Strategic Planning: An Executive's Aid for Strategic Thinking, Development and Deployment

Number 4 — Monitoring and Evaluating

It is recognized that strategic goals and strategies are deployed from management throughout the organization and that results are reported from the organization to management. A process exists to monitor progress against plans and to take corrective action when needed.

Systematic reviews are done throughout the year to determine how annual goals are being achieved. These reviews include: methods deployed, study of data and comparison of plans against activities and plans against results.

“Executive management, individually or as a group, dedicates time to reassess the logic of their strategies and related goals and their achievements.”¹

In most companies, top management is expected to do three things:

1. Run the business well.
2. Grow the business.
3. Improve the capabilities of the enterprise.

Number 1 is supported by Class A planning and control processes and behaviors. We would expect properly managed product portfolios, visibility of demand, supply chain effectiveness and efficiency, satisfied customers and respectable financial results. However, without a strategic view to the future, the company may be at risk in achieving number 2 and number 3. Strategic planning, properly performed, will establish growth goals and strategies and improved capabilities goals and strategies. Measures supporting these goals are an integral part of Class A strategic planning.

Kaplan and Norton, in The Strategy Focused Organization⁶, expound on the use of the balanced scorecard to help top management measure the strategy - both financially and non-financially. Done correctly, these measures can address the three management areas above.

The balanced scorecard focuses on the following measures:

1. Financial Perspective (traditional financial performance measures)

2. Customer Perspective (basic requirements, differentiators)

3. Internal Perspective (internal capabilities, operational excellence)

4. Learning and Growth Perspective (To achieve our vision, how must our organization learn and improve?)

Once strategies have been agreed upon in support of strategic goals, appropriate measures should be in place to measure the strategy.