If you’re forever coming up short when it comes to achieving your dreams, your values might be at odds with your goals.

Use these techniques to set goals that support your values:

1. List your current values. Have you ever taken the time to examine your values? Most people have never given their values a second thought. This is a shame, because a person’s values guide their thinking, decisions, and actions.
   
   • Take 30 minutes and list your values. Put them in order of their priority to you.
     
   • Ask yourself if your behavior is aligned with your values. If there’s a mismatch, what set of values would actually represent your behavior?
     
   • Most of us have an idealized impression of our intentions, values, and qualities.

2. What are you trying to accomplish? What are your goals in life? What do you want to accomplish? Do you want to be wealthy? Get a six-pack? Write a screenplay? Save the whales? Build a real estate empire? The first step to any great success is to identify your objectives.
   
3. How do your current values impact your goals? If your values and goals don’t match, the odds of success are dismal without something changing.
   
   • For example, if you believe that wealthy people are fundamentally bad, you’ll never accumulate a significant amount of wealth.
     
   • If comfort is a high priority for you, that six-pack will never materialize.
     
   • Do you value having a lot of leisure time? A goal that requires a lot of work isn’t going to happen.
     
   • Look at your goals and look at your values. Do your goals support those values? Do your values support your goals?
     
4. What would be the perfect set of values to support your goals? Imagine you could build a person from scratch that would be perfect for accomplishing your goals. What values and qualities would they possess? How would you be different if you had these values?
   
   • Think about the people you know that have accomplished what you want to accomplish. How would you describe them?
     
5. How close can you come to matching those values? How well can you rearrange your values to match that ideal set of values? The closer you’re able to come, the greater the odds of your success.
   
6. Reinforce the values that matter. Imagine that your goal is to save $20,000 for a down payment on a home. Let’s suppose that you’ve determined that you need to be someone that values saving money over spending. How can you build this value in yourself and make it a part of you?
   
   • Prove to yourself that you’re that type of person: For example, pick up pennies you find on the ground and save them. Cut coupons. Find new ways of dealing with stress other than shopping. Save part of your income as soon as your paycheck hits your bank account.
     
   • When you keep proving to yourself over and over again that you possess a value, those actions will build and reinforce that value.

Final Thoughts

Are your goals and values a good match? It’s important that they are. When a mismatch exists, it’s important to either alter your values or your goals. There’s only so much resistance a person can overcome. Success is much easier when your values and your intentions are highly compatible. For deeper insights on values and goals in business read Shared Values A Winning Formula to Business Success.

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Before we go into how you can achieve shared values in your business, let’s look at what values are.

What Are Core Values?

The core values of a company serve as the foundation in which members make decisions, interact, and plan strategies. They are the founding principles that drive every decision made by teams or employees, and the company as a whole.

Many people believe core values are dependent on the type of industry. They expect that companies in the same industry will have the same values. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. In fact, core values may vary widely among companies in the same industry. Examples of basic core values that you find in a lot of companies are integrity, honesty, efficiency, consistency, and so on.

Shared Values and Business Success

So what do shared values have to do with business success? In establishing Why Strategic Planning is a Smart Business Plan, we highlighted its importance to business success. However, without your team’s contribution to manage and execute the plan, your efforts in devising goals and objectives are futile. In other words, to execute your plans successfully, it is essential that your team share your business core values. This ensures that they understand and identify with the values. Thus they are able to execute the strategic plan accordingly. Furthermore, it prevents misunderstanding and conflict of values, which often lead to teams losing interest at work.

A survey carried out by Gallup indicated that only about 30 percent of the US workforce was engaged at work. This means a whopping 70 percent of the American workforce have lost interest in their work. So, whilst you need to set strategic direction for your business, you need a plan that includes employee education in order to gain maximum success.

Communicating shared values

The process of communicating and reinforcing shared values should be an objective in every strategic plan. Meaning, it should be a natural outcome of your strategic planning process. As with any objective, the actions need to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-oriented. This should be highlighted in a communication plan, with a clear implementation strategy.

The question of why businesses need shared values often comes up among CEOs. It helps your bottom line! Here’s an example involving one value that all businesses should embrace – safety. Gallup provided a simple answer to this when it shared that more engaged employees have about 50 percent fewer accidents. This tells me that when businesses share and reinforce its safety value, they incur far less in medical costs. This is really a serious matter for businesses! No wonder businesses in the US spend hundreds of millions in dollars on increasing employee engagement.

How to Help Your Team Embrace Shared Values

Let’s look at ways to ensure that your employees share your company values.

Develop concise and clear values

First things first! You need to adopt or develop values that align with your company mission, vision, and goals. Next, get your employees in line with the whole idea.

Communicate with your employees

After defining your core values, it is essential that your employees share these values. Smart managers even consider shared values during recruitment processes. They hire employees who are considered “good fit” as their own values fit in with the company values. However, having strong values is just about half the work. According to a report by the Human Capital League, only about 42 percent of employees know the values of their organizations. So, be sure your employees get the gist of things.

I can’t say this enough! Communication is the easiest way to make everyone aware company values. One of the primary reasons many employees don’t know the values of their organizations is because they are not communicated properly to them.

Invest in your employees

Your business brand and values start with you and your employees. Therefore, your company values should be evident in everyone’s actions. An excellent way to demonstrate to your employees that you value them is to invest in their development. Apart from the advantage of increasing shared values via employee development, it also increases loyalty. So when you invest in your employees, you increase the chances of them remaining loyal to your brand. This is a win-win for all!

Be proactive, not reactive

Your decision-making process is also quite essential for a shared value system in the organization. Taking proactive actions is a more healthy business strategy than being reactive. Furthermore, proactive steps are more budget-friendly because they prevent you from spending huge amounts on corrective measures. So take proactive measures! This will ensure you create a well-balanced culture, which forms the basis for rapid growth.

Final Thoughts

There are other steps that could help create shared values between your organization and its employees. Yet it is quite impossible for us to include them all here. However, the ones listed here is a good place to start.

Creating an environment where employees share the company’s values is quite essential for any business. This helps speed up the growth process of the company by improving the productivity levels. If you haven’t really considered the effect of shared values in your business, you should definitely do that today.

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What is Strategic Alignment?

The word “strategy” is widely used in business today. As a result, sometimes I think it’s actually being overused. In addition, I often consider why so many people fail to properly execute their strategy and here’s an interesting perspective! Although approximately 65 percent of businesses know their intended strategy, only about 10 percent of them successfully execute them. This can be attributed to the fact that many businesses don’t consider strategic alignment in their business planning process. For instance, I have found that many simply embark on their business planning process without fully understanding how it affects the planning process as a whole, or how to integrate their strategy at every step of the process. In other words, many strategy managers are not fully aware of what strategic alignment means.

Strategic alignment involves linking a company’s business environment and strategy with its resources (including people skills and tools) and structure. It refers to a state where an organization’s strategies align internally and externally, with its users, marketplace, and customers.

“Alignment” is the keyword here. The strategies of your company must align with the ultimate business goal at every step of your business planning process – from creation to execution.

Benefits of Using Strategic Alignment in Your Business Planning Process

Let’s look at some of the benefits of strategic alignment.

Saves time

There is a saying, “lost time is never found again.” Time is a very important and delicate resource in the business world. The way you use your time could determine where you will be among your peers. Managers that do not adopt strategic alignment tend to embark on activities that, while being good ideas, are simply not the right fit at that very moment. If they are lucky, they will find out in time that they are operating off course, and wasting time.

To avoid this situation, ensure that your business strategies align with your company’s goals and objectives.

Motivate your team

Team motivation is another important area that needs to be considered in any business plan. However, we aren’t going to go deep into the subject. The point to grasp here is that when your team understands the big picture, it becomes a natural motivation factor. Therefore, strategic alignment helps keep teams motivated by making your strategy clear to them and showing them how it ties to the big picture. Businesses that actively use Shared Values as a Winning Formula to Business Success master this very well. At the end of the day, alignment between strategy and goal encourages shared values, helps gain “buy-in” and everyone sees the value in achieving these set goals and objectives. In essence, it helps you eliminate conflicting priorities, so everyone can be on the same page.

Supports market maneuverability

Maneuverability, long known as a military term, is now being applied to business today because of the dynamic nature of the marketplace in our global economy. We have to find ways, strategies, to maneuver and stay ahead of the competition. However, in a bid to keep up with the various trends, we must be careful to not lose business identity. An aligned strategy helps businesses to focus and maintain the balance between following trends and keeping true to their identity.

How Strategic Alignment can be Used in the Business Planning Process

As mentioned earlier, you should incorporate strategic alignment into every stage of your planning process. This way, you can be sure that you don’t leave anything unattended. Let’s consider the creation, communication, and execution stages of your business plan.

Creation

This is the stage where you consider How Goals and Objectives Help Your Business Succeed with consideration for the changing marketplace. Therefore, focus on drilling down to strategically align your action plans. You see, in a bid to retain business identities, many refuse any bit of change regardless of current trends or customer preferences. On the other hand, some businesses bend to the will of every customer, thereby losing their identity. A mindset towards strategic alignment helps you apply a systems approach to maintaining a healthy balance between these two extremes, thus helping you sustain your business.

Communication

This is perhaps the most important area of any business strategy. The Communication Plan is where you focus on how to achieve shared values and getting buy-in from every party involved. A strategy that aligns perfectly with your business goals communicates stability to teams, employees, management and customers alike. The goal here is to ensure that daily actions and decisions align with the strategic direction of the organization’s goals.

Execution

Execution is the stage where you produce the desired outcomes. Therefore, while executing the various objectives, it is important to continually assess and ensure that you consider the company’s structure and goals. Many organizations miss it here and end up damaging employee engagement and trust. In a thrust to adapt to changes in the market, ensure you don’t stray away from your business identity. Your business identity is what makes you a brand.

Final Thoughts

Many things make your business planning process a success and strategic alignment is definitely top on the list. It is essential because it saves time and other resources, while also keeping your employees informed and motivated.

Lack of strategic alignment is one of the primary reasons why many businesses fail to achieve their objectives. The importance of strategic alignment cannot be overstated. Therefore, ensure you consider it in your next business planning process.

The post Strategic Alignment: Why It’s Crucial to Business Planning appeared first on Strategy Nook.

Perhaps you’ve once been a part of these unfortunate statistics and you still haven’t figured out what went wrong. Well, the truth is that, the majority of the businesses that fail do so because of the lack of a proper plan. The planning stage is where you set your business goals and objectives. Let’s take a look at what goals and objectives are and how they relate to each other.

What Are Goals and Objectives?

Perhaps you’re thinking, “but I already know what goals and objectives are.” I’m sure everyone feels the same way too. The truth is everyone has the basic idea of what these two terms mean but many people actually use them incorrectly, as they are often used interchangeably. So, what do they actually mean?

Goals

Goals are generally broad in scope and indicate the general direction of a business. During the strategic planning process, your business goals can seem quite abstract and are not as easily measurable as the more tangible objectives. For example, you may say “I want to be the number one manufacturer of product X”. This represents the lofty plans you have for your company but how do you decide what measures you need to take to achieve this goal. This is where we move into the conversation of developing objectives.

Objectives

Objectives are like sub goals of your goal. They are more factual and tangible than goals, and are shorter term, specific – more narrow in scope, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely – they have deadlines. In essence, objectives represent exact steps that your business need to take before you can achieve your goals. Therefore, it is only reasonable to expect that your business objectives are in line with your goals and overall business strategy. This is referred to as strategic alignment and later we will discuss Why Strategic Alignment is Crucial for Your Business Planning Process.

Now, let’s look at objectives as it relates to the example introduced in our discussion on goals. An objective for this example can be to increase your production by 5 percent in the next production year. As you can see, this is more specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and provides a timeframe. You can track the success of this objective and it will take you a step closer to achieving your goal. It is important to note that you may need more than one objective in order to fully achieve your goal.

How setting goals and objectives help your business succeed

Now that you know the difference between goals and objectives, it should be easier for you to devise plans and measures for your business success. In case you still have doubts about their importance, here are 4 reasons why you should focus on setting business goals and objectives each year:

1. Give your business a direction

This is perhaps the most obvious advantage of setting business goals. A goal serves as a projected end for all your business efforts and it gives all your employees a sense of direction. It also helps keep management on track when it’s time to make difficult decisions.

Objectives are like small accomplishments that make the achievement of the goals look more realistic. They are like those little steps that get you closer to the goal. Hence, when your employees have an objective in mind, the business goals seem attainable to them.

2. Quality planning

Of course, planning is just as important as having a final destination in mind. It’s the response to, “how do you expect to get to the destination?” Planning your business strategy is important and the strategy you adopt will guide you in implementing your goals and objectives.

Revisiting our example, your strategy to achieve your objective of increasing sales by 5 percent could be, “increase sales by employing social media campaigns.” Looking at this example, you can see that the stated strategy is in line with the company objectives. It is pretty easy to see that a quality planning process involves setting up a reasonable strategy for achieving the objectives, which ultimately leads to achieving your business goals.

3. Easy evaluation of your business

Goals and objectives are excellent benchmarks for evaluating your business success. By setting achievable time-bound objectives, you can easily determine the success of your business. The more objectives you achieve, over time, the more successful your business.

Apart from evaluating the business as a whole, you can also easily evaluate your employees. What’s more? Even your employees can evaluate themselves. You can easily determine the departments that are succeeding and those that are lagging behind. This gives employees a chance to adjust their work to meet the required objectives.

4. Increased financial returns

Planning and focusing on achieving your goals and objectives ultimately lead to growth in your business, which translates to increased financial returns. Therefore, more objectives you achieve, the closer you are to achieving your goals. This means your business is growing, meaning the value of your business is growing. Understanding your business goals also helps you make financial decisions.

Final Thoughts

Strategic Planning is a great opportunity for you to get all your business decisions right. It is essential that you set achievable goals and objectives, as this gives your business a direction through the year. Also, it motivates your employees by letting them see a particular end goal. It also makes it easy to get buy-in from management and other stakeholders.

Suffice to say, it is highly beneficial for you to set goals and objectives for your business.

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How Strategic Planning Helps

Here’s the fundamental in which strategic planning helps – it provides a formal process that, if followed and implemented appropriately, leads to success. This process involves envisioning a future for your business. Then it works at translating this vision into well-defined goals and obectives, Then sequential steps are taken to devise actionable items that are geared to achieving those goals and objectives.

From the strategic planning process, action plans, processes, procedures, and projects are birthed or updated to fulfill the strategic goals and objectives. This is a key area in how strategic planning helps a business to choose the path of strategic alignment.

It is also important to understand the reasons Why Strategic Planning is a Smart Business Plan and how strategic planning should be implemented to avoid some of the pitfalls that result in failure. According to a report published by the Small Business Administration in 2017, about 20 percent of startups fail in their first year while 50 percent fail in the first five years. Having a solid business strategy will help reduce your chances of falling into these categories of startups. No wonder many businesses today are hiring strategic managers to help them with their strategic goals.

Why You Need a Strategic Business Plan

A strategic plan is a formalized document that serves as the roadmap describing how your company will execute the chosen strategy. It basically spells out where your organization is, where it wants to be, and the steps that need to be taken to get there. Lack of planning is known to be one of the reasons why many new businesses fail, so it is imperative that you develop a solid business strategy.

Another reason why you need a strategic business plan is so that you can carry your team along. This is achieved through training and communication campaigns, which is critical to the successful implementation of your strategic plan. Strategic Managers are well aware of the importance of getting teams onboard, as we have seen the fallout from poor implementation. Yet the numbers are still showing that 95 percent of a typical workforce has no idea about their organization’s strategy. No wonder we see a 90 percent failure rate when it comes to executing business strategies.

Strategic Planning Process

In addressing how strategic planning helps a business, let’s look at how a business philosophy is developed.  Besides identifying the company values, three terms are very essential to the strategic planning process. These are the vision, mission, and goals. The understanding of these three terms is what sets strategic managers apart from the rest of the population. Before we can go into the process of developing a strategic plan, let’s see what these terms mean.

Vision

Vision refers to the direction your organization is going.

Mission

Mission basically refers to what you will be doing as an organization and for whom.

Goals

Goals have to do with where you want to be, so you can take measures to guide your strategy.

The first thing you need to do is determine where you are as an organization. This is pretty important because it allows you to accurately determine the steps needed to progress from your current point.

Next, you need to know your vision, meaning where you want to be. This is one of the most important steps in your strategic planning process as an organization, as it gives everyone a clear understanding of what needs to be done. It is simply not enough to have a vision statement, your vision has to be clear and detailed like the blueprint to a house. A well-defined vision lets everyone see the same picture.

The next step you need to take is to figure out the possible obstacles to achieving your goals. This allows you take proactive actions, thereby reducing the cost of tackling obstacles. After this, you need to determine the steps needed to achieve your goal. Other requirements include setting up a communication plan and a strong action plan.

Final Thoughts

Strategic planning is essential for the success of any business. It gives your business a specific goal and ensures that your entire team is on the same page. Setting a strategic goal for your business also gives your business a level of credibility, as it displays stability to your customers. Therefore, if you don’t have a proper strategic plan for your business, you should definitely consider hiring a strategic manager to help with creating a solid business strategy.

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In today’s competitive market, many business owners remain unsure about why strategic planning is important. Yet, if you have ever embarked on any activity without a plan, you would appreciate proper planning. The business world today is just too unforgiving for anyone to enter blindly. Many businesses fail within the first few years because they lack proper business strategy. This is further reiterated in the fact that about 30 percent of businesses fail within the first two years, while about 50 percent fail within the first five years. You may be thinking, “there are many other things that affect the success of a business.” While this is true, if you really think about it, you will see that it all comes back to inadequate planning and execution.

What is Strategic Planning?

Strategic planning is a management activity used in an organization to define its priorities, direction, and strategy. It involves ensuring that stakeholders and employees realize the importance of the company goals, and are working together for the realization of the set goals and objectives. Suffice to say, it ensures everyone is on the same page. An effective strategic plan contains details on the where the organization is going and the steps that would be taken to reach the set goals.

Benefits of Setting a Business Strategy

It important to understand How Strategic Planning Helps To Streamline Your Business.  Knowing the many benefits of having a solid business strategy during the planning stage of your business is also key. Let’s look at some of these benefits.

It gives you a sense of direction

Before you embark on any business, you need to set a foundation that will keep the business going especially over the first few years. With strategic management, you can coordinate the various resources and actions of the organization in line with the business strategy. This way, you are sure that every step you take is geared towards the vision and strategic goals of the business. This is referred to as strategic alignment. A strategic plan serves as the foundation your business needs for success and growth.

It helps you remain proactive

If you engage in discussion with any successful business person, you will realize that staying proactive is a lot more beneficial than being reactive. Strategic planning helps you anticipate potential unfavorable scenarios in the future of your business. This allows you to take preventive measures or – in a case where it is unavoidable – prepare adequately for the eventuality.

Many new businesses cannot handle the effect of some unfavorable market scenarios. It is, therefore, not smart to only have a reactive plan for every problem.

It increases the profitability of your business

Of course, the goal of every business is to make a profit. Consequently, it is essential that you pursue means that will increase the market share of your business. Through a dedicated business strategy, you can get valuable insights into consumer segments, product and service offerings, and market trends that may affect the success of your organization.

Having a proper strategic plan will help you reduce unnecessary spending in tackling problems while helping you take advantage of valuable insights into the market. Then, your profit margin will increase rapidly.

Tips for Setting Strategic Goals and Objectives

Many business owners, especially new ones, believe they don’t have to go through the thorough process of setting a strategic plan. The reality is many people believe it is boring and takes too much time, and even when they go through the process some fail to execute. The reality is, about 90 percent of organizations fail to successfully execute their strategies. So what is the answer? From my experience, I have found that some of the answers lie within the lack of shared values, commitment, resources, training, implementation, and understanding. Below, I will provide a simple way of looking at strategic planning.

Setting Goals

The first thing to remember is that goals are usually longer term outlook that ties to a big-picture vision. It describes the final destination – your end-goal. Goals are typically broken up into objectives and action plans for management and execution.

Objectives

The first thing to note is that objectives are SMART, meaning they are specific, measurable, attainable or achievable, relevant or realistic, and time-based.

Measurable

You should be able to measure the progress that is being made to get to your destination. They also respond to the “who, what, when, where, and how” to achieving your goals. When drilling down to your objectives and action plans, always remember your “why” to ensure that you stay aligned with your strategy. Here are a few tips that will make it easier to set objectives before making them into actionable items.

Be specific

It is essential that you make your goals as specific as possible. You don’t want any form of ambiguity among your employees and stakeholders. Everyone involved needs to know exactly where the company is going and how it is going to get there. This improves the productivity of all the parties involved because they know exactly what to do at every given time.

Make it attainable

Nothing is more demoralizing for a team than an unrealistic goal. It is okay to be optimistic while setting your goals, but you need to know the point where optimism reaches unrealism. To get the buy-in from your employees and colleagues, you need to set goals that are right in front of their eyes. Planning for an unreachable goal is the first step towards failure.

Make it time-based or time-oriented

Putting a time-frame on your strategic goals is an excellent motivator. Any goal that is not time-based doesn’t seem as urgent as one that has a set period, and as such, allows for a more lackadaisical attitude from the parties involved. Therefore, ensure your strategic goal is time-based to get the level of enthusiasm required from your employees.

It is essential that you carry your team along in any plan you make. You see, approximately 95 percent of a typical workforce doesn’t understand the strategy of its organization. I have come across this challenge many times when I consult with companies on Strategic Project Management and Organization Assessments. There has to be a plan that addresses shared values.

Final Thoughts

There is a popular saying, “failing to plan is planning to fail.” This covers the importance of strategic planning perfectly. Having a strategic management system will help you stay relevant in the business market as you grow your business. It gives you a sense of direction, helps you remain proactive, and increases the profitability of your business. Let me also remind you that many of the challenges new businesses face can be avoided with a proper strategic plan in place.

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1. Disjointed Business Processes

Top of the list and hard to pick out as the reason behind your company’s decelerated rate of progress – aligning business processes with your objectives. We won’t say it’s easy building a company up from scratch until you have clearly defined departments to handle the various tasks that bring revenue, yet we should agree that it is very hard to maintain fluid business processes across departments.

Even when the departments are still abstract, there is a need to respect each process and establish a framework that sees through every task. For instance, most companies know how to market their business. However, when it comes to closing the sale, a lot is left to be desired. That may not be your exact case, but when two such business processes don’t have strong synapses, you’re soon to find yourself with more outgoing clients than those coming in.

2. Inadequate Marketing Strategies

With the internet widely accessible and ready for you to use as a marketing channel, some assume that it makes things easier to prevent a business rut. However, access to information does not solve the problem.  In fact, this line of thinking is exactly why a lot of marketing executives cannot explain their spending and returns deficits.  You see, without strategically mapping out custom marketing channels and campaigns to boost your business – sometimes this means failing, again and again, your company will always come 2nd at best in your area of focus. Design a custom marketing plan to give you the edge over your competition.

3. Low Team Morale Is a Sure Recipe for Business Rut

When all is said and done, your team has to be as motivated and crazy about your business as you are, every day. A hard feat in itself, even for the owner of a company. However, when your team is anything other than motivated to keep knocking activities off their to-do list, your company will eventually find itself in a slump. In other words, it drives you in a business rut. For this, even when money is probably the biggest motivation, team-building activities have also been observed to increase morale.

Final Thoughts

There are hundreds of other reasons capable of placing companies in what looks like permanent slumps, and any of them could as well be behind your frustration. A probe into the source should not be deferred at any cost. If you feel like your business could be doing so much better than what you’re currently experiencing, you will need to conduct assessments to find the root cause. Then you will need to devise strategies to address the problem.

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Although most project management methodologies across professional fields and industries tend to focus on driving or achieving deadlines and project goals, project outcomes can still be misaligned with organizations’ business strategies. Yet project alignment is key to ensuring business strategies are achieved. Misalignment is caused by many factors, but most important to note are:

1.  Individuals’ mental misalignment

One area in project management that is identified but often overlooked is that people are the key to the process.  This is true because people are necessary to drive the project management processes and produce deliverables.  Therefore, ensuring the mental alignment of project individuals with project goals, as well as organizations’ business strategies, is most important to achieving project success. This points to the importance of communicating and creating shared values, vision and strategies throughout organizations or within project teams.

2.   People’s tacit views and motives

Another factor that hinders project alignment is individual’s unvoiced views.  Too often tacit views or motives of individuals, whether internal or external stakeholders, have led to unexpected behaviors and choices that have impacted cost, quality and scope negatively, and forced projects into slipping or abandonment.  Identifying key stakeholders and encouraging open and frequent communication helps to alleviate this issue of hidden views and behaviors.

3.  Ignoring the project environment

Another factor that makes a huge difference in managing behaviors is how the environment around the project is managed. No matter the size of the project, it is important to pay attention to both the internal and external project environments.  This includes corporate and local belief systems, culture and circumstances, as well as their potential impact on the project.  Many times, technology and other deliverables become the focus of the project with stakeholders and strategic outcomes forgotten. The fact that people are in the driver’s seat of every project is also forgotten, and management of the project environment is lost.

4.  Organizations’ lack of strategic project planning and oversight

The challenge is ours as strategic project managers to ensure that projects are aligned to business strategies or objectives.  To achieve this, project managers should ensure that their project plans include ways of tying project outcomes to business strategies. Sometimes, however, project managers are forced to compromise project planning and oversight because of imposed constraints to delivery.  In such cases, the risks due to project misalignment should be highlighted and clearly communicated to stakeholders.

Additionally, project audits are important and should evaluate whether or not the project outcomes are misaligned. For example, if the company’s competitive advantage is to hire the best and most qualified workforce, or to put forth the best products and services then all HR, IT and other related departments must execute policies, procedures, processes, people and technology that achieve these outcomes. This seems intuitive at the onset but how many projects actually accomplish strategic alignment and how many are actually audited for these results?

Take Away

People hold the key to success! Encourage project managers and stakeholders, in general, to share ideas on how to ensure projects are aligned with organizations’ strategies. The sharing of ideas is intended to bring people into communal agreement on how to move forward. However, it does not stop there! This is just the beginning of ensuring project alignment. Taking the same approach in gathering lessons learned for knowledge management and transfer by sharing thoughts, challenges, or successes will help to continually improve project strategy and project management outcomes. Finally, ensure project outcomes are also audited against business strategies.

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Strategy Managers are Needed for Long-Term Planning

Stuck in operational mode, companies find little to no time for long-term planning. Yet, can they really afford not to provide for long-term planning? Can a company really survive in the tactical mode? Although we believe the answer to be no, when there are choices to be made, long-term planning alone cannot meet a crisis and keep a company afloat. Therefore, if a choice has to be made, the obvious one is to survive now and plan later. What does this mean for strategy managers? Will they continue to dwindle and become a thing of the past instead of the forward-thinkers of the future? Will companies be able to play the balancing game and, once more, begin planning for the future? Only time will tell! However, I suspect many companies will suffer and fold in the long run if they are unable to look and plan ahead.

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