STEP TEN
Maintaining the Plan
OVERVIEW
Identifying common maintenance triggers
Deciding between updating and rewriting
Setting a plan review schedule
Although it's one of the most important steps in the process, this last step is seldom completed. You've worked hard to develop a strategic plan, and you've documented and publicized it successfully. Now your task is not to put it on the shelf and consider the process complete. It's not unusual for planners to accomplish steps 1 through 9 and then never see the plan implemented. A few years after the planning, someone comes along and says, “We need a strategic plan.” You can expect a chorus of groans and exclamations: “We did that already!”
To be effective, a strategic plan must be a living document, and it needs to change and respond to the changes that occur both within and outside the organization. That's why this final step in the development process doesn't end—not as long as the plan remains in effect. This is where the plan is maintained and updated.
Using the steps in this book helped you avoid the agony often associated with the lengthy process of traditional strategic planning. Even so, you certainly expended a lot of effort in completing the plan—effort that should not now be wasted. Strategic plans are meaningless if they're not kept up-to-date. A maintenance plan that gives directions for continually updating and refreshing your strategy helps keep it alive.
In this final step we'll address these topics:
setting and following a plan review schedule
identifying common maintenance triggers
using a comprehensive process for continual plan maintenance.
Case Examples: Maintaining the Plan
The following case examples illustrate how two companies maintained their strategies through updates and rewriting.
Updating Core Elements of the Plan
Axion Inc. faced a serious reorganization when a large share of its product line became obsolete. The product line fizzled because a competitor created new technology that was more advanced and more customer friendly. After the company furloughed more than 30 percent of its workforce, it began an effort to reposition itself in the marketplace. A review of its strategic plan revealed that the mission, objectives, goals, outcomes, and tactics needed to be updated to reflect the current environment. After some anxiety about keeping a strategy flexible enough to meet dynamic circumstances, Axion modified the mission, objectives, goals, outcomes, and tactics of its strategic plan. As a result of this maintenance, Axion employees have a much better understanding of the organization and where it's going in the future.
Success Breeds Commitment
A large insurance company, Safe4U, developed a strategy one year ago. In an effort to create a more efficient workforce, the strategy included many tactics related to technology. The director of strategic planning found it difficult to convince the CEO that a new strategy was needed, but when it was implemented, the CEO was impressed with the results. Now that the plan has been yielding positive results for a year, the director has had no trouble at all gaining the CEO's approval to maintain the plan regularly every 12 months using a detailed process. The CEO believes this maintenance will save time and money in the long run.
POINTER
Strategic plans are meaningless if they're not kept up-to-date. A maintenance plan that gives directions for continually updating and refreshing your strategy helps keep it alive.
Scheduling Plan Reviews
Maintaining your strategy need not take a great deal of time. It may require as little as a couple of weeks every three years. If a complete overhaul is needed, however, it may take as much time as developing a new strategy. How long it takes depends on how much change has occurred since the plan was first developed or last updated.
If change has been minimal—if you have the same customer demographics, offer the same types of products and services, and hold the same mission—then the maintenance will focus mostly on new goals and tactics. But if your mission has changed, it's another story—that kind of change demands a large-scale strategic planning effort.
There are two basic methods for scheduling a strategy review. The first is to schedule it like any other task. The second method is to identify a set of maintenance triggers and review them on a scheduled basis.
Example 10.1 demonstrates the first method of scheduling, indicating how often each component of the plan will be reviewed and the specific date of the next scheduled maintenance. Even if you choose to set a definite schedule for plan reviews, any type of significant change in the business climate should prompt an immediate review, without regard to the standing schedule.
EXAMPLE 10.1
Sample Maintenance Schedule
| Strategy Component | Maintenance Schedule | Next Scheduled Maintenance |
| Mission statement | 8–10 years | January 10, 2017 |
| Vision statement | 3–5 years | July 31, 2012 |
| Values statements | 8–10 years | January 10, 2017 |
| Strategic goals | 1–3 years | November 1, 2008 |
| Strategic objectives | 1–3 years | November 1, 2008 |
| Strategic outcomes | 3–5 years | October 31, 2009 |
| Plan tactics and schedule | 1–3 years | November 1, 2008 |
| Measures | 1–3 years | July 31, 2008 |
If your organization is fairly stable, with a durable product line, strong and immutable core values, and a customer base that hasn't changed over the years, this method of scheduling maintenance will work well for you.
But if your organization is in a dynamic industry, and especially if it's young or small, you're probably better off using the second method to prompt a plan review. Regularly looking at internal and external change triggers will signal when one or another component of the strategic plan needs to be updated. We'll discuss these triggers later in this step.
A set schedule for component review is based on expectations at the time the strategic plan is finalized. But nothing is so constant as change in any organization. Therefore, those people who are responsible for overseeing the strategy or the planning group and for ensuring that the strategy is meeting the organization's current needs and circumstances should meet every six months to consider the business environment and decide if something essential to the organization's continued success and future plans has changed. They should review the existing maintenance schedule and alter it in any way they think is beneficial. Generally speaking, a maintenance review should occur every six months.
Identifying Maintenance Triggers
Maintenance triggers are internal and external changes that may indicate a need to update the strategy.
External triggers are changes occurring outside of the organization that might affect its strategy. Examples of external triggers include economic changes such as increasing oil prices, geopolitical upheavals like armed conflicts and terrorism, or rapid changes in technology such as faster computers that can increase customer expectations. These types of changes will most likely require a review of the whole strategy.
Internal triggers are changes that take place within the organization. For example, a corporate reorganization may affect the strategic plan; economic changes influence what the organization does; and changes in goals or objectives, or in organizational systems, processes, or procedures, affect the tactics and the relative order of their importance, the evaluation metrics, and potentially the evaluation instruments themselves.
Being aware of change happening around you, both inside the organization and beyond its walls, is half the battle of staying current. Organizational change is the most frequent internal trigger, and it's important to ensure that your strategy continues to be linked to the business. If you look back over the changes that have affected your organization in the past two years, most likely you'll find that the changes occurred in one or more of the following areas:
technology
customer sophistication
marketing approaches
global expansion
human resource base
resource availability
the local, national, or international economy
competition
leadership or structural changes.
In thinking about these triggers, it's easy to see how quickly things change year to year. Responses to business drivers often change business needs, so the organization's strategy must change to meet the new business need.
Identifying the external and internal triggers that are affecting your organization is crucial to keeping your plan active and productive. Worksheet 10.1 lists key factors in your strategy that may need to be addressed and revised in the presence of an external or internal trigger. When you've linked an existing trigger to the factor it's affecting, it will be easier to review the strategy and make appropriate changes. The worksheet is designed to be used with numerous triggers; no need to complete a separate worksheet for each change trigger.
With the triggers and affected factors identified, and a decision made about what needs to change, the maintenance process described below will help limit the time spent on doing the maintenance.
Using a Detailed Process to Maintain the Strategic Plan
Many organizations schedule maintenance into their strategy as they design it. They know that, with rapid changes in technology and global expansion, the company will naturally evolve over a period of three years or so and it will be necessary to readdress the strategy as a whole.
The first step to reviewing the strategy is to review the mission statement as it exists. Does it still define “who the organization is,” its purpose, its customer base, its product line and services, how it offers and delivers its products and services, and what the environment would be if the organization did not exist? The mission statement often is stable unless there have been drastic changes to the organization's customer base, product and service base, or the marketplace in which it operates. Typical events that affect mission statements are large mergers or acquisitions, deep global expansion, and sweeping leadership change. In most cases, a mission statement is stable through several strategy rewrites.
WORKSHEET 10.1
Identifying the Impact of Maintenance Triggers
Instructions: In column 2, identify any internal or external triggers that affect the currency of the strategic factors listed in column 1. In column 3, describe how those triggers affect that factor. An illustrative sample is included.
After the mission statement has been addressed, it's important to identify what has changed for the organization and how that change might need to be addressed through strategic objectives. The most efficient and effective way to do this is to look at maintenance triggers. (Refer to the most common external and internal triggers we listed above.)
After the triggers have been reviewed, it's important to review the measurement results that were previously set. Is the organization on track to achieve those results? Does more work need to be done? Has a result been scrapped? Are new measures needed?
With the information on the mission, triggers, and measures in hand, the outcomes, goals, and objectives can be addressed. First, what outcomes, goals, and objectives from the previous strategy are still relevant and in progress for the new strategy? Then, what new outcomes, goals, and objectives need to be developed for the organization and documented in the new strategy?
At this point, you should have enough information to identify what maintenance is needed. Is it simply readjusting the existing strategy? Or do you need to create a completely new strategy? Or does the need fall somewhere in between those two extremes?
If out of this review there is a bit of “outcome overload” (or more than five clear strategic outcomes for the strategy), you will need to prioritize the maintenance needs. This is where the tools used in chapter 7 will be useful again in prioritizing.
When the outcomes have been prioritized, you're ready to kick off the strategy maintenance by revisiting the necessary steps in this book to develop a new or revised strategy.
Tool 10.1 condenses this process information into a handy reminder format.
TOOL 10.1
The Maintenance Process Described
| Maintenance Process Step | Description |
1. Review the mission statement |
Ensure the mission statement still identifies what is unique about the organization and defines its purpose and the market it serves. Determine if any changes in the operations of the organization have altered the mission and should now be reflected in the statement. |
2. Identify the maintenance triggers |
Determine what has changed internally or externally and if these changes have triggered a need for components of the strategic plan to change as well. |
3. Review the measurement results regarding the strategy |
Determine if the organization is on track and meeting the desired measure. If not, decide what needs to be changed within the strategy to ensure that the measures are met, or decide if the measures themselves should be revised. |
4. Review the strategic goals, objectives, and outcomes |
Determine if the goals, objectives, and outcomes have been met. If not, why not? Does something need to happen to achieve the desired outcomes and the corresponding goals and objectives? Identify what new outcomes are necessary for the health of the organization. |
5. Identify the maintenance needs |
From the four previous steps, identify the most likely maintenance needs. |
6. Prioritize the maintenance needs |
Determine which of the maintenance needs are the most important to the organization and its health, and which are of least importance. |
7. Kick off the maintenance |
Initiate an updating of the strategic plan by defining the scope of the maintenance. Revisit the 10-step process detailed in this book as appropriate to the maintenance. |
If a conscientious and careful review of circumstances shows that a complete overhaul of the existing strategy is not needed, then the changes to the strategy should be documented in an addendum that can be attached to the original strategy document. The addendum should include the following elements:
summary of identified triggers
brief description of how those triggers have affected the current strategy's tactical plan
description of changes to the current strategy, by tactic
description of and plan for new tactics to be implemented as a result of environmental or situational changes
evidence of the need for or rationale behind the changes themselves
updated list of required resources, budget, and timeline.
