Collaborative Strategic Planning

Many organizations underperform—not because they lack strategy, but because they fail to hear the unvarnished truth from their employees. The gap between organizational design and strategy execution often remains unspoken due to fear, hierarchy, and organizational silence. Enter the Strategic Fitness Process (SFP) from Harvard Professor Michael Beer: A collaborative action research method that helps leaders: ☑ Break down organizational silence ↳ Employees and stakeholders share honest, constructive feedback without fear. ☑ Align structure, leadership, and processes ↳ The right design supports strategy execution—avoiding silos, inefficiencies, and disengagement. ☑ Foster continuous learning and adaptability ↳ Organizations must reinvent themselves constantly to stay competitive. Example: Hewlett-Packard (HP) HP’s Santa Rosa Systems Division was struggling—conflicting priorities, lack of coordination, and disengagement threatened performance. By implementing SFP, they: ✔ Adopted a matrix structure to improve cross-functional collaboration. ✔ Created a strategic management process for better resource allocation. ✔ Built a culture of trust and transparency, leading to dramatic performance improvement. Organizations don’t fail because of poor strategy—they fail because they don’t listen, adapt, and evolve. The best leaders create environments where the truth is heard and acted upon. Ps. If you like content like this, please follow me 🙏

I used to believe Customer Success should drive the product roadmap. Here’s what I know now. The roadmap should be a collaborative design, built by Sales, CS, Support, Product, Marketing, and Leadership together. No one team sees the full picture. ▶️ Marketing sees market shifts. ▶️ Sales hears why deals are lost. ▶️ Leadership ties it all to strategy. ▶️ Product builds scalable solutions. ▶️ Support sees recurring pain points. ▶️ CS sees where customers struggle. When we isolate roadmap ownership, we build for one team. When we collaborate, we build for the entire business. Want true collaboration? Set it up intentionally: 1️⃣ Monthly cross-functional planning meetings: Bring leaders together to align on customer feedback, market signals, and business priorities. 2️⃣ Voice of Customer (VoC) programs: Collect real user feedback consistently — surveys, interviews, success metrics. 3️⃣ Closed-lost analysis with Sales: Review why deals are lost and what patterns could inform the roadmap. 4️⃣ Support ticket and escalation reviews: Identify top friction points that need attention. 5️⃣ Market research and trend studies: Analyze competitor moves and emerging trends quarterly. 6️⃣ Executive alignment sessions: Validate that roadmap priorities map directly to company strategy. The roadmap shouldn’t be a surprise. It should be a shared vision. One that every team feels connected to — and proud of. How does your company approach roadmap collaboration today? Because if you're only building with one team's input, you're only solving one piece of the puzzle. ____________________ 📣 If you liked my post, you’ll love my newsletter. Every week I share learnings, advice and strategies from my experience going from CSM to CCO. Join 12k+ subscribers of The Journey and turn insights into action. Sign up on my profile.

Everyone talks about planning or strategy, but rarely both. Ignoring their link makes both weaker, not stronger. A plan is the how. Strategy defines what and why. There's no doing one without the other. Strategy comes first and must be rock-solid before planning. Too many leaders jump straight to "how" without nailing "why." 70% of your time should be on strategic thinking, and 30% on planning. And they should be done consecutively If you're doing it right. To be successful at both, you have to understand their differences. I built a framework to bridge that gap. Here's the elements of strategy and planning in eight steps. STRATEGY: Step 1: Define the Arena - Where will you compete? - What game are you playing? The competitive dynamics - What's your aspiration? The measurable outcomes Step 2: Competitive landscape: - Who are the players and what are their moves? - Market forces: What trends, disruptions, and shifts create opportunity? - Internal capabilities: What are your unique assets and competencies? Step 3: Choose Your Approach - Where will you play? Select specific battles you can win - How will you win? Your differentiated value proposition - What won't you do? The deliberate choices to focus your resources Step 4: Challenge assumptions: - What must be true for this strategy to work? - Stress test scenarios: How does your strategy perform under different conditions? - Validate differentiation: Why can't competitors easily replicate your approach? PLANNING: Step 5: Break Down the Strategy - Strategic pillars: 3-5 major themes that support your strategy - Key initiatives: The big bets and programs that advance each pillar - Success metrics: Leading and lagging indicators that measure progress Step 6: Sequence and Resource - Timeline: Logical sequence of initiatives with dependencies mapped - Resource allocation: Budget, people, and assets assigned - Quick wins: Early victories that build momentum and credibility Step 7: Build Execution Systems - Governance structure: Decision rights, meeting cadence, escalation paths - Progress tracking: Dashboards, reviews, and course-correction - Communication: How strategy translates through organizational levels Step 8: Launch and Adapt - Implementation sprints: Break execution into manageable phases - Learning loops: Regular assessment and strategy refinement - Cultural alignment: Ensure behaviors and incentives support direction The Integration Imperative Strategy without planning is wishful thinking. Planning without strategy is busy work. The sweet spot is when both work together. Master this framework, and you transform your team from someone just creating plans into a team that drives strategic planning. ----------- Please share your thoughts in the comments. Repost if you feel this will benefit your network. Follow me, Beverly Davis, for more strategic finance insights.

Strategic planning is about seeking deeper meaning. Collaboratively. To build shared understanding of what matters most. . With nonprofit strategic planning, I’m not listening for: ⮕The most popular new ideas ⮕The best, feasible ideas that fill a market niche Rather, I’m looking at patterns around *why* these opportunities matter. These threads of deeper meaning could be around: 🌳Forested land is being lost to development so quickly that we risk being left with no green space in many neighborhoods ❤ Communities are seeking public spaces where they can spend time and feel a sense of belonging 📍How can we make sure this city is a great place to live, where all can experience health, wellbeing and economic mobility Once you’ve built a foundation of shared understanding about what matters, you then prioritize strategies based on: ✔️What is feasible ✔️What communities care about. ✔️What is needed for your ecosystems. ✔️What is important for your staff & organization. ✔️Which opportunities are not being addressed by any other entity. I say this because it seems to be so often misunderstood -> Strategic planning is not about creating a written plan. It's a collaborative path to shared understanding. **************************** Hi, I'm Elizabeth, founder of a boutique environmental economics firm, Sustainable Economies Consulting, LLC. We help organizations gain clarity and have more impact through strategic planning, community engagement & economic analysis. This is part 1 of a 3 part series. Follow along if you want to see more content like this.

To get your leadership team aligned around a clear strategic plan is a process. What’s needed (and often missing)? Collaboration. Alignment. Accountability. These come from trusting a system that creates space for every voice to be heard and for the team to work issues from all sides. CEO Paul Anderson and his leadership team at Rypos, Inc. just completed Katahdin Group’s Strategic Ascent strategy planning process with facilitator David Cohen. These images tell the story. Day one begins with the CEO presentation: reviewing the team’s SWOT input and probing questions, and sharing a clear vision for the future. From there, the group breaks into teams to begin to shape strategic goals, coming back together for debate to refine and sharpen thinking. The process requires stepping out of silos for real collaboration and making room for reflection. The team steps away overnight, then returns to ask hard questions. Are these the right goals? What are we missing? That rhythm ensures every perspective is heard and the group is satisfied with the landing point. Once goals are agreed upon, the team creates measures, accountability, and governance plans to carry the work forward. The results of trusting and engaging in this process: a team that has spoken, aligned, and is ready to move forward together with a clear path to execution.