Strategic planning process redesign for a government corporation
A state-chartered government corporation decided to assess and improve its strategic planning process. The CEO and leadership team wanted to drive broad participation while improving collaboration and follow-through on key strategic objectives.
A review of existing planning processes highlighted the opportunity to establish consistent and rigorous strategic planning below the enterprise level – Divisions developed an annual budget but most did not develop strategic plans.
The solution involved the introduction of two key activities: 1) development of Division strategic plans; and 2) a Leadership Team debrief and prioritization meeting following those plans. Importantly, the new process design respected and worked in conjunction with the existing budget and capital planning processes already in place. To further aid adoption and ensure strong change management support, the team decided to pilot the new process prior to a full organizational rollout.
The pilots generated over 30 strategic initiatives for senior leadership consideration – 9 of these were prioritized for enterprise support. In a survey of pilot participants, 88% recommended the new process to their colleagues, and ver batims suggested a particularly positive response to the role of the senior team in supporting the work and prioritizing initiatives across the enterprise. The new process will roll out to the full organization next year.
“We had a sound strategic plan at the enterprise level, but we needed to develop strong links between that plan and strategic planning at the division level. McDonald Strategy Partners helped us design and execute a pilot program for division planning, enabling us to test new processes, identify learnings and, next year, roll out the new process to the entire organization.”
– CEO