Want to halve your planning time and double the impact of your strategy?

Then tell people what you want them to achieve, not how to do it

Do you ever wonder where & why strategic planning goes wrong?

To use a government department as an example, a new load of targets come down from above to say that hospital waiting times should be under 4 hours.This is management by target setting.

Now don’t get me wrong, I think targets are really valuable.The problem comes when the target and measure are communicated as “This is what I want and this is how I want it done”, rather than, “What is the best way to get this result?”

If you want to get your strategy working more quickly, don’t waste so much time trying to work out for yourself how to do it. If you spend more time explaining what you are trying to achieve, why it is important and then unleashing people’s creativity and resources, they will respond. Not only will you be on the path more quickly, you will have more resources thinking about it and most likely come up with better solutions than if you had done it all yourself.

If you help people understand why they are doing something they can also look out for things to help. If they understand that particular skills may be important, they know to look out for people with such skills. If they understand the benefits of reducing the time it takes to process a report, they might find ways to do that. If they understand how the products fit together, it is far easier to cross-sell them to customers.

So, save yourself time and become more effective.Tell people what you want to achieve, and ask them to help you achieve it.