Eight Problems With Your Firm's Strategic Plan

By Hank M. Harris
Copyright by FMI Corporation; reprinted with permission.

Yours may be among the few professional services firms with a powerful, well crafted, and well executed strategy. However, many engineering, architectural, and environmental firms have fallen victim to some common planning pitfalls. Here are eight potential problem areas to investigate. Ask yourself the following questions:

1. Does our process produce a plan that's "real?"
   I have seen many planning efforts involving a facilitator who knows nothing about the industry (for example, a generic management consultant) or one who knows too much (a former practitioner). For lack of a better approach, these facilitators run everyone through an academic model. The result is a hyperbole-laden mission statement and a dozen loftily written goals. Nowhere in the process did the participants adequately ask themselves how to gain a competitive advantage or produce results in the market. They have a strategic plan, but they have no strategy.
2. Is our plan "strategic?"
   Two issues are involved. First, did you use a model that lends itself to a strategic plan--not to be confused with a business plan, a marketing plan, or a five-year financial projection? Second, did you deal with strategic issues? Many planning teams wind up discussing operational issues if the facilitator does not remain vigilant.
3. Do we have adequate external focus?
   Firms that have never been through the process often produce plans that are internally focused. Good strategy is externally focused. If your plan drives towards markets, clients, alliances, acquisitions, etc., you're probably in good shape. If it focuses more on "reengineering your core processes" or housekeeping issues, get ready for your staff to start sending you Dilbert cartoons.
4. Do we make sufficient use of outsiders?
   You definitely want to use some outside participants or facilitators. Many firms boast of doing strategic planning all by themselves, but that approach is flawed. Surgeons do not operate on themselves or their family, and lawyers maintain that "he who represents himself has a fool for a client." The dynamics are the same in a good planning process.
5. Does our plan really work for the organization?
   For it to work, the plan must be effectively communicated and sold inside the organization. In working with senior management planning teams, I have occasionally asked them to write down their firm's mission from memory. Often this request produces a chuckle and then a realization. After all, if senior managers don't know their firm's mission, how can it possibly mean anything downstream? Similarly, the plan must become part of the firm's collective conscience. It must really drive behavior. Involve people, refer to the plan at meetings, and promote it. If you go through all the work to develop a plan and then let everyone forget it, you have wasted company time and resources.
6. Is our plan actionable?
   Occasionally, the top people dream up a lot of ideas, commit them to paper, and call the exercise strategic planning--even though no actions or measures of progress are put in place. Without specific assignments to individuals, due dates, and measurable objectives, the plan may be little more than a wish list. Obviously, no strategy is worth much until it's implemented. The plan needs to be translated into measurable components and discrete individual activities.
7. Is anybody doing anything?
   Someone has to follow up to ensure that people execute the plan. People say they will work on strategic initiatives, but then go back to their everyday roles and spend all of their time on "real work." After all, it's more immediate, tangible, and within their comfort zone. I'm not advocating management by embarrassment, but there must be enough follow-up, rewards, and consequences to put teeth into the actions. If nothing else, the process should enable you to get more done than you would have otherwise.
8. Are we getting lost in executing tactics, but missing the big picture?
   At the other end of the spectrum, some firms (especially engineering firms) get things done, but the group becomes so absorbed in tactics that they lose sight of the overall goal or strategy. Strategic planning is just the framework for strategic thinking. To be effective, your planning team must regularly reengage the process and reassess the quality and viability of the overall strategy. The best strategy usually evolves. It doesn't just happen over a partners' weekend.

Strategic planning, like most management tools, started as a trendy thing to do, but evolved into a management classic. Most people now view strategic planning not as "something we ought to get around to someday," but more as an integral part of firm's management. Why? Because it works. But it works only if it's a serious effort, competitively focused, externally driven, and actionable. It can be tough to get it right, but it can also be a thing of beauty when you do.

Hank Harris is responsible for the management of all FMI consulting services to engineering, architectural, and environmental firms. FMI is a management consulting firm specializing in the design and construction industry.