7 Strategic Planning Frustrations and How to Eliminate Them

I think Brainzooming has heard every strategic planning frustration. They’ve come via talking and consulting with organizations across industries. When clients reach out to us, they are generally up in arms about the shortcomings of their previous planning initiatives and are looking for a successful approach.

Whether you’ve finished your plan and are focused on implementing it, are looking ahead to your next strategic planning process, or gave up on strategy planning long ago, I suspect that you’ve experienced comparable strategic planning frustrations.

7 Strategic Planning Frustrations

Here are seven frustrations that Brainzooming clients have expressed about their previous strategic planning processes. Are you stinging from one or more of these strategic planning frustrations, too?

1. Complacency permeates the strategic planning process, so there’s no ambition to make the needed transformative changes.
2. Persistent resistance to big thinking, so your direction ends up being more of the same, tired old things you’ve been doing for years.
3. The organization isn’t prepared to think about itself and its audiences and environment in new ways, so nobody is imagining dynamic changes for your brand.
4. There’s a disconnect between areas prioritized in the plan and daily business, so new initiatives aren’t creating meaningful results.
5. The strategic planning process takes forever, so when you complete the plan, there’s little energy for the organization to aggressively take it forward.
6. Your team won’t own the new strategy plan, so they keep doing the same things they’ve been doing.
7. The completed strategy plan sits on the shelf, so despite tons of time and effort, nothing will change.

Addressing Strategic Planning Frustrations

What antidotes does Brainzooming introduce to eliminate these frustrations?

Brainzooming has a passion for making strategic planning productive and fun. Here are strategies that we employ to accomplish this:

• Helping to identify and highlight compelling reasons for change
• Exercises that make it safe and intriguing for everyone to think big and new
• Making it efficient to incorporate internal and external audience perspectives
• Focusing planning on real-world opportunities and issues impacting the organization
• Streamlining and accelerating the entire strategy process
• Using collaborative exercises to engage more and diverse audiences in strategy

Want to eliminate your strategic planning frustrations? Let’s chat.

We can share with you many ways to improve the effectiveness and outcomes from your next strategic planning initiative. It’s what we do! - Mike Brown