Doing

Doing is the space where you apply your seeking and thinking to what you do every day. It’s the realm of what we now call strategic planning.

Strategic planning as we practice it today is actually a waste of time and energy. We focus on the plan as the main focus of our activity, rather than the thinking that goes into the decisions about the words in the document we call a plan – that is, we start with the plan, not the thinking. Or worse, we let a few senior people do the thinking for us.

We start from the present and extrapolate out into a single, linear future, tweaking what we do as a response to what is happening today. The result is usually a glossy document that means very little to the people who work in organisations – because it does not require them to change how they think and work to be ready to respond to the change that is coming.

Thinking Futures will work with you to redesign how you document your strategic responses to change in a ‘plan’. We will help youto align action to implement those responses across your organisation. We will work with you on key messages for your staff about the how that change will mean they have to think beyond the status-quo and work differently.

How Thinking Futures can help you with doing

Developing meaningful responses to change so staff know how they are contributing to achieving organisational strategy involves three steps.

Staff input: you will want your staff to implement your strategic responses – they must have a voice in the process. In the ‘doing’ space, it’s about asking your staff about issues they have with current ‘planning’ processes, and what they see as the best way to implement organisational strategic responses.

Workshop: a workshop with key staff involved in documenting your strategic responses opens with an exploration of what constitutes a meaningful strategic document, and how to make the document a change driver rather than a dust gatherer. Staff are taken through the major planning steps – clarity around the vision and strategic goals, identifying action that is aligned across the organisation, and performance measures and targets. The workshop can include a second session to help staff begin drafting the response document.

Finalising the Response: we work with you to finalise the response document in an interative process that builds on feedback from staff and stakeholders.

To find out more about implementing strategic responses in your organisation, you can:

• organise an in-house workshop with staff to build understanding about the differences between planning and doing, and
• contact Maree to talk about how to strengthen the documentation of your strategic responses.

You can also:

• download the slides from the supporting webinar, or
• watch the slideshow right here.