Identifying and analyzing the impact of business and industry changes on your strategy is critical to shortening the time to take action and make a difference.
A strategic planning drumbeat will always differ from organization to organization. Its frequency may increase or decrease depending on the level and rate of change of the business environment at any one point in time. Understanding and adapting your strategy to this change means that you will need to adopt an elastic approach, continually increasing and decreasing the frequency of review to accommodate the rate of change facing your business environment.
As a general rule of thumb, you should undertake a strategic planning drumbeat every 3-4 months. Doing this gives you the ability to become nimbler, adjusting to only those important changes that will have immediate impact. This means that you can react tactically, while still remaining aligned to your strategic goals.
It is important, however, that you do not lock yourself into a drumbeat that has no meaning. Your cadence is directly related to the rate and nature of change in which your organization exists. Don’t be afraid to increase or decrease the frequency as needed.
To create focus, we recommend taking a timeboxed or sprint-based approach when executing your strategic planning drumbeat. Typically, a drumbeat sprint would run over 3-4 days, or 5 at the most. During this time, assess your macro challenges, objectives and capabilities in light of the change occurring within your industry. Work through the following steps to assess:
During your sprint, engage with your stakeholders and teams as much as you can. Encourage them to help you identify what’s not going to work and the constraints. Creating this level of engagement will ensure that you continue to create transparency between your strategy and what you are executing to achieve your goals. At the end of your sprint, create an opportunity to showcase the changes to your roadmap and its impacts on the organization.
It is important to note that while regular sprints are good, taking an annual view of your strategy has incredible merit. This provides a learning opportunity that should consider:
Irrespective of how often you undertake strategic planning, one of the most important things regular planning provides is visibility and an opportunity for discussion. Creating this common understanding and facilitating debate is crucial to ensuring that your strategic roadmap is right for the current environment. That is, one that will enable future success in your industry.
We all understand the importance of strategic planning and having a strategic roadmap. What is even more crucial is that this practice must be a living exercise, a constant rhythmic drumbeat which is infused into the meetings and activities of your organization.
“Strategic cadence creates a vision for the future with its stakeholders through repetitive action in the present. It unifies the stakeholders, builds confidence and trust and energizes the participants.”
Jibility is an ideal business architecture tool for facilitating a regular strategic planning process, as it has been designed to support an iterative approach to strategic roadmapping. This means it is quick and easy to reflect changes and re-prioritize as needed.
A business value stream represents a chain of business activities that delivers stages of value outcome to the business along that chain. Every bu...
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