Corporate Planning Survival Guide for Human-Centric Leaders
At Rise, we live by the mantra: hope is not a plan.
That doesn’t mean we find the corporate planning process fun - we don’t 🙃. We do believe, though, that a small amount of intentional effort building a talent strategy can pay off in quicker, stickier hires, improved performance & productivity, and talent retention. The good news? Aligning your corporate strategy & your talent strategy doesn’t have to be a big, expensive lift.
If you lead a team, you’re probably going through the 2024 planning process now (we are too). Hopefully your executive team is aligned on a corporate strategy, and as a leader you’re charged with creating a team strategy & operational plan. Maybe you’re a business owner, and you’re working with a cross-functional group of leaders to determine what needs to be done and how it will get done. Maybe you have to evaluate your team’s capabilities & capacity in the wake of new plans.
We’ve heard it all - from “we grew too fast; it’s too much to go back & clean it up now,” to “we just don’t have time to think about talent strategy,” to “we’re in growth-mode, our priorities will shift through the year, so I don’t want to invest in a talent strategy.” We get it - but organizing the people doing the work into effective teams is one of the most challenging and important things you can do as a leader. Don’t take it from us, take it from Mark Z.
Below you’ll find our Talent Strategy Baseline for human-centric leaders. The components of the baseline are free and make up about one half day of work, depending on your management experience & productivity. Happy planning (said no one ever)!
Talent Strategy Baseline:
Maintain a team roster. Organizing your people into effective teams is one of the most challenging yet one of the most rewarding parts of leadership. Who’s on the team, what are they working on, and what capacity are they at currently? Use this information to organize the team into project teams based on your goals. You should review your roster once/month.
Bring your 2024 corporate strategy & operational plans to life. Individual humans will do the work to achieve these goals - as leaders, this is an opportunity to align & motivate your team. The strategy & operational plan should be discussed in team meetings; monthly at a minimum. Read: Please don’t hide them in a locked spreadsheet that you review at a leadership meeting.
Prepare your employees to navigate change. Change is the only constant. Corporate strategy will probably shift throughout the year, and operational plans will shift as well. Leaders & front line managers should be very comfortable communicating and helping their team navigate uncharted waters. Enduring businesses are skilled at managing through change.
Resources we like:
A Plan is not a Strategy (video)
Change Management Toolkit (whitepaper from UC-Berkeley)
How to Motivate & Inspire Your Team (article)
If you’re a human-centric leader, you'll probably be interested in a recent roundtable we hosted. Sarah Young, David Hanrahan, Jessica Moon, and Niko Skievaski joined me to share ideas & best practices for creating alignment that intertwines employee experience and profit. “Aligning People & Profit: Investing in talent during a shifting market” aired Wednesday, September 13th @ 12:00pm MT. View the recording on-demand here.
