How to conduct powerful reviews against your strategic and operating plan

Planning is what holds together the work of different groups in an organisation. This is why boards should ensure they are creating sound strategic and operating plans, and importantly, reviewing them! In this comprehensive guide, Steven Bowman from Conscious Governance communicates the best way to review your strategic and operating plans. He also includes some bonus tips on how to create amazing plans in the first place.

So, where do the strategic and operating plans fit in, and how should you review them? The strategic plan is a medium term strategy (2-3 years), and is born from the long term vision strategy (10-20 years). The operating plan is the shortest term plan; a 1 year plan to make the strategic plan come to life.

To have a successful plan, Bowman tells us, there are 3 key ingredients:

1. Activity and context: e.g. the operating plan supports the strategic plan, and the strategic plan supports the vision statement of an organisation
2. Timeframes around each activity: ensure there is always a clearly defined start and end date for each activity
3. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for each activity: check that you have a clear way to measure the success of each activity

Once you’re clear on the what and how of your operating and strategic plans, it’s equally important that you set aside time to review them. This is Bowman’s focus in the guide. Bowman provides frameworks for how to individually review your strategic and operating plans. However highlights that these 5 key questions provide the most insights:

1. What has worked?
2. What has not worked?
3. What have we missed?
4. What do we need to add to the Strategic Plan?
5. What do we need to take out?

The guide also includes handy examples to assist you in your robust review of your organisation’s plans. Hit ‘download the guide’ now to wow your board using Bowman’s guide and templates.