Strategy for managers

- A common misstep of managers is not making enough time for strategic planning. Chances are the leaders of your organization have developed a strategic plan for the broader organization. It probably includes things like a vision, mission and specific targets or goals your organization hopes to reach. But have you been thinking strategically about the work that fits within your sphere of influence? Strategy is about working on your business, not in your business. Rather than focusing on the day-to-day work, can you take a step back and view it from a much higher level? In this video, I'll share a framework and some tools you can use to think strategically about your work. The framework was developed by Greg Fisher and colleagues and is discussed in their book "Strategy in 3D," which is about empowering everyone in the organization to diagnose, decide and deliver in a constantly changing environment. Let's start with the first D, diagnose. Here you use a methodological approach to understand the issues and challenges facing your unit. By analyzing the internal and external environment, you can identify key challenges and insights. A simple tool to help you diagnose is the SWOT analysis where you look at your unit's most significant strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, SWOT. Check out the exercise files for a template you can fill in as I discuss each of these, starting with strengths. What is your team really good at? What are the specific skills and talents you're bringing to the organization? Next, what are your team's weaknesses or things they need to get better at doing? The O is opportunities. What are the opportunities or new initiatives you might pursue? Finally, what threats exist that you need to be aware of? A threat is a disruptive technology or change that might make your work seem less important or useful. Once you have a solid sense of your area's SWOT, your diagnosis, you can dive right into the second D of the 3D framework, decide. Based on your diagnosis, what will you do? To answer this, you can look at the strategic options and alternatives that stem from your SWOT analysis. Combining your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats gives you four strategic options. In box one, use your strengths to seize opportunities. In box two, look for opportunities to overcome weaknesses. In box three, use strengths to mitigate threats. Finally, in box four, you can think about how you'll act to defend against threats and weaknesses. Pause the video and continue in the exercise file. You can come back to document this regularly. Now that you've considered your strategic options and alternatives, you can make a decision about how to best proceed. Rather than jumping right into a new direction, you can test a hypothesis by doing a mini experiment or pilot. This will help you confirm the right decision for your team. Finally, the last D. Now that you've diagnosed the landscape and decided on your approach, it's time to deliver. You have a thoughtfully developed game plan. Now it's time to execute it. How will you implement your recommendation? Will you need buy-in from other stakeholders in order to move forward? What will this cost and what's a reasonable timeline? Thinking strategically will help you take your unit's work to the next level. Try to dedicate time, literally block it off on your calendar for strategic planning. You might start with an hour a month, or even once a quarter. Ideally, you get to a place where you're doing this more regularly like weekly or even daily. The more often you can prioritize strategic planning, the better.