I recently was asked to review a draft of a “Strategic Plan” document for a non-profit organization. A committee of about 15 people have been working on this for several months. In a nutshell, the “plan” included the following elements: situation analysis, key findings and recommendations.

In other words, not a complete strategic plan.

There are so many flavors, so many definitions of strategic plans in use today that if you asked ten people what the term meant, you’d get eleven answers.  It’s gotten that bad.  And strategic planning can get incredibly complicated. In large companies, it’s not uncommon for entire departments to be vested with the responsibility to do planning.  Or, it can take several years to roll out a complete strategic planning approach.

Here is a simple analogy for understanding what strategic plans really are:  They are just like the old Triptiks created by the Automobile Association of America (AAA).

You might remember these old friends from the pre-digital age (Actually, the AAA still offers them)  They are a series of map sections, personalized to the needs of the customer, bound together with  plastic GBC binding. In the days before GPS, Triptiks were the easiest way to get detailed directions from Point A to Point B.

Aha! What a perfect definition of a strategic plan:  Directions for getting from Point A to Point B.

Triptiks include both a starting point and a destination. So should strategic plans.  This may sound incredibly obvious, except that the example of the above mentioned “plan” for that non-profit, where the goals were omitted, occurs far too frequently.  The group doing the planning were all experienced business professionals.  While they did a great job of determining point A, they totally forgot about the destination, Point B.  No one takes a trip without some destination in mind.  And the really cool trips usually involve highly desirable destinations, right?

Triptiks provide a route that guides the journey. When you order one the AAA asks you if you want the fastest way, the scenic route, etc.  That’s because there are all kinds of ways to get from Point A to Point B.  The Triptik spells out the best route based on your needs and preferences. Because of their size, each Triptik page contains only a section of the overall route. I remember the feeling of accomplishment on a long drive as I ticked over each successive page:  “I’m getting closer to my destination!”

Good strategic plans do the same thing: They spell out a specific route to be taken, out of all the possible routes that could be taken. They break long complicated activities into smaller component pieces.  As each piece gets completed, people get a feeling of success: “We’re getting closer to achieving our goals!”

Here is final, often overlooked, similarity between Triptiks and good strategic plans: They are relatively small, printed on paper (meaning, not digital), and everyone can get their own copy personalized for them.  In terms of adopting digital technology, I am an eager overachiever. Generally I hate paper, and try to keep everything in digital form on my laptop. And yet, after years of running businesses and consulting with my clients, I have come to the conclusion that strategic plans need to be on paper, as short as possible (no more than 3-5 pages) and in the hands of every employee in the organization.

Strategic plans should not be any more complicated than the tried and true Triptik.

The new year begins.  Most companies, my clients included, have completed their 2011 plans. So now you’re back from the holiday break and focusing on execution.

You’ve planned the results you want. Here are three New Year’s resolutions that you can make to help you get off to a great start on getting the results you planned:

1. Communicate the plan’s key themes and objectives with employees at every opportunity.  It’s ironic that sexecutive teams spend so much time planning and so little time making sure the rest of the people implementing those plans are clear on what they’re doing and why.  Top-to-bottom alignment is the first key to successful plan execution.

And, make sure you communicate in plain English, not “plan speak.”  A great technique is to express your plan in the form of a story. What makes a great story? A protagonist who overcomes challenges, learning along the way, ultimately succeeding.  Ask anybody about the last great strategic plan they read.  Then ask about the last movie they saw or a great book they completed.  People don’t remember plans. But they do remember a great story.

2. Visit your top customers and do a post-mortem on last year. CEO’s should be talking to customers all the time. This is not a sales call. Rather, it’s a chance to be objective about how well your business added value to your customers.  Where were you great? Where did you fall down?  What could you do better?  Don’t try and anticipate what’s important to your key customers.  Get it first hand.

3. Be the change you seek. This is a famous quote from Ghandi, and a great reminder for leaders.  These days, any new strategic plan invariably implies change within the organization.  The competitive environment is changing too quickly.  You have to model the change in behavior that you want from your employees.  If they don’t see it and feel it from you, chances are they won’t follow suit.

Good article in the BNET Owners Only blog yesterday about the need to actually respond well to customers if you provide a feedback mechanism. He talks about companies acting like they care about customers, but when you scratch the surface a little, it’s just for show. Sad but true.

Look at customer feedback from another perspective for a minute: while most companies provide a way for customers to communicate problems, how many proactively go out to customers on a regular basis to solicit feedback? In my experience, I’d say far too few.

It’s one of our key principles at the Upswing Group: The organization, from the CEO on down, must be in constant dialog with customers. No one department will adequately capture what the customer thinks or desires. Waiting until the customer has a problem is arguably too late. Why not go to the customer when they’re happy and talk about things you could do to add even more value? That’s when customer’s really know you’re plugged into their needs. The conversation isn’t about selling them something or calming them down because they are angry at that moment. It’s about building a dialog that can change the relationship from “buyer and vendor” to one that is closer to true partnership. And it helps build loyalty that will help navigate a rough stretch that will inevitably arise down the road.

Yes, if you’re going to invite customer feedback, you have to be prepared to listen. But don’t wait for them to write you via that little “contact us” form on your website. Go see them. In person. You’ll be amazed at what you’ll learn and how valuable that learning will be.

Too many people in too many companies believe that only some departments have a role in developing relationships with customers. The perception is that sales or marketing or customer service people are the ones that impact customers. Not field service people, or accounting folks, or other departments like those. They couldn’t be more wrong.

When a company is truly customer focused, everyone in the organization comes to believe that he or she plays an important role in developing the relationship with the customer. And the person leading the charge in making sure everyone gets this? The CEO of course.

For example, Coinstar was smart enough to understand how important the field service technicians were in building relationships with both the supermarket parters who “host” the machines as well as the end consumers. The operations leadership repeatedly drilled home the message that the field service job was far more than just about keeping the machines clean and operating. Those techs were trained to interact with store management, collect feedback from the manager or other store employees. And on top of that, they often would go into the checkout lanes with a small amount of change and give it to a waiting customer, encouraging him or her to try the Coinstar service. Replicate that behavior across the entire nationwide network of machines and the result is a very important grassroots marketing effort. One that can have for more impact on brand development that millions in advertising.

Leadership teams need to continuously communicate that everyone in the company is important in creating the strongest possible customer relationshps, no matter what the job. This focus helps develop the right company culture, keeps everyone focused on what’s most important, and builds the company’s reputation.

A highly recommended article from the Feb 11 NY Times, entitled, “How the Recession Made Us Stronger.” The author recounts the experience his small company endured before, during and after October 2008 when the bottom fell out. He used what he called the “4 P’s” – people, positive cash flow, profits and positioning. And he practiced what he calls “open book management” to include the employees in the issues and gain alignment around, and commitment to a series of necessary actions to keep the company afloat.

This is a perfect example of being focused on results and treating planning and execution as a single activity. And whether the author consciously knew it or not, he also did a marvelous job of managing change in his company, following the key steps John Kotter has found to be critical in the change process.

The quote the author, “At a lot of companies, when things get bad, the chief executive starts banging his or her head against the wall out of frustration and demanding: ‘How come they don’t get it? How come no one seems to understand what’s going on? Teaching people how to build a company is what open-book management is all about. It works in good times, and it works even better in bad times. It bridges the tremendous gap that separates management from their associates and that separates perception from reality.”

Spot on. One of the keys to managing a business through a crisis, or scaling a business for rapid growth, is to gain top-to-bottom alignment with employees on what exactly the business is trying to do. More than that, it’s engaging the employees in the discussion; that dialog creates more energy and ideas for the CEO and the executive team than they as a group could ever generate. And it’s why we at the Upswing Group are so passionate about our belief that getting the results you planned means that you start the process of executing your plan the day planning starts. And the first step is to engage the entire company in the conversation.

There was an article a couple of weeks ago in The Wall Street Journal entitled, “Strategic Plans Lose Favor – slump showed bosses value of flexibility, quick decisions.” A quote that stuck out for me was, “Walt Shill, head of the North American management consulting practice for Accenture Ltd., is even more blunt: ‘Strategy, as we knew it, is dead,’ he contends. ‘Corporate clients decided that increased flexibility and accelerated decision making are much more important than simply predicting the future.’”

Basically, the article was about how many businesses are discovering, as they pull themselves out of the recession, the absolute need to link planning and execution in a more fundamental way. Otherwise, they find themselves following their strategic plan, but are totally out of sync with the current environment. And, the reverse is also true: operating in tough times can lure companies into being so focused on tactical issues that they lose sight of whether they’re making progress torwards their important long term goals. Either way, the result isn’t good.

This dilemma is something I think about a lot, and it’s translated into one of the guiding principles at the Upswing Group: The ultimate goal is results, therefore, strategic planning and execution are components of a single integrated activity. I don’t want clients to create a strategic plan that’s just going to end up, forgotten, on the shelf. The plan, done correctly, can serve as the tool that guides execution. And if the business environment changes (as it always will), adjustments can be made to the plan on the fly that still reflect the core strategies and long term goals that the company has deemed crucial to its future.

Being so dedicated to the plan at the expense of staying on top of the market is clearly dangerous. But so is being sucked into the day-to-day and losing sight of the bigger picture.

When was the last time you talked to your customers about something other than selling them your products or services? If you’re like most CEO’s, the answer is probably something like, “Too long ago.” In this business environment, staying close to customers is absolutely critical. And, an important part of those conversations should be about understanding how the customer views your value proposition.

Just about every company has what it calls its “value proposition”: what it is offering the market that customers will pay for. The mistake often made is assuming that since customers are buying from you, they agree with that value proposition – that they are actually buying what you’re selling. This is not always, and in many cases rarely, reality.

A client of mine went out recently and talked to about 10 of the company’s largest customers. One of the questions he asked was, “why do you buy from us instead of our competitors?” The answers were revealing. He got some of the standard feedback, “Your product is reliable,” or “It saves us time and money. But other responses were, “your company has always been straight with us,” and “we can always depend on you to do the right thing by us.” These “intangible” statements of equity, rooted in the company’s values, were not part of the company’s stated value proposition. At least they weren’t then.

Seeing your value proposition through the customer’s eyes helps you understand where they put the value. Perhaps they really value some part of your proposition that in reality doesn’t cost you a lot to provide them. Solution? Provide more of it. The customer is happier because they are getting more of something they truly value, and your incremental cost is very low.

The entire organization needs to be in constant dialogue with customers, from the CEO on down. No one department can be relied upon to provide accurate information about what customers are thinking or needing.

Jennifer Gehrt and Colleen Moffitt, who are the founding partners of Communique PR in Seattle, have written an excellent book called “Strategic Public Relations: 10 Principles to Harness The Power of PR.” They wrote this book based on a conviction that most of the “how to” books on PR are very tactically oriented. Their approach is just as the title suggests: taking a broader, more strategic perspective on the subject and providing very solid advice on how to construct, and execute, the right kind of PR program based on their principles.

Public relations is perhaps the most powerful tool a company can employ these days, especially smaller companies with limited marketing-related budgets. As advertising vehicles have fragmented and consumers and customers get their “media” on a much more individualized basis through the web, traditional advertising has lost a lot of its power. Really good PR firms (and I definitely put Communique in that category) have developed specific expertise in a wide variety of communication disciplines, the most interesting of which are social media vehicles such as Facebook or Twitter. Those who view PR as the process of just writing and issuing press releases should definitely read Jennifer and Colleen’s book. It’s available on amazon.com. And check out Communique; they just went live with a new site – communiquepr.com

Article on Ford Motor Company and CEO Alan Mulally yesterday in the newspaper. Mulally is doing a phenomenal job of bringing Ford back from the brink. For me the operative quote in the article was: “Mulally is relentless. He’s got a laser-sharp focus on a simple vision that he just drills into the organization.”

There it is. That’s all you have to do! Focus on a simple vision that you drill into the organization. When you put it like that it seems so easy, right? Of course, it’s anything but easy. Defining the right strategic direction, distilling that strategy (imagine how complex that must be at a place the size of Ford!) down to the essence, then communicating clearly to the team. Believe, it is anything but easy.

Mark Twain once said, “I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” Distilling a simple vision from a complex strategy rarely if ever just pops into one’s head. It takes work to boil it down. And then, you have to hammer that vision, every day, constantly, pretending that overnight everyone’s forgotten what the strategy is.

The implications for your business? You have to take the time to define a clear three-year vision and plan; take the time to build alignment around that plan among not only your executive team, but the critical mass of you employees as well. To do that, you need a simple story around which you build that alignment – a simple vision that you can focus on with laser-like intensity, hammering away every day until not only does everyone get it, but everyone is working to achieve the same results. It’s the stuff successful execution is made of.

So I’m working with a client earlier this week on long range planning, and a visitor joined us for lunch and wanted to know what we were up to. The CEO explained and the guy said, “Right, so you’ll do the planning, put it in a binder on the shelf, and that’ll be the end of it.” I was struck by how many times I’ve heard versions of that same story over the past 20 years; in fact, how many times I’ve had it happen to me. You go through an arduous exercise to get the plan done, go through the arduous process of linking it to a budget, through the process of getting board buy-in and approval, and then poof! The plan is rarely if ever to be seen again! And straight we go into tactics.

In my consulting practice, my clients tell the exact same story. That’s why the new mantra is, “Planning is not the goal, results are the goal.” Planning is just one of several key steps in getting results, not a process unto itself. Planning has to be done in a way that will will breed executional success. You plan the results you want so that you can get the results you planned.