A strategic plan is one that helps a corporate to navigate from its current Mission to envisioned Vision of the future. The strategic planning process is a long-term thinking exercise, broken down into short term and long-term tactics aligned with corporate culture and values. While the strategic planning happens at some level in Retail organizations, very few organizations can draw a process forward for its articulation across the length and breadth of their organization. If the strategy can’t be communicated to everyone, the time and money spent on the strategic planning exercise just goes waste. One Harvard Business Review study found that 95% of employees at most midsize to large companies don’t understand the strategy of the Company. Lack of communication is the primarily reason for this
Most corporates do not have a smooth and fulfilling workplace communication method. Whoever sets the strategic plan, they do not have a credible communication channel or mechanism to communicate that down the line. The remote workforce does not get the context of strategic planning and is far from owning, involving and executing it. Finally, the strategic plan ends up in a spreadsheet and the creators’ update and analyze it periodically, without any informed participation by all in the organization
One must examine the questions as to how a strategic plan will get aligned to the Mission and Vision of a corporate and how does the plan get integrated into the day-to-day works of every employee in Retail organization. After all, several critical components of a strategy get executed at the bottom of the pyramid in any organization. A corporate must drill down its strategic plan to levels of Key Performance Indicator (KPI) and attach to various associates linked to their functions. While doing so, they must inter-align the larger picture of Mission and Vision to every KPI through which associates can gauge how their KPI achievement contributes ultimately to the Vision of a Corporate. This will not only help associates to know about the Vision but also develop a pride of having committed to the Vision of Corporate that she/he works. This pride will ultimately enhance engagement and long-term loyalty
In building Retail ViVA, we created our Strategy module that links the Mission, Vision, Values, Strategic Plan, KPI and employee wise performance in a seamless manner that everyone is on the same page and aligns with that one purpose. It helps to achieve the ultimate corporate purpose of what is good for my company should be good for me as well and makes employees commit to the strategic plan with a sound understanding
Written by
(Ragu)nathan Kannan