For the past few weeks, I’ve talked about three lenses that go into my “magic kaleidoscope.”  Today, we’re diving in to putting it to use.

For me, the three lenses in the kaleidoscope help diagnose underlying causes…and help me shift onto a more productive pathway.  Today’s diagnostic situation deals with the feeling of being stuck…and alone.

Our strategic plan is great. Everyone loves it! But none of it is happening.

I’ve worked with many organizations on strategic planning.  And I’m always amazed when I hear the above statement.  It seems like some organizations believe that merely having a strategic plan means it magically happens.  They don’t seem to realize that they personally must shift, adjust, and move to make it happen.  The plan is just a plan, a guide.  It’s the Direction and Vector.  You still have to get up off your ass and move!

If you feel like you have a great plan, and you’re not seeing the results you want, ask yourself these questions.

• Is there enough detail in our plan that we can accurately measure our progress?
• How well are we following the plan?
• Is everyone truly on board with the plan?
• How fast are we really moving?

Is there enough detail in our plan that we can accurately measure our progress?

Is your strategic plan really an actionable plan, or is it more of a fluffy wish, hope and a dream?  Is there enough detail in it to truly hold yourself capable?  Does your strategic plan go beyond Vision, Mission and Strategic Objectives?  Are those Strategic Objectives delineated in terms of Goals?  Are those Goals defined in terms of Milestones?  Do those Milestones have a defined unit of Measure?  Have you identified the Metric or KPI that conforms to that Measure?  Where are you gathering the Data that informs that Metric or KPI?  What Systems house that Data, and how are you acquiring it to feed into your instrumentation that tells you how well you’re doing?

Without those kinds of details, it’s difficult to perform an honest assessment of progress.

How well are we following the plan?

Is your strategic plan “shelf-ware,” or are you using it, implementing it, following it?  I’ve never understood why organizations go through the strategic planning process only to lock up the results in a pretty binder whose sole purpose is to ensnare wayward dust particles.  And yet I’ve seen that very thing happen, more than once…in the same organization.  Strategic plans are meant to be used!

A strategic plan may include something like “Increase gross sales 20% by 31 December 20xx.”  And with the above items spelled out, you’ll know how well you’re doing.  But how well are you sticking to the route you said you would take to achieve that outcome?  Did you say you would increase sales by opening new stores?  By increasing per-customer orders?  By acquiring new customers?  What roadmap did you say you were going to follow?  How well have you followed it?  What mechanisms did you say you were going to use?  How well have you executed them?

For example, if you said you were going to increase sales by acquiring new customers, that’s a whole other mini-strategic plan.  How is that plan going?  Is everyone on board with that mechanism?  Are you giving it the time and attention required for it to succeed?

Use the plan.  Change the Plan.  Use the plan.

As my business partner and I started up Lamark Solutions and trulyMEid, we planned to have a FIDO-compliant Bluetooth authenticator as one of the primary features.  As we talked to more and more potential customers, we quickly abandoned the prominence of that feature.  We found the early adopters were far more interested in other aspects of the product, and we re-vectored accordingly. 

Some may look at that and say, “Hey, you didn’t follow your plan very well.”  And, they would be right.  We didn’t follow our plan.  However, we did have a plan, and we were following it…until it made sense to change it.  We were attentive to the gauges, the feedback…the Communications and Visibility.  And we adjusted Vector and Direction and Thrust and Momentum accordingly.

Is everyone truly on board with the plan?

Are people paying lip service to the plan?  Are those people still doing things the way we’ve always done them?  I’ve been through turnaround type strategic planning exercises where the organization was failing and fading away into oblivion.  Without a significant change in Vector and Direction accompanied by significant Thrust and Momentum along that new Vector and Direction, failure is exactly what would happen.  And in some of those cases, I’ve seen the folks who still have a job because of the new ideas outlined in a new direction refuse to see any value in following that direction.  They’ll talk about how great things are.  Then they’ll go right on doing the things that torpedoed the organization before.

How fast are we really moving?

Going back to the example of increasing sales by 20%, let’s say the mechanism we were going to employ to achieve the 20% increase in sales was to add 1,000 new customers.  And, let’s say that over the past six months, we’ve added 600 new customers.  Hooray!  We’re on track, even ahead a little bit.

Well, hang on a minute.  Tracking the number of new customers is like tracking airspeed.  It’s a good indicator.  However, it doesn’t account for headwinds.  So, what if in that same period, we let go of 300 customers?  (OK, the deadbeats in the company let go of 300 customers, certainly not me or you.)  Suddenly that loss of 300 customers is a headwind that significantly impacts how fast we’re really moving toward that goal of 20% increase in sales.

Track and Play

I recall one eye-opening meeting with some senior executives of a mail-order type organization whose secret desire was to cancel media buys on a specific network.  Others in the organization agreed.  As the guy responsible for the organization’s data, I suspected that was a fatal choice.  But I was one guy in a sea of opposition. 

Because our systems allowed for inaccurate data entry around revenue attribution to specific media outlets, I had been playing around with alternative revenue attribution models.  Those models told me that the only reason we were still afloat was because we were on that network. 

The original gauges built into the system were no longer serving the organization.  And, because the system captured a lot of other data, we were able to correlate things in different ways to create new gauges that were more accurate.  If we had only captured the bare minimum – if we hadn’t taken a “capture everything” approach – and if we hadn’t taken a playful, explorative approach to data, that organization would have relied on bad gauges and evaporated in a matter of months.

What should you be tracking?  Is it an either-or?  Either the increase in sales, or the increase in the number of customers?  Either airspeed or groundspeed?  To use a road trip analogy, is it miles per hour, time elapsed, or time remaining?  From my perspective, it’s not an either-or.  II’s a both-and. 

Track it all.  The tracking becomes data points that are useful for future diagnosis.