Most strategic plans don't fail at the drafting stage. They fail at the implementation stage. The retreat produces a polished document or slide deck, everyone feels good for a few weeks, and then daily operations quietly swallow it whole. In PSMJ’s all-new online course, AEC Strategic Planning Workshop, we take you inside the process that PSMJ’s own strategic planning experts have used with countless firms to build a “sticky” plan that gets results. One of the most common areas that a plan stalls is in the implementation. If that sounds familiar to you, follow these six steps and start getting real results:
1. Start With Data, Not Opinions
A credible strategic plan begins with comprehensive data collection to accurately define the firm's current state, not a room full of leaders debating their impressions. In the pre-retreat process, you must gather and review:
● Feedback from the leadership team
● Feedback from employees
● Feedback from clients
● Financial benchmark analysis
● Market intelligence
After gathering this data, clarity will emerge as to the firm’s current state and the trends, opportunities, and challenges that lie ahead. The critical element here is to take a data-driven approach. Anyone can have a perception or opinion on what is or is not working, but the data brings the proof…and from proof comes action.
2. Build the Plan Around Alignment
One of the primary purposes of a strategic planning retreat, and the corresponding plan that comes out of the retreat, is to create alignment. Before strategic planning, individual leaders and staff are often pulling in different, even conflicting, directions, producing an unpredictable "resultant" outcome for the firm. After strategic planning, those same individuals are aligned around a shared direction. Not everyone will agree with every last detail of the plan, but they should all agree that it is “our” plan. Better alignment is what produces better performance. Achieving alignment in the planning process means:
● Candid conversations on topics that matter
● No “sacred cows” or protected issues
● Everyone in the room should feel empowered to speak up
● All of the key stakeholders should be in the room
An additional important note on alignment. When asked if an AEC firm has a strategic plan, many CEOs will quickly assert “Of course we do…it is all in my head.” A plan that isn’t visible and bought into by the leadership team isn’t a plan and isn’t going to foster alignment. Additionally, alignment should also tie back to an inspiring and energizing “why” behind the firm’s success formula. This is where the magic really happens to get the “whole” to produce more than the sum of the parts.
3. Cascade Goals Down to Individuals
Strategic goals only translate into action when they're broken down into specific elements of individual-level accountability. Here's what that cascade looks like in practice:
● Long-Term Goal and Strategy: Increase profitability from 9% to 16% by reducing project write-offs
● Annual Business Plan Objective: Reduce write-offs by 40% next year
● Business Unit Objective: The Chicago office reduces write-offs for all its projects by 60% next year
● Project Objectives: Each new Chicago office project is completed with no write-offs
● Personal Objectives: All Project Managers complete their jobs with $0 net revenue deficit (write-ups equal to or greater than write-downs)
This cascade shows how a single firm-wide goal translates into something an individual Project Manager can actually act on day-to-day efforts. This is the difference between a strategic plan that changes behavior and one that just looks good as a PowerPoint deck.
4. Build in a Regular Operating Cadence
Once the plan is built and initially rolled out, organizational inertia is working against it. Clients scream and yell when a project deadline is missed. Oftentimes, nobody screams and yells when a strategic planning deadline is missed. Humans are humans…they will chase the squeaky wheel. Here are four practices to ensure that strategic plan implementation actually happens:
● Regular communication (both with the leadership team and with staff)
● Regular reporting on performance versus goals
● Aligning individual goals to the strategic plan
● A regular operational cadence to ensure execution (quarterly, monthly, and weekly)
This may sound counterintuitive, but more meetings are better. Missing a deadline in a meeting should result in some element of (constructive) shaming. Meetings create a sense of urgency when it may, otherwise, not exist. Meet at least monthly as a team to monitor and manage implementation. Meet more frequently (even weekly) early in the implementation phase. Use this agenda for the monthly cadence:
● Review strategic goals and the status of Key Performance Indicators
● Review each item on the strategic action plan, with an update from the responsible party
● Identify barriers to achieving the strategic actions and address them
● Identify revisions to strategic actions that may be necessary
● Identify operational issues outside the strategic objectives that may affect strategy or need to be addressed
● Discuss trends that may impact the plan and how to react accordingly
It is critical here for AEC firm leaders to not over-correct for broader industry trends. There will be near-term “noise” associated with external factors. Leaders must always think longer-term and anticipate what opportunities and challenges will look like 3-5 years ahead. Additionally, the need for course-correction or plan adjustment will increase as the plan flows down to specific personal objectives. In other words, big-picture mission, vision, and values should hardly ever change, but specific personal objectives are more likely to change as conditions change.
5. Plan for Resistance to Change
Implementation doesn't fail only because of poor process. It fails because of predictable human resistance to change. Expect three distinct failure points:
● Failure to See. "Everything seems OK to me. Why change?" Overcome this by seeing the need to change yourself, then showing that need to others.
● Failure to Move. "What we're doing now isn't working, but I'm not comfortable moving ahead with anything different." Overcome this by getting comfortable with new ways, and helping others feel comfortable too.
● Failure to Finish. "This is a lot of work! I wonder, is it really worth the effort? Are others changing too?"
Overcome this by giving feedback on how the new ways are working, and continuously encouraging others.
Recognize which of these three states different members of your team are in. That's more useful than assuming resistance is a single, uniform problem.
6. Avoid These Common Mistakes
By tackling the above-mentioned five steps, you are well on your way to a strategic plan that gets results. But, you aren’t there yet. Watch for these mistakes throughout the process:
● Lack of preparation and data
● All vision and no action
● Too many competing priorities
● No measures of success
● Not allocating proper resources
● Not engaging the whole firm
● Not being flexible
Nearly every mistake on this list is a variation on the same underlying failure: treating the strategic plan as a document to be produced rather than a discipline to be practiced. Preparation without data leads to plans built on opinion. Vision without action produces inspiration with no mechanism to make it real. Too many priorities and no measures of success mean nobody can tell whether the plan is working. A facilitator who doesn't participate, or a plan that doesn't engage the whole firm, produces alignment on paper without alignment in practice.
Get Expert Guidance Through the Process
PSMJ's AEC Strategic Planning Workshop takes AEC firm leaders through the exact process that PSMJ’s strategic planning experts have been using for decades to help a wide range of firms achieve long-term sustainable success. This is a unique opportunity to look inside the process, address friction points, and understand how strategic planning can serve as the vehicle to overcoming challenges (and capitalizing on opportunities) in a wide range of areas…from leadership development to project management and ownership transition. Good decisions are built on good strategy.
The Bottom Line
A strategic plan that survives contact with daily operations isn't the one with the most polished-looking deliverable. It's the one built on real data, cascaded down to individual accountability, supported by a genuine operating cadence, and that is honest about the human resistance that any real change effort will encounter along the way. Learn more about PSMJ's Strategic Planning Advisory Services.