Less is more

I have seen a lot of strategic plans in my time, these have generally been thoughtfully put together by very clever people and with the best of intentions…….sadly I have seen most of these plans fail to meet their objectives or at best only half of what they were suppose to achieve actually being achieved. Part of the reason has been the lack of a compelling call to action, by this I mean that you might have a whole bunch of strategic imperatives but if you are unable to communicate them with clarity and in easily understandable terms the people on the front line, who have to play a big part in delivering your strategy will remain indifferent. To be honest I would always try to go a step further and ensure that everyone across the organisation feels that they have a part to plan in delivering a successful strategy and it’s at this point I would start to consider not just the message, but the tone of the message. I would not just look to inform people about the strategy, I would look to excite and energise them thus ensuring that my plan should have a fighting chance of meeting its objectives. Finally, I am a great believe in keeping things simple and no matter how many work strands I would envisage, when communicating my plan I would keep things nice and simple and in bite size chunks. Starting with “people”, “place” and “product” might not sound sexy but trust when I tell you that I would swap the word “sexy” for “achievable” all day long!