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THE ROLE OF THE STRATEGIC PLANNER.

By Ruth Tearle.

 

Strategic planning departments may consist of one person, or larger teams comprising permanent employees and external consultants. Depending on the focus of the organisation, and the number of resources available, the internal strategist will perform some of the following roles.

Research

Strategic planners provide up to date research to the leadership of the company in the following fields.

• External environmental trends. This includes information on political, social, economic, technological and industry trends that may impact on the organisation.
• Business trends. This includes information on the strategies being adopted by global organizations. It may include benchmarking or best practices.
• Market research. This includes research on changing customer needs and expectations. This may consist of formal research outsourced to market research companies.
• Customer research. This involves finding out how existing customers view the organization. This may include monitoring social networking and consumer complaints websites to identify comments customers are making about the organization, or surveying existing customers to determine what they perceive the organization's strengths and weaknesses are.
• Competitor research. Many strategy departments set up a competitor database. They track competitor strategies. Sometimes they compile comprehensive information on their competitors in the following areas: finance, marketing, human resources, production/manufacturing, distribution, promotion, culture, structures, alliances, technologies
• Strategists also keep up to date with new ways of doing strategy itself. This may include techniques such as participative and creative ways of doing strategic planning that result in buy-in from stakeholders, and formal methodologies such as the balanced score card. This includes balancing IQ, EQ and SQ to ensure people are excited and inspired while they develop new powerful strategies.

Education

A prime role of any strategy department is to educate leadership in both strategic planning and strategic thinking. Strategists use a number of approaches to educate their leadership. These include:

• Formal training courses and workshops.
• Organizing monthly education sessions. Getting guest speakers in once a month to present information on new trends that might affect the organization.
• Writing newsletters.
• Speaking at workshops and conferences organised by different divisions in the organisation.
• Circulating interesting articles.
• Circulating interesting websites.
• Organising conferences in house.
• Sending key people on external training courses.

Provider of strategic tools

The strategist provides heads of SBU's, divisions and regions with tools designed to make it easier for them to develop powerful strategic plans together with their teams.

Examples of tools designed to encourage participation, strategic thinking and creativity within teams include Strategic trends cards and Strategy facilitation cards.

Facilitator

Often organizations review their strategic plans at a three-day workshop. Their SBUs or divisions then develop strategic plans aligned to the organization's strategic plans. Strategic planners either facilitate these sessions themselves or hire external facilitators who are independent of company politics. These facilitators help:

• The organization to develop its strategic plan.
• To communicate the organization's plan to the rest of the organization.
• SBU’s/divisions to develop their strategic plans which are aligned to the organization's plan
• To communicate the SBU/divisions plans.
• Identify and manage the changes needed to support the new strategic plan.

The strategic planner also keeps up to date with the latest tools and techniques of doing strategic planning, and provides these tools to the leadership of the organization and its SBUs, divisions, and regions.

Systems integrator and co-ordinator

Like a spider weaving a web, the strategist has to ensure that the organizations systems, structure and culture are all aligned to the organization's strategic plan and values. This means that every system and employee pull in the same direction.

The strategist works closely together with the finance department and the OD/change management/HR departments to ensure that all planning and measurement systems use the same language and terminology. This means that staff members will input their goals and objectives once only - and these goals and objectives will be applied to their strategic planning, budgeting, performance management, and reporting systems.

The strategic planner also analyses all the strategic plans in the organization to ensure that no duplication occurs between different regions, divisions and departments. The strategist checks for aspects of the strategy that are being neglected, because they fall between divisions or SBU's. These will be turned into projects that cut across different SBU's and divisions.

The strategist will also ensures that all new projects are designed and implemented in a way that supports the organization's strategies and values.

MONITORING OF STRATEGY

The strategic planner often works with change management specialists to ensure that both the content and the spirit of the strategic plan are being implemented. Where barriers occur, the strategist helps teams to remove these barriers. This may necessitate a change in structures and systems.

Muse to the CEO or chairman

Strategic planners are often called upon to do special, one off feasibility studies and research into areas that fall outside of the mandate of the divisions or SBU's. They assist the CEO/chairman to make confidential strategic decisions. They act as a high level personal assistant to the chairman/CEO. Often they also act as an internal consultant to the leaders of the different divisions and regions.

QUALITIES OF A STRATEGIC PLANNER.

The ideal planner would have the following qualities:

• Credibility and trust - the ability to work at all levels in the organisation.
• A wide range of knowledge - preferably someone with experience in 3-4 different areas or the organization.
• A formal generalist business qualification such as an MBA, or a general management experience.
• The ability to do very unstructured work.
• The ability to work with teams of people both inside and outside the organisation. This includes the ability to work with people across all departments and with external alliance partners.
• Self confidence balanced by humility. People are often jealous of the profile the strategist gets, and this person will have to manage this.
• Facilitation skills.
• Strong rational, emotional and spiritual intelligence.
• A willingness and desire to continuously learn about new techniques and acquire new knowledge.
• A love of innovation and new ways of doing things.
• A sense of humour and a sense of fun.

HOW COMPANIES SELECT THIS PERSON

Initially organizations try to select someone who has all above qualities.

The first person in this job has the additional role of setting up the function and selling the concept to leaders of SBU's and divisions. They also have to prove the worth of the function to the organization.

Having set up the position, many companies use the strategy division as a training ground for developing talented staff. Strategy give people a broad overview of different parts of the organization. People with talent are moved into the strategy department for a few years. After that they are often asked to head up some of the new projects that emerged from their strategies.