I received a question asking for more information on how Blast!, our online collaboration platform, enables an organization to streamline strategic planning exercises and deliver a plan more quickly.
In response, here's a case study from an online collaboration we facilitated. If you need to remove time from your organization's strategic planning process (either for an imminent planning deadline before year end or for planning you do throughout the year), here's how a Blast! from Brainzooming makes it happen.
A Blast! Case Study - Ideas to a Plan in 6 Hours
Our client is an industry association management team deployed in multiple locations. With forty potential initiatives identified as possibilities for the next year, our objective was to help narrow the initiatives to a manageable number and develop strategic plans for the top priorities.
The pressing deadline was the need to deliver the strategic plan to its board members a mere eight days after we started our work.
Based on a preliminary conversation with the client, we designed a planning schedule and four online collaboration sessions for the week. The first three Blast! online collaboration sessions included an orientation and two working sessions to gather input on priorities and implementation; these sessions were Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. The final session, last Friday morning, was to review the plan based on the week's work.
Blasting through Strategic Planning Exercises
Within the first three online collaborative strategic planning sessions (less than six hours of the client's time), we:
- Gathered input to develop a prioritization model for the organization going forward
- Identified the list of forty potential priorities
- Used a rough version of the prioritization tool to narrow the forty initiatives to six
- Ranked the six initiatives and identified the top five
- Gathered input from the group about their objectives and potential approaches with each of the five initiatives
After completing the third session on Wednesday, The Brainzooming Group team developed the input into five initiative plans, complete with strategy statements, metrics, critical success factors, and implementation steps to make the plan a reality in the coning year. We reviewed the twenty-plus page strategic plan with the team on Friday morning, making final edits to prepare this week's board presentation.
Yes, you read that right.
The start-to-finish client time investment for a prioritized, five-initiative strategic plan ready to share with the board was about seven hours.
In fact, at one point, I let the team know they'd done 4 weeks of work in 45 minutes.
And the client's reaction? It's "amazing."
That's the power of combining Brainzooming strategic planning exercises with our online collaboration platform, Blast!
Want to take advantage of the power of a Blast! for yourself?
If you'd like to spend less time planning and more time doing, a Blast! is what you need.
Email (info@brainzooming.com) or call us at 816-509-5320 to schedule time to learn how The Brainzooming Group can create an online collaboration to help you address your strategic planning questions and complete your plan for next year while there’s still time! – Mike Brown
Enjoy this article? Subscribe to the free Brainzooming blog email updates.
