Surely each of you has heard about the term strategic session. But what is it? For what? How to do it? Let's look at this issue.
Content
A strategic session is an event at which key participants of the company (CEO, CEO-1, CEO-2) discuss strategic tasks for the company and make key decisions.
During the strategic session, the current situation is analyzed, goals, strategic directions are determined and action plans are adopted that will affect the entire organization and so on, it all depends on the type of strategic session. For example, why companies need digitalization, what problems they want to solve with its help and what projects need to be implemented, how to approach this issue globally.
Strategic planning session
Strategic planning session - identifying and discussing strategic goals, priorities and action plans for a certain period.
This type is characterized by the following stages.
Current State Analysis: Review of external and internal factors that may affect the organization, including competitors, market, trends, and the organization's strengths and weaknesses.
Setting Strategic Direction: Defining the organization's mission, values, and long-term goals, and developing a strategic platform that will serve as the basis for developing specific strategies and action plans.
Defining Strategic Goals and Priorities: Defining specific goals that the organization wants to achieve within a specific time period and identifying priorities that will help focus resources and efforts on key areas.
Developing a Strategic Plan: Developing specific strategies such as growth, diversification, competitive advantage, innovation, and marketing strategies, and identifying action plans, resources, and activities needed to achieve set goals.
Evaluation and monitoring: identifying key performance indicators that will help evaluate the progress and results of strategic initiatives, and establishing mechanisms to monitor and control the implementation of the strategic plan.
A strategic planning session is a key tool for determining the future course of an organization and ensuring its successful development in the long term.
Strategic strategy update session
A strategic strategy update session is a review and modification of the company's current strategy to adapt to new conditions and challenges, increase its efficiency and the company's competitiveness.
This type is characterized by the following stages.
Environmental Analysis: Assessing changes in the environment, including markets, competitors, technological trends, and regulatory factors that may affect the organization.
Analysis of internal resources and capabilities: assessment of the current capabilities, strengths and weaknesses of the organization, as well as resources that can be used to achieve strategic goals.
Redefining Mission, Values, and Goals: Renewing the organization's mission and values and reviewing and redefining strategic goals to align with the organization's changing environment and strategic priorities.
Evaluating the current strategy: Analyzing the effectiveness of the current strategy and identifying its strengths and weaknesses, identifying areas where changes or improvements are required.
Development of a new strategy: defining new strategic directions, priorities and action plans that will achieve the updated strategic goals.
Communication and Implementation: Develop a communication and implementation plan for the new strategy to ensure that employees and stakeholders understand and are involved in its implementation.
A strategic strategy update session helps the organization adapt to changes in the external environment.
Strategic session for making strategic decisions
Strategic session for strategic decision making - analysis and discussion of important strategic issues and decision making.
This type is characterized by the following stages.
Environmental Analysis: Assessing trends and changes in the external environment, including market conditions, competitors, technology, regulatory factors, and other influencing factors.
Analysis of internal resources and capabilities: assessment of the organization's strengths and weaknesses, its resources, competencies and capabilities to achieve strategic goals.
Defining Strategic Goals: Defining the organization's long-term strategic goals that will guide decisions and develop strategic plans.
Alternatives and Evaluation: Exploring and discussing various alternative strategies and ways to achieve goals, and evaluating them based on risks, benefits, and costs.
Decision making: making strategic decisions based on analysis and discussion, selecting the most effective and feasible strategies and action plans.
Development and implementation of a strategic plan: development of specific strategic actions and plans, identification of resources and activities necessary to implement the selected strategies.
A strategic decision-making session allows an organization to make informed and informed decisions, taking into account external and internal factors, and ensures the implementation of the strategy and strategic plan.
Strategic assessment and analysis session
Strategic Assessment and Analysis Session - analysis and assessment of the current strategy and its implementation, as well as evaluation of the results and effectiveness of strategic initiatives.
This type is characterized by the following stages.
Strategy Execution Review: An assessment of how well an organization is executing its current strategy, achieving its goals, and solving strategic problems.
Assessing key performance indicators: Analyze and evaluate financial and non-financial metrics related to strategy execution, such as revenue, profitability, market shares, customer satisfaction and other performance indicators.
External environment analysis: assessment of changes in the external environment, market, competitive situation, trends and other factors that may influence the organization's strategy.
Assessing internal resources and capabilities: Analyzing the organization's strengths, weaknesses, resources, competencies and capabilities, and determining how they align with strategic goals.
Issue and Opportunity Identification: Identifying strategic issues, challenges, and opportunities that may require adjustments to current strategy or the development of new strategic initiatives.
Developing an action plan: identifying specific steps and activities that need to be taken based on the analysis to improve the strategy and achieve the goals.
A strategic assessment and analysis session helps a company understand how well it is executing its strategy and make the necessary changes to achieve long-term success.
The main advantages of a strategic session:
establishing and maintaining focus and direction;
involving people in change. You don't just collect proposals and then launch an action plan, but involve future performers in the planning. This, firstly, improves the quality of planning, and secondly, it is a powerful tool for introducing change.
The session can be held as a one-time event to formulate a strategy, or as a regular meeting for planning, monitoring and analyzing strategic development. That is, as a management cycle tool with an element of informal communication.
Let’s say right away that a strategic session as a one-time event has low efficiency and value for the company. Therefore, this should be a regular event with support during its implementation, but more on that at the end of the article.
The key to strategy is consistency. Remember our articles about meetings and brainstorming, communication stages? Everything is the same here: preparation, implementation, consolidation.
Preparation
Preparing for a session is one of the most difficult and important tasks:
it is necessary to formulate the strategy that you see right now.
Of course, the strategy session moderator will help you with this. He will ask leading questions: what decisions have you made recently, why, what were you based on. It will help to do a retrospective analysis - together you will remember what happened a year ago and analyze the decisions made. Even if it seems to you that there is no strategy, there is definitely one if there is a company. The main task is to realize it.
you need to do your homework - collect data on revenue, labor productivity, trends, sales, bottlenecks, growth points and much more.
Figures from 2-3 previous years will provide answers to 80% of the questions. Everyone should come to the session prepared - this is not a concert at which the moderator will play the magic flute, and everything will work itself out in your company. During the session, the whole team works, not just the moderator.
Carrying out
Next comes the stage of the session itself within the framework of the topic that we are working on. We formulate the goals and objectives of the session, ask the main questions. How to triple your revenue this year? How to stabilize a business under sanctions? How to carry out digitalization in conditions of limited resources and the departure of Western software and equipment suppliers?
We create an image of the desired future and analyze whether we are moving towards it. Next comes designing how to make what you want out of the actual.
Summarizing
Essentially, a report on the past session. Without it, the team may forget all the generated ideas and miss something. It is advisable to enter information into Bitrix or any other system. This is the only way you can be sure that nothing is lost and the work will bring results.
One of the key people in a strategy session is the moderator. In general, in any event, the moderator is 50% of the success. And moderators can be divided into several types.
Blank sheet
Through questions and “games” he pulls out all the information from you and your team. This is necessary so that you can look at the situation and information from the outside, evaluate everything and come to a decision. In fact, the moderator only organizes communication and gives each participant the opportunity to express themselves. A “blank slate” is most effective when it is important to agree on something, rather than formulate something new.
This type of session is suitable for your company if you have a strong team. If your team is still “growing” and requires direction and guidance, then choosing this type of moderator may become ineffective.
Professional strategist
This moderator has an understanding of the strategy cycle, complex and strategy as a whole.
He can, through techniques and “tips,” lead the team to the correct answer, because he has an eye for observation. Most effective for small and medium-sized businesses, i.e. in a situation where the main request is to find tools for making decisions, setting and achieving goals.
During the session, the team is upgraded. There can only be one downside here - due to the pressure of the moderator, not all people “show up” and share their thoughts, and thus useful ideas may be lost. But this will not happen if the moderator is experienced.
Entrepreneur/expert
Moderator with own entrepreneurial/expert experience. He has already developed a successful strategy for his company, implemented changes and can share his knowledge with you. The main thing is that the moderator does not slip into proving that only his business model/idea is correct.
The main task is to share experience, not impose it. An entrepreneur is most effective when industry expertise is important.
The moderator can be universal, but a specific model of behavior must be chosen for each session.
The main sign that the session was successful and you did not make a mistake with the moderator is the pleasure of the team. When they leave the hall and say: “This is what we lit with you, guys!” And not a word is said about the moderator. No matter how offensive it may be for a specialist, in fact this is an excellent result. The moderator must create the environment, follow the rules and remain invisible.
Strategic sessions are a great tool in the right hands. But this should not be a one-time event and event. Its use on a regular basis gives excellent results; it is not for nothing that it is a mandatory element of any large corporations both in Russia and abroad.
And with all the advantages of strategic sessions, it is important to remember one thing - the plans developed and decisions made must be implemented. And here we already need a tracker that can accompany the team, maintain focus and point out errors in project management, implementation of changes and other tools of a systematic approach; it will also be useful to work with a coach/mentor to change the psychological attitudes of managers. After all, the limitations of the paradigm (thinking), as practice shows, key limitations companies and divisions.
Well, a strategy session is an excellent tool within the framework of a systems approach, especially for developing a strategy for launching digitalization and digital transformation. A tool for making changes to the strategy and avoiding a common mistake - expecting a miracle from the technologies themselves and that someone will come and implement everything.