Whether you are developing a new marketing program, product launch, or business strategy, disciplined planning makes sure you are asking yourself and your colleagues the right questions, drawing the richest implications, and identifying new opportunities with the greatest leverage.
Via decades of planning experience, we have encountered and developed numerous Best Practices. We have found that the best results come from facilitated conversations that seek to answer the right questions, based on sound data and confronting the brutal facts of your business. Reviewing the facts, asking questions, and probing the issues provide a far better outcome than seeking to produce documents or presentations. Business planning should not be about producing a Powerpoint deck to show stakeholders once a year. Nor should it be about establishing rigid rules for engagement and execution. Instead, great planning is simple, disciplined and flexible. It results in a road map that is based on sound analysis, innovation and creativity. There is no single formula for planning. If there were, everyone would use it and every business would succeed. Planning occurs at the intersection of quantitative analysis and expansive creativity.
We design and deploy customized planning processes for companies, as we believe that although there are many great Best Practices, that we ourselves deploy, there is no pre-determined solution that fits your company’s needs off the shelf. We do not do the strategic thinking work for you. Instead, our methods facilitate your journey through the strategic planning process. A journey wherein we help you review the data, ask the right questions, derive powerful implications, identify opportunity, and coordinate alignment of your employees and synchronization of the interdependent parts of your organization.
LEVEL ORDER PLANNING AND THE PLANNING PYRAMID
Level order planning is the name of our proprietary planning process. Here’s how it works. We use a pyramid as a visual device to illustrate the way objectives and strategies cascade throughout an organization.
The Planning Pyramid is divided into three layers. Each layer corresponds to a different level of planning. The top of the pyramid is referred to as Level 1. This is the level where the macro level strategy for the organization is created. This is usually the strategic plan created by the CEO and their direct reports. Together as the leadership team of the organization, they determine the vision, mission, objectives and strategies that will drive the rest of the company’s focus. It is also at Level 1 where a balanced scorecard approach is developed and embodied in the strategic plan.
Level 2 corresponds to the next level where planning occurs. Exactly who is involved in planning at the level depends on the organizational structure of the company. Most often, Level 2 planning corresponds to the direct reports of the CEO, and are in the form of business units, divisions, and/or functional areas such as finance, legal, and HR.
Level 3 planning corresponds to either the direct reports of those people planning at Level 2 or to region or country level operations and subsidiaries.
Further levels can be added for more detailed planning, however, companies just as often move to setting individual objectives after Level 3 planning.
As the Planning Pyramid shows, each level below Level 1 cascades the Level 1 plan as the core of their level’s plan. Level 2 decides what each planner can do to support Level 1 objectives and strategies. In a perfect cascade, the higher level’s strategies become the next level’s objectives. However in the case of Level 2 planning, many Level 1 objectives and strategies may cascade directly to Level 2 plans as their objectives and strategies.
FOCUSED DISPERSED
Each level has the opportunity to add additional objectives and strategies that were not present in the level plans above them. These additional objectives and strategies correspond to specific areas of focus unique the business unit, division, function, region or country involved in planning at that level. It is important that all additional objectives and strategies at any level are approved by the level above. This allows the organization to control the width and therein the focus of the Planning Pyramid which illustrates the strategic focus of the organization.
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