1st Edition
Strategic Action Planning Now Setting and Meeting Your Goals
Filling the need for a "how-to," step-by-step guide to strategic planning, Strategic Action Planning NOW! outlines team-based planning in four steps. Gate Gable's techniques provide detailed guidance into planning processes, strategic skills, recognition of challenges, consideration of goals, monitoring and measurement, and implementation tips to help the reader begin the planning process almost immediately.
Written in three parts, the author provides exercises with each chapter. Part one covers the pre-planning stages, defining who and what your team is and what your teams' goals are. The second part goes over the actual planning, identifying the challenges and setting the goals for your team. The third and final part deals with post planning, implementation and evaluating your team's progress.
Introduction
Beginnings
Is This Book for You?
Review of Book
Part One: Pre-planning Preparation
My Team, My Self
What is Your Planning Process
What is Your Team?
Who is Your Team?
Who Are You and What is Your Role?
What is Your Team Culture?
Exercise One: Creating Agreement
What if?
Summary
Beginning Concepts
So Why Plan? Why Worry?
Where Do You Fit in Your Company's Planning Process?
What is Strategy?
What Are the Qualities of an Effective Strategy?
What is Action?
NOW! A Brief Interpretation of Time
Exercise Two: Influences From the Past
Becoming a Strategist
Frozen Strategy vs. Fluid Insight
Information Harvesting: Trend-spotting Without the 'Popcorn'
Exercise Three: Influences From the Future
What's on Your Reading List?
CHI: Clarity, Honesty, Integrity
Exercise Four: Nurturing Your CHI
The Courage to Create
Strategic Action Planning-Four Steps
Our Planning Methodology
The Challenge
The Goal
The Strategic Action
Monitoring and Measurement
Summary: The Process
Part Two: The Planning Process
Seeing the Challenge
What's Wrong With This Picture?
Identifying Challenges: An Overview
Task One: Capturing Challenges
Exercise Five: What Needs Fixing?
Sample Planning Items: Brainstorming Challenges
Task Two: Alignment
Exercise Six: Alignment with Management
Sorting the Challenge
Connection and Dissection
Task Three: Discussion and Analysis
Task Four: Grouping by Clusters
Exercise Seven: Clustering the Challenges
Sample Planning Items: Challenge Clusters
Task Five: Prioritization and Selection of Key Challenges
Exercise Eight: Prioritize and Finalize Challenges
Sample Planning Items: Final Challenges
Summary
Setting the Goal
What Makes a Good Goal?
Exercise Nine: Transforming Challenges into Goals
Sample Discussion for the Goal Formulation Step and Sample Planning Items: Challenges and Goals
Summary
Devising the Strategic Action
Preparation
Exercise Ten: Influences Reprise
Devising Strategic Action
Exercise Eleven: International Insight
Exercise Twelve: On Target Action
Final Check Mop-up
Sample Planning Items: Goals and Strategic Actions
Summary
Monitoring and Measurement
Monitoring: What and Why
Monitoring as a Communications Tool
Monitoring as Standards for Performance
Monitoring as Guidance for Decision-making
Monitoring as Strategic Action Feedback
How Do You Measure Success?
Exercise Thirteen: How Do Measure Success?
Sample Planning Items: Adding Monitoring Tools
Summary
Part Three
Implementation Tips
Overview
The Planning Document
The Communications Plan
The Implementation Team
The Information and Communications Möbius
The Last Word
Future Perfect
Evaluating Your Team's Planning Process
Exercise Fourteen: How Did We Do?
Future Perfect
Postscript
Appendices
List of Exercises
Sequential Overview of the CGSM™ Planning Process
Sample Planning Items
Glossary
Selected Reading
Bibliography
Index
Biography
Cate Gable is a writer, poet, and business consulta President of Axioun Communications International, Ga strategic marketing and planning for clients both in the Axioun’s clientele includes high-tech start-ups, Fortune nonprofits, and small businesses. Prior to founding Axioun, Gable was Marketing Direcl Reserve Bank of San Francisco and Marketing Manager at 'Western Division. Additionally, she has served as D Information both for Ohlone College, an institution of 1 the Silicon Valley, Fremont, California, and for the Fedt of Los Angeles. Gable has published widely in a variety of fields.
"As anyone who has attempted to facilitate strategic planning processes knows, the hard part is that every situation is unique and the unfolding of events produces a great deal of "messiness". In Strategic Action Planning NOW!, Gable strikes a workable balance between the need for a simple, basic structure for planning steps and the equally pressing need to be responsive to emergent complexity." -Susan L. Harris, Ph.D., Leadership and Organization Development Consultant
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