Assess your leadership team’s capacity for strategic planning
When it comes to developing a strategic plan, a crucial factor that’s often overlooked is the capacity of the leadership team. After all, they are the ones responsible for making it happen!
So how do you assess your team’s readiness? There are two key categories to consider: strategic thinking and strategy execution.
Strategic Thinking focuses on your team’s ability to think beyond the day-to-day tasks and consider the bigger picture.
On a scale of 0–10, where 0 represents a team solely focused on putting out daily fires and 10 represents a team that thinks long-term, where does your team fall? Are they actively seeking opportunities, exploring future possibilities, and making connections within your industry? Assessing their strategic thinking capacity will help you understand if they are prepared to contribute meaningfully to the strategic planning process.
Strategy Execution is essential to turn ideas into action. Consider your team’s track record in handling special projects, not just their performance in routine tasks. Do they demonstrate a proactive attitude, taking ownership of initiatives and seeing them through to completion? If so, they would score higher on the execution dial. On the flip side, if your team tends to falter when faced with new projects and struggles to finish them or leaves them incomplete, their rating on the execution side would be lower. Assessing their ability to execute will help you gauge whether they can effectively translate strategic plans into tangible results.
By evaluating your leadership team’s strategic thinking and strategy execution capacities, you can gain valuable insights into their readiness for the strategic planning process. Keep in mind that this assessment is not meant to pass judgment but to identify areas where your team may require additional support or development, and take targeted actions to strengthen their capabilities.
Remember, a well-prepared and empowered leadership team will not only drive effective strategy execution but also inspire and motivate others within the organization to embrace a strategic mindset.
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A good strategic plan is dead in the water if you don’t have a healthy team to back it up.
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