Strategic Planning Kit For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

A Strategic Plan Eliminates Wasted Time and Money

Stop for a moment and reflect on the hundreds of meetings and projects you and your team worked on over the past three months. How many of those instances weren't directly tied to a strategic initiative? Or better yet, what percentage of your team's time was spent working on something that turned out to be a dead end or yet another rabbit trail? Don't misunderstand me, taking risks means risking failures. However, a good strategic plan helps reduce the potential for false starts. Ideally, you want to align your human and financial resources as closely as possible with your strategic direction to eliminate wasted time and money.

A FranklinCovey study evaluated the characteristics of 52,000 managers across hundreds of organizations. More than 400,000 of the managers' associates were asked to rank the managers. The areas where managers scored the lowest included:

• Prioritizing work so time is spent on the most important strategic issues
• Providing clear expectations with employees that align to the strategy
• Wasting an inordinate amount of time because of poor strategic planning

As your organization is getting prepared to invest in strategic planning, consider that strategic planning eliminates wasted time and money, along with the eight other reasons discussed in this chapter. Ultimately, strategic planning yields organizations a multitude of tangible and intangible benefits when done correctly and for the right reasons. Keep all these ...