‘Strategy’ is a word that sometimes seems to be used very lightly at work, but a winning strategy is often hard to create. HR Zone member Jeremy Thorn offers some helpful tips on strategic planning.

1. Strategy implementation is much harder than strategy development
Some boards work really hard to develop excellent strategies and then wonder why they fail. Successful execution usually requires acceptance and belief from all those who have to implement the strategy, not just its creators.

Consider sharing your strategic deliberations with everyone involved in its implementation, invite their participation as appropriate – and at least their comments?

2. Make it YOUR strategy
External facilitators and advisers can add considerable value to developing winning strategies, through their objectivity, impartiality and willingness to challenge with integrity. But in the end, they can only facilitate.

If the strategy is going to work, it must be your strategy, not your facilitator’s. If anyone doesn’t like it, they must be encouraged to say so.

3. Take your time
Creating a winning strategy takes time, requires research and development, and almost always iteration. Winning strategies are hardly ever ‘created in a day’.

Encourage your team to be patient, explore many options and withhold early judgement.

4. Factor in the ‘people’ element
Bright boards, with a keen operational focus and a firm eye on financial and market outcomes, often need reminding that they need to factor into their strategic thinking the ‘softer’ elements of strategy development to be successful. Not just the impact on employees, but other stakeholders such as shareholders, customers and suppliers, and the local community.

Don’t be shy about this. People can be really good at sabotaging any strategy, if you don’t consider and engage them.

5. Don’t forget the action plan
Notwithstanding point four above, strategy development can only happen with time-bound actions and agreed responsibilities.

Because many busy people hate to volunteer a thought or idea if they think they are going to be landed with the responsibility for developing it, why not consider drawing up the action plan at the end of your planning session, rather than as you proceed? This will also help you make sure that the necessary actions are evenly and reasonably distributed.

6. Focus on corporate needs first
It is only natural for individuals to consider the impact of colleagues’ suggestions on themselves first, rather than the organisation’s best interests – and still wonder whether others’ suggestions may be based on their own personal interests, desires and aspirations too.

In leading your organisation’s strategy development, demand that everyone participating puts their own personal interests to one side, at least for the moment.

7. Lift your eyes up from today’s detail
Members of functionally organised, operational and executive boards are often most used to dealing with immediate issues. ‘Dreaming and scheming’ about how the world might look, in time still to come, does not always come naturally to many.

Make sure your strategy development team is encouraged to look ahead, to lift their eyes above their immediate horizons, and to ‘look around corners’.

8. Break the mould
Winning strategies rarely involve ‘doing what we always did’ (because then, you ‘always get what you always got’). This isn’t to say you shouldn’t ‘stick to the knitting’. Rather, ask whether the way you knit, where you knit and what you knit is still appropriate, even whom you knit for and who should do the knitting?

Note that a winning strategy often means doing things differently. So encourage your colleagues to think outside the ‘well-established’. If your chairman or other senior influencers may not like this, or hold ‘self-evident’ truths that may possibly be worth an updated challenge, show them this document!

9. Speak your mind
Encourage your ‘rebels’ and folk from ‘left-field’, the deep thinkers and the slow thinkers, all to have their say. Firstly, they almost certainly will have something to contribute. Secondly, you won’t ever know the truth of this if you don’t encourage them.

Think how easy it is to close down a comment you don’t welcome, even by saying nothing. An arched eyebrow? A pregnant pause? A worried frown? Or even a light quip? A sarcastic remark?

10. Confidentiality is key
What is said must allowably be kept private, ‘in the room’ and never elsewhere for future reference or attack.

Successful strategy development requires trust and respect, that each and every contribution is allowable (and probably valuable) – however unpalatable – and that it is inherently intended in good faith.

Jeremy Thorn is the president of QED Consulting and non-executive director of several fast-growing businesses.