Providing direction to your team members via a strategic planning process gives you the opportunity to clarify roles and responsibilities. To succeed in managing strategic change for an organization, the executives responsible for that change need to have necessary strategic plan in place. To apply strategic change in the organization, there is a need for leaders that can guide this change through a facilitated strategic planning process that takes into consideration front-line concerns.
Many team members may have experienced difficult strategic planning processes that did not result in much but reams of paper and plans that go wasted. Don't rush this process too quickly. We all do it, but it can have a negative spiral in an organization. What do you think your team sees when you cant make a clean strategic plan? Make the decision to develop a strategic plan in concert with your team and go for it.
This type of strategic planning process is reality based. Years of undeliberate practices have resulted in these byzantine systems. Corporate culture experts Lisa Jackson and Gerry Schmidt define the leader of an adaptive organization as a leader who derives, and benefits from, a strategic advantage that is the result of having built and encouraged teams and individuals who are receptive to change, who have the capacity to adapt quickly and resourcefully to opportunities and threats. Instead of a recipe for mediocrity, a concrete strategic plan based on the input from relevant stakeholders results in a real, usable strategic plan.
People sense integrity and will naturally respect your opinion and leadership. Seek information from a wide range of sources and evaluate risk from all perspectives. The greatest leaders are those who include everyone in their sphere of influence by recognizing each persons greatest value. Possessing charisma often brings to mind a historical figure or a celebrity, but the most charismatic leaders in organizations are those that are inclusive and listen well, not those with a bombastic personality.
The reason why these strategic planning retreats are highly anticipated is because it encourages integrated thinking and quick action plans. Furthermore, most of these facilitated retreats are only successful when all the other members of the team make it together. The culture influences the way that an organization's people view leadership and their expectation of the behavior of leaders and potential leaders.
