Strategic filters are tools you can use to prioritize your organization’s initiatives.

Being able to evaluate the initiatives you’re going to pursue as part of your strategic plan is at the core of the strategic planning process. You need to be able to identify what the high-priority initiatives are and what the low-priority initiatives are. To do so, you need a common set of criteria that everyone across the organization is going to use to conduct those evaluations. I call them strategic filters.

These filters are going to be things that are important to your organization, things like this idea meets a customer need, or it helps us be differentiated versus our competition, or it has an acceptable level of complexity. Sometimes your filters aren’t qualitative; they’re quantitative. So what’s the net present value of this initiative? What’s the financial return? What’s the return on investment? By articulating this set of criteria, you’re going to have a common lens to evaluate your initiatives through.

These filters are going to screen out initiatives that aren’t consistent with the stated direction of the organization. And they’re going to be customized based upon the needs of the organization. For example, if you need to grow internationally, you probably need a filter that says, “Helps us be more global.” If the initiative does that and gets you into new countries and new geographies, then it would be high on the priority list. If it doesn’t and it keeps you domestic, that initiative would be low.

Once you’ve generated your set of strategic filters, you need to understand how much risk they’re going to have you take on. There are five things to look at as you evaluate that risk.

First, consider how relevant your existing capabilities are. Are the strengths you have today going to be relevant to the initiatives you pursue tomorrow? 

Second, look at your channels. Will we be distributing our products through the same channels, or will we be entering new channels? For example, if we sell through retail today and we’re looking at selling online only tomorrow, you’re going to be taking on more risk with a newer channel.

Third, look at your cost structure or the infrastructure. If the cost structure and infrastructure required to pursue an initiative is similar to what you do today, then it’s lower risk, and if it’s not, then it’s higher risk.

The fourth thing to look at is your customers. Will you be serving the same customers or are you going after new customers? Obviously, new customers carry higher risk.

And lastly, will you be running against the same competitors or are you going to compete with different ones?

Once you’ve generated your filters, do this back-check against these five criteria to understand whether your filters are going to direct you in a riskier direction or a safer direction. The right answer lies somewhere in the middle. You want to take on some risk because that’s going to create new opportunities for you, but not so much risk that you’re risking the enterprise.

By creating this consistent set of filters, you’re going to be able to evaluate your initiatives quickly and effectively and stay on your stated path to reach your goals.

Want to learn more about strategic planning? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how plan strategically. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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Define your mission, vision, guiding principles, and goals to set the direction of your organization.

When you set direction for your organization as part of the strategic planning process, there are four elements to doing so: Articulating your mission, your vision, your guiding principles, and your goals.

A mission is: Why does your organization exist? What is its purpose in the world? The vision is then saying: If we’re fulfilling that purpose, at some point in time, where are we going to be? What do we want to achieve? What do want the organization to look like at some future point? Your guiding principles are the rules you want your team to live by. How do you want people in the organization behaving, especially when the boss isn’t around? What are the lenses you’re going to look through as you try to evaluate decisions? And lastly, your goals. Try to quantify these. It may be X number of customers by a certain date, or dollars of revenue, dollars of profit, a margin percentage, being able to put out hard numbers by a certain point in time to orient the organization and say, “Here’s what we’re shooting for.”

Here are some of the pitfalls that I’ve seen during this step of defining where you’re going.

First, many vision statements and mission statements are way too long. I’ve seen some that have spanned multiple pages. To the extent possible, make them short, clear, and free of buzzwords.

Next, your guiding principles need to be clear enough that everyone in the organization understands them and can apply them, even to the smallest actions.

And last, your goals need to be aggressive, but pragmatic. If they’re not aggressive, the organization isn’t going to push itself. They’re not going to innovate to try and fill that gap between where they are and where the goal says they should be. If the goals are too aggressive and you’re not pragmatic, people will look at the goal and say, “There’s no way we can achieve that,” and they just give up.

As you define it for your organization and set out that mission, vision, guiding principles, and goals, you’ll be providing clarity for where you want the organization to be in the future.

Want to learn more about strategic planning? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how plan strategically. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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Laying out your organization’s strategic plan can be overwhelming. Follow these steps to keep your strategic planning process simple and effective. 

Strategic planning is an inherently simple process. There are some major tools and steps that you’re going to follow as you pull together your strategic plan. 

First, you need to set direction and stay in a lane. That begins with articulating the vision, the mission, and the goals of the organization.

Once you’ve set that destination, it’s important to define the organization’s core competencies. What are you great at? And how are you going to compete in the market?

The next step of the process is defining strategic filters. This is the heart of the method. These filters are going to be the objective functions you’re trying to achieve. They’ll be the evaluation criteria you’ll use as you analyze the initiatives that you are or are not going to pursue.

Next, you’re going to say no to distractions. You’re going to stay focused. You’ll use tools like a two by two matrix to evaluate which opportunities you should pursue and which ones you should avoid. You’ll take all the initiatives on your list and run them through those strategic filters to identify the ones that are high value and high potential and the ones that should be avoided.

Next, you’re going to draw the line. Strategic planning is about focus and you’ll have your list of initiatives. You’re going to identify the top ones, the bottom ones, and resource them appropriately. You should only work on things above the line for which you have resources.

Next is making sure you have a diversified portfolio of initiatives, and then executing the strategic plan. You’ll look at your initiatives in the following ways. Are they long term? Short term? Do they balance your core competencies? Are they balanced across products or markets or services? You’ll look at your portfolio and how it evolves over time.

As you go through the strategic planning process, there will be major tools and frameworks you’ll apply at each step, and you’re going to come up with a very clear plan with a prioritized set of initiatives.

Want to learn more about strategic planning? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how plan strategically. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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Create better strategic plans by avoiding these five common mistakes.

Strategic planning takes a lot of time and energy. It is a high-resource type of exercise. Unfortunately, many times that process can be a worthless pain, and the worst thing that can happen with a strategic plan is everybody puts in all this effort, and then it gets archived, put on a shelf, and never looked at again. Here are some warning signs that you can look for to determine if your strategic planning process is flawed.

First, initiative proliferation. Do you have to use multiple pages just to add up all the different initiatives you’re thinking about pursuing?

The second risk is thinking too small. All the initiatives that are on your list are really small, incremental improvements to your business. They don’t really advance you to your strategic goals.

A third is thinking too big. All the initiatives are huge, everything has to line up perfectly, and it’s a really large bet that you’re taking with the organization.

A fourth risk is what I call starving the kids. Many organizations have a large, profitable business unit, and then they have a lot of smaller ideas that are going to be more rapid growth. The risk is you invest all your resources in the big known business and you starve those smaller businesses. The problem is you’re starving your future in doing so.

Finally, I call this fifth risk the random initiative generator. You look at all your initiatives, and they all seem really great, but when you try to figure out where they’re taking you, there’s no clear direction. An example I’ve seen was when I worked in a strategic planning group. When I first arrived in the group, I said, “Let me see our strategic plan.” I was handed a list of 37 acquisition targets. I said, “This is great. These all look like interesting companies that we should think about pursuing, but where’s the plan?” Well, that was the plan. It wasn’t a plan. It was a random list of companies that competed in the market we were in, and we didn’t know which of those acquisitions was going to be attractive and which ones were distractions. Our first task was fixing that strategic planning process, setting direction, and putting some focus to the initiatives that we pursue.

Take a look at your strategic planning process. Ask yourself if you’re showing some of these symptoms and make sure you set direction so that you can pursue initiatives that will add value and help you reach your destination.

Want to learn more about strategic planning? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how plan strategically. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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Learn about the three principles of strategic planning and how they can focus your efforts.

What is a strategic plan, and why is it important? A strategic plan defines what your organization stands for. It defines the market where you compete and how you compete in that market. It’s the definition of the goals you’re going to pursue and, more importantly, the initiatives you’re going to pursue to achieve those goals. It’s also going to help you allocate your very limited resources to pursue those initiatives and reach those goals.

Why is a strategic plan so important? First, it provides focus for your efforts and your limited investments. It gives your team something to rally around and be excited about. And lastly, it helps you identify the risks and opportunities you’re going to face in the market, and then plan for those risks or exploit those opportunities. There are three principles of strategic planning that you should follow.

First, set a clear direction and stay in your lane, versus meandering and pursuing strategies that change every year.

Second, say no to distractions. It’s very easy to get caught up in the “Wow, that looks like a cool initiative, let’s pursue that.”

The third is making sure you diversify your bets. You have limited pools of money and people and time. Make sure you don’t put all your eggs in one basket and instead pursue initiatives that are spread across different time horizons, different markets, and different products.

If you follow these three principles of strategic planning, you’re going to have a clear direction that you’re able to follow over time and achieve your goals.

Want to learn more about strategic planning? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how plan strategically. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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Changing your approach in the middle of a negotiation is a great way to surprise the other party and drive value for your organization.

During a negotiation, you can change your approach. You don’t have to maintain your initial approach or your initial position. You can change it at any time. Your opponent won’t maintain their approach or their position, so throughout the deal, determine your counteroffers and your approach. Think about how these might change and how those changes might benefit your position.

For example, you can become more or less aggressive. You can become cooperative. You might change your anchor. In the initial negotiation, you said the price was here, but you know what? The price just went up or the price went down. You can add negotiating points along the way. Just because you didn’t ask for something right out of the gate, doesn’t mean you can’t add it later on. Beware of getting locked into a single negotiating approach. Your opponent can and will use that against you.

We were involved in a very contentious negotiation at one point. In the beginning, we were very collaborative, but our opponent was very combative. We knew the main points we wanted. They were price and deal structure. We also knew that time was our friend and their enemy. Throughout the negotiations, we continued making concessions and we stayed collaborative the entire time as long as price and structure were acceptable to us. But time passed and the other party changed structure. They got very aggressive at one point. But the thing they missed was that so much time had passed. Our position was going to change because time was now on our side. We turned around and got very aggressive in that negotiation. We pushed very hard for additional concessions related to the structure and pricing of the deal. The other party was caught by surprise by our change in approach and overall, it worked out much better for us. Our willingness to change our approach to be more aggressive drove a lot of value for our organization.

As you’re going through your deal process, think through the approach you’re taking and if there are changes you can make. Think about what the impact of those changes might be. Be willing to change your approach, but only do so when you fully understand the benefits and the risks of doing so.

Want to learn more about strategic negotiation? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to negotiate. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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