13 Ways to Sponsor Strategic Planning Process Success

Chuck Dymer and I led the first step in a client’s multi-day strategic planning process this week. The client wants to envision its organizational role decades into the future. This initial visioning exercise was hugely successful and fun.  And fun was an important expectation since they found us by Googling "strategic planning fun" and downloading our eBook on the topic of fun strategic planning.

We have been preparing the strategic planning process design for this workshop over the last month. Along the way, our two client sponsors have been incredible with their level of engagement and participation.

All of their involvement paid off via the five-part strategic planning process workshop addressing multiple strategic priorities. The support they provided and roles they played were integral to making the visioning workshop a success. They are a great example of how a client can powerfully support strategic planning success.

13 Ways to Support Strategic Planning Process Success

If you want strategic planning to be more productive in your organization, here are 13 ways our clients made it happen that you can do also:

1. Be present and active throughout the process
2. Actively take part in identifying who to involve in the strategic planning process
3. Devote the appropriate amount of time to understanding a workshop's design and strategic thinking exercises
4. Greet workshop participants as they arrive
5. Describe the process to participants in real words (not jargon) that people understand
6. Introduce the facilitators with enthusiasm
7. Play along with the icebreaker activity
8. Stimulate ideas among other participants without dominating a conversation
9. Smile throughout the workshop
10. Ask constructive, probing questions to generate ideas
11. Engage people that aren't participating much (if at all)
12. Refer back to information sharing and activities earlier in the workshop
13. Summarize the results with passion and hopefulness

If you do these things as an internal strategic planning sponsor, you are setting the stage for making your strategic planning process a success! – Mike Brown

11 Ideas to Make Planning Strategy More Fun!

Yes, strategic planning can be fun . . . if you know the right ways to liven it up while still developing solid strategies! If you're intrigued by the possibilities, download our FREE eBook, "11 Fun Ideas for Strategic Planning."

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