More Effective Strategic Planning Processes—
Improve Planning Process Productiveness
The most productive part of many strategic planning meetings is the socializing and golf. Meetings themselves tend to be consumed in bringing participants up to speed (who ever reads pre-meeting handouts any more?). Productive discussion typically gets squeezed into a few hours at the end, just as people start drifting away or preparing for their next meeting.
Even though the meeting's lengthy preparation phase is often useful from a communications standpoint, it makes the meeting as a whole not very productive. For the few who did prepare, the meeting can be largely a waste of time.
Wouldn't it be nice to have most participants come to the meeting reasonably well-prepared on most issues that will be discussed?
This would leave the bulk of the meeting for productive discussion of alternatives, priorities and action planning. You may even be able to shorten the meeting itself.
Did you prepare thoroughly for the last planning meeting you attended? Probably not, unless you were the leader or facilitator or a major presenter. Why? Because, for most meetings, enough participants come unprepared to require a lengthy period of going through background material to get these folks conversant enough to proceed. You can count on it, so why bother wasting your precious pre-meeting time in preparation.
So, how can you motivate participants to do the hard work of preparation prior to the meeting itself? If participants feel that their preparation will be rewarded by something of value, most will prepare adequately. What can you offer them in practical terms that will persuade them to prepare? Here is our approach:
1. Ask participants for input on issues raised by the background material itself.
2. Summarize the input so that it will engage and challenge readers.
3. Distribute the summary to contributing participants.
An effective "action" summary will be a "must-read" document — part of the process and not simply process documentation. Most participants will want to know what others have said prior to going into the meeting in case they need to develop a rebuttal, a stronger case for their position, or some new options.
If you are interested in reading more about this approach, please check out our commentary on this subject, "Strategic Planning Process Productiveness" ... è
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