Strategic Planning Kit For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

Overlooking Life after the Meeting

The absolute worst thing you can do is continue business as usual, as though you never had a strategic planning off-site. Not only have you wasted everyone's time and your money, but you've also made it nearly impossible to get people to participate in the future.

Committing time and resources to implementing the plan is almost more important than the plan itself. Don't underestimate how much effort it takes to get the plan moving. Here are a few tips:

• Within a week after your strategic planning meeting, send a time-line that contains the next steps and deadlines for completing the plan. Also include any notes that captured decisions from the session. Communicate this timeline to everyone in your organization so your employees know what's happening with the process.
• Do not, under any circumstance, cancel the next meeting in your planning or implementation process. As the leader, you're responsible for setting the example that the strategic plan is important. Canceling a meeting signifies it isn't.
• Send the strategic plan on the deadline you set, regardless whether it's complete. You reinforce the importance of the plan.
• Post a visible result of the planning session in a common area. Items to post include your mission, vision, and values statements or a poster of your strategic plan.

Flip back to Chapter 14 for more ideas on how to implement your plan.