Written by: Paul A. Raggio, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Operation Overlord, the plan executed that led to the end of World War II, is one of the most complex and multi-dimensional plans in our world’s history. Consider uniting thirteen allied nations and executing a cross-channel invasion from England to Normandy in the Northwestern part of France. Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the channel, preceded by a 1,200-plane airborne assault and a 5,000-ship amphibious assault. Airborne drops of paratroopers at multiple sites added complexity, as did the hundreds of thousands of multi-national assaulting ground forces already staged in Europe.
It’s hard to imagine the strategic thinking, then execution planning that went into Operation Overlord, all without the benefit of cell phones and texting, computers and instant messaging, virtual meetings, and webcasting endless PowerPoint presentations. General Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Forces Commander, was known to say, “In preparing for battle, I have always found plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” Strategic thinking and execution planning are what General Eisenhower and his four-star cohorts did in creating and successfully executing Operation Overlord.
What is the Discipline of Strategic Thinking and Execution Planning?
Strategic thinking and execution planning is a discipline and mindset the best CEOs habituate. Envisioning their company’s place years in the future and the milestones necessary to achieve each progress pillar along the pathway to a vibrant, thriving, dominating business is the definition of strategic thinking. Defining the multitude of goals, sequentially and concurrently time-framed to leverage and optimize resources, articulating what success looks like for each goal, and then assigning a champion held accountable to achieve them is the definition of execution planning. Gone are the days of strategic planning that results in a group of executives coming together to chat about the future, producing a notebook laden with platitudes that eventually is book-shelved for the year and has little or no connection to the company’s financial forecasts.
Planning is an organizational process. If you do it well, then you have a defined and deliberate method that addresses future environments and how your company will contribute and benefit under forecasted and predictable, and unpredictable conditions. If you do it poorly or not at all, you’re leaving the fate of your company in the hands of others, and they’ll indeed determine your short-term success and long-term failure.
When should CEOs be doing this?
So, CEOs and business owners, if you haven’t thought strategically about 2022 and created executable plans containing strategies on how you intend on achieving the organization’s goals, you’re behind the power curve. The second and third quarters are the times to do your strategic thinking and execution planning, and the third and fourth quarter is when you map your execution plan to the preliminary follow-on year budget. If you’re a small business, think eighteen months out. Think thirty-six to sixty months out if you’re a medium to large business.
The Framework
The framework for strategic thinking and execution planning always starts with envisioning the future. Where will we be in five years, three years, and the end of next year? How will we get there, and what are the resources we’ll consume along the way? Refresh your purpose, vision, mission, and values aligning them with what you envision. Develop specific, measurable, attainable, results-oriented, time-bound, encouraging, and rewarding goals. Prioritize the goals and identify the resources your company will require to achieve them.
Then turn your focus to where your company has been.
Where were sales against the goal? How much backlog exists, and how does it measure against the plan? Was the profit goal achieved? What worked and what didn’t. What conditions led to success and failure. What leadership and management skills increased, and what lack of skills inhibited productivity? What annual goals remain and determine if they warrant being pursued, rescoped, or eliminated. Where and why were there budget over and underruns?
End with the present. Evaluate your existing organization and ensure it’s easily scalable and fully leverages its span of control, lines of communication, systems, facilities, capacity, and human capital. Assess your systems, procedures, and processes, introduce technology where needed, clarify the procedures and processes where uncertainty exists.Then document and train them by job, section, department, division, and other organizational stratification. Most importantly, assign, provide the resources, and support accountable champions to achieve the goals. Finally, create a budget and multi-year forecast that aligns the company’s priorities to match resources to annual and out-year goals.
Gone is the old way of Strategic Planning
Strategic thinking and execution planning are disciplines CEOs and their executive teams must master if they want their companies to thrive. Gone are the days when executives escape on retreats to build a strategic plan laden with platitudes and lacking accountability and resource fidelity. As General Eisenhower noted, plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. Be that strategic thinker and inspire your leadership team to create an executable plan to launch your business on an exponential pathway to growth and success. This is how you lead, think, plan, and act. Now let’s get after it!
Paul welcomes your comments and feedback and please contact him at paulraggio@actioncoach.com.
Paul A. Raggio, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Paul Raggio is co-owner, with his sister Lisa, of One True North Leadership and Business Coaching Solutions, a service-disabled, veteran-owned, family-operated leadership and management coaching firm in Santa Clarita, California. He is an AddingZEROS executive facilitator and certified executive business coach for ActionCOACH, the number one business coaching service globally. Paul mentors and coaches c-suite leaders, business owners, and their employees on leadership and management principles in achieving and sustaining their business growth and profitability goals. Paul and his sister were the 2020 Rookie of the Year for the ActionCOACH Southwest Region, the 2021 Rising Star Awardee for the Santa Clarita Valley Chamber of Commerce, and the best Business Consultant & Coach of 2021 by The Santa Clarita Valley Signal. He brings over forty years of leadership, business, and personal development experience to executives and business owners.
