Once you get the knotty key-stakeholder problem sorted out you can move on - but not too fast.Īn essential second step, and one that I’ve been guilty of not stressing enough with clients, comes with the word “target.” It’s vitally important to identify your “target customer” before moving forward. Its other key stakeholders were distributors customers-retail customers-industrial/food service consumers and employees. We described these as: farmers-as-shareholders and farmers-as-suppliers. It was a national distributor of milk and other dairy products and in it, farmers occupied two roles.
Take the example of a dairy cooperative I worked with recently. The same group of stakeholders can occupy more than one role. The trick is to identify stakeholder roles. But then you become aware that some of the employees are also owners, and the complexity grows. And in a small business, like a convenience store, it initially is: customers, employees, suppliers, and owners. Step one is to recognize your dependencies, i.e. I’ll let you in on the six-step technique I have developed over many years, working with clients and in teaching my public seminars on strategic planning. This problem is the lack of an effective “method” - a systematic or established procedure to undertake something, step by step.
I would spontaneously go about saying how about we do this/how about we do that. As the managing partner of a client law firm recently explained to me: “Before we adopted your approach we lacked the keys to effective strategic planning. It starts with a “vision” statement, moves on to “strategic themes” (six in all) and culminates in 28 “strategic goals.” The latter is a list of actions interspersed with a sprinkling of desired results, all utterly useless in terms of strategy. I have one such document in front of me as I write this.
Why is it that when a group of managers gets together for a strategic planning session they often emerge with a document that’s devoid of “strategy”, and often not even a plan?
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