4 Things that could be Missing from your Strategic Planning Process

Attention to detail in the strategic planning process makes good of your investment of time, people, and resources. Do not sell your process short by failing to address these 4 key strategic planning components.

1. Risk Assessment: One of the core duties of a bank director is to assess risk, set risk parameters, and monitor risk. Yet, there are still institutions that do not ask their directors to perform key risk assessments on a regular basis. The assumption of risk, or the lack thereof, directly impacts the profitability and success of any strategy you may come up with making it an essential element of the strategic planning process.
2. Communication: Often strategic planning gets treated as little more than an extended board meeting. Everyone must be actively engaged and fully participate in order to have the rich dialogue needed for strategic planning. When you facilitate in-house or fail to produce valuable interaction and discussion, you rob the process and ultimately produce a mediocre plan with little buy-in.
3. Lack of an Actionable Agenda: Have you ever been part of a strategic planning meeting that feels like it is 90% off-track? That you could have gotten the same amount done in a regular board meeting? Doing some heavy lifting with communication prior to the strategic session will enable you to pull together an agenda that matches the expectations of your board and management team. Having and sticking to an agenda that focuses on exactly what needs to be discussed and decided upon raises the productivity and engagement level exponentially.
4. Remains Too Tactical: Tactical planning is important and valuable but has no place in a strategic planning session. When you let your budget or tactical items run your process, you fall into the trap of getting into the weeds of your plan and missing the critical big picture. Plus, it derails the session and can be a real time waster. Time must be dedicated to strategic long-term issues and vision to produce a strong plan. Tactical application comes after and is led by the management team.