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The following tool provides a framework to develop your company’s: 1) 20-Year Guiding Statements, 2) 5-Year Strategic Plan, and 3) Annual Management Plan (AMP). Further, it explains how to translate the SMART Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) of your AMP into Projects, and then use the AMP in your monthly and weekly meetings. The first series of boxes in the image below show how your guiding statements cascade down to your daily work through the use of successive and more detailed plans. The second series of boxes explain the key meetings, or battle rhythms, you must have to effectively use your company’s plans.
MASTER PLANNING SOP
Figure 1: How to cascade vision to daily work
Strategy:Values
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Vision: Where the company wants to be in 20 years. What the world looks like in 20 years if the company has been successful. Remember, you can prepare both internal and external versions of your guiding statements. They must be aligned, and they should both be gender-smart. The internal version might be more specific, edgier, or informal.
Values:MissionWhat the company believes in (including gender equality), which will guide how the company behaves. Values are used to make important decisions – hiring/firing, promotions, etc.
A concise statement that describe how the company will win in the marketplace; how the company protects its market position. Should have an objective, scope, and advantage
Mission:Vision
The core purpose of the business.
Market:StrategyA description of the marketplace where the company sells its goods or services, the competition, the trends, and where the company see the greatest opportunity (don’t forget about the opportunity that is gender equality!). Also, what sets the company apart from others in the market – why customers should buy from your company? Market
20-YEAR GUIDING STATEMENTS
The company’s 20-year guiding statements are the highest-level (gender-smart) statements that guide the company for the decades to come.
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plan: How the company will operate your business. General description of how the company ethically sources, adds value and sells its products or services.
High-level Plan: A high level plan that outlines how the company will execute its strategy to achieve the company’s gender-smart vision.
Operating model
OperatingInitiative1.2.3.4.
Business and financial model: How the company will generate revenue, incur expenses, and generate a sustainable and growing profit. Business model
CURRENT STATE ASSESSMENT
1. What trends is the company seeing in the market? Use Porter’s 5 forces to evaluate the competitive landscape – mainly the threats. Hint: The Porter’s 5 Analysis can be conducted in a gender-smart manner, as explained in the Exec’s Program, which point out opportunities (e.g., to be gender-smart along the entire value chain), risks (e.g., being gender-blind, perpetuating gender stereotypes, etc.), competitive advantages (e.g., women’s market opportunity; business case for gender-smart teams and companies, etc.), and weaknesses (e.g., the downside of not being a gender-smart company).
5-YEAR STRATEGIC PLAN
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a. Brainstorm. Have several bullets describing the end of next year (i.e., “We have hit [value] in sales, [value] in profit, we have launched [number] of new product(s) and entered [number] of new market(s)”). These targets can be gender-smart.
Five to seven SMART Objectives:
1. Where do we want to be in 5 years?
FUTURE STATE PLANNING
b. After you brainstorm, organize, and prioritize your bullets and begin to form them into five to seven (gender-smart) SMART Objectives (i.e., where SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound).
The strategic plan is the highest-level plan for the company (refer to The Exec’s Program Session #2: Gender-Smart Strategic Planning for a detailed overview).
Opportunities: Threats: 2. What is happening at our company?
Strengths: Weaknesses:
CASE FOR CHANGE AND ALIGNMENT CHECK
PLANNING Performance Initiatives – Making your business more efficient Strategic Initiatives – NEW projects to widen and deepen your competitive advantage
1. Which barriers or constraints will make it difficult for us to move from our current state to our future state? What can we do to overcome them?
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Barriers Mitigation plans
1. Review your objectives and make sure they align with your strategic plan.
BARRIERS
a. Nothing to fill in – just reviewing and refining work. b. Review your future state. Is it exciting or compelling? Will it inspire you to wake up early and get out of bed and go into work? If not, then your staff will likely not be inspired to come to work. If it is not exciting strengthen your future state.
c. Alignment Check: Does this future state get you closer to your 5-year strategic objectives outlined in your strategic plan? Is this future state aligned with your strategy? Does it help you get closer to your objective? Does it stay within your scope? Does is strengthen your advantage?
d. If the AMP does not align with the Strategic Plan, make updates to it. Change your objectives. This is the art of alignment. It is not a science.
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a. Where did we hit our targets (operational and financial)? Why? Where did we miss our targets (operational and financial)? Why?
Targets versus Actuals and Why:
THE ANNUAL MANAGEMENT PLAN (AMP)
a. What is working well? (strengths) What is not working well? (weaknesses)
b.
b. Any new competitors (new companies, or new products from current competitors)? Any new risks to our business?
The AMP is the plan for the year. It informs quarterly and monthly work. And monthly work informs weekly work.
1. What is happening in the market –Any new opportunities we should go after this year?
CURRENT STATE ASSESSMENT
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Opportunities: Threats:
a.
2. What is happening at our company?
Strengths: Weaknesses:
3. How did we do against our plan last year?
c.
b.
4. What lessons did we learned that will improve our planning this year? and Lessons Learned:
Mistakes
b. After you brainstorm, organize, and prioritize your bullets and begin to form them into 5-7 SMART Objectives. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-Bound, along with 1-5 Key Results (KRs) per Objective. The objective is the high-level goal for the year, and the KRs are the milestones. The KRs add up to accomplishing the Objective. KRs are binary – you either did them or you didn’t.
Three to five Company-Wide Objectives; One to Five Key Results per Objective: BARRIERS
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1. Review your objectives and make sure they align with your strategic plan.
a. Brainstorm. Have a number of bullets describing the end of next year – i.e. “We have hit $XXX in sales, $YYY in profit, we have launched ZZZ new product, and entered AAA new market. These can be gender-smart. Furthermore, the company’s gendersmart metrics should be reviewed using a variance analysis on a periodic basis. Some of them, such as gender-smart sales targets should be reviewed monthly, while others such as pay equity targets can be reviewed annually.
1. Which barriers or constraints will make it difficult for us to move from our current state to our future state? What can we do to overcome them? Barriers: Mitigation Plans:
FUTURE STATE PLANNING
CASE FOR CHANGE AND ALIGNMENT CHECK
1. What do we as a company want to have accomplished by the end of next year?
a. Nothing to fill in – just reviewing and refining work.
b. Review your future state. Is it exciting or compelling? Will it inspire you to wake up early and get out of bed and go into work? If not, then your staff will likely not be inspired to come to work. If it is not exciting strengthen your future state.
3. Develop a detailed project plan for each objective (Optional at this stage)
PLANNING: FROM OBJECTIVES TO PROJECTS
d. If the AMP does not align with the Strategic Plan, make updates to it. Change your objectives. This is the art of alignment. It is not a science.
a. Once the AMP is written it must be communicated to all staff during an all-hands meeting. Ideally in the first two weeks of January. Also, during these first two weeks the management team (those that lead units and divisions) as outlined in your org structure, meet to review the AMP objectives. b. Next, map your AMP objectives to the org structure. If an objective is not assigned to a specific manager (i.e., a unit) it will not happen. Doing this step ensures someone takes ownership of all the company objectives and is held accountable for an objective. The org chart has many uses and assigning ownership of objectives is one of them.
a. The project plan should be done in January, by the units that are accountable for the AMP objective. Each project plan has the following components:
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c. Alignment Check: Does this future state get you closer to your 5-year strategic objectives outlined in your strategic plan? Is this future state aligned with your strategy? Does it help you get closer to your objective? Does it stay within your scope? Does it strengthen your advantage?
1. Categorize your AMP objectives and map them to the org structure
2. Outline a high-level project plan for each AMP objective
a. This is more advanced. Once you have developed your high-level project plan for each objective, now develop a detailed 12-month project plan for each objective. This is a more detailed project plan for each objective.
In the market we see a few things happening that we need to be ready for. These are [give a summary of the threats and opportunities]
By the end of the year, we want to have accomplished the following:
2. SMART OBJECTIVE 2: with 3 sentences to add a powerful description that people can rally around. 3. SMART OBJECTIVE 3: with 3 sentences to add a powerful description that people can rally around. 4. SMART OBJECTIVE 4: with 3 sentences to add a powerful description that people can rally around. 5. SMART OBJECTIVE 5: with 3 sentences to add a powerful description that people can rally around Objective 1
1. SMART OBJECTIVE 1: with 3 sentences to add a powerful description that people can rally around.
STRATEGIC PLANNING & EXECUTION TOOL | 10 APPENDIX
1. Department Lead: UNIT NAME 2. Objective: Insert company-wide SMART objective – a specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound target 3. Team:a. Names of all team members and their roles b. 4. Q1 Objective: Insert unit/division/department-specific SMART objective that ladders up to and supports the corresponding company-wide objective. 5. Q1 Key results: a. MONTH: INTERIM KEY RESULT. Note: break up big objectives into small bitesize objectives that can be accomplished each month. b. MONTH… c. MONTH… 6. KPIs & Targets: a. KPI #1 – targets for the KPI and date it is to be accomplished b. KPI #2 – target for KPI #2 and date it is to be accomplished c. Etc.
YEAR Plan Theme: Given that, we believe the theme for this year is [one concise statement that you will repeat at every management meeting, and something all staff can rally around]
Background
Last year was a good year. We [describe your successes and strengths] That said, we also had some challenges. We [describe your weaknesses]
ANNUAL MANAGEMENT PLAN TEMPLATE