CEO Mindset – Strategic planning and execution

Step 1: Create mission, values, and vision statements

1. Mission – Why does our company exist? This is shared internally and externally.
2. Values – What are the core, fundamental values that guide our decision-making?
3. Vision – What do we want to accomplish in 3-5 years? This is the Northstar. This should be the starting place for your strategic objectives. Your business strategy is derived from the vision statement. The vision statement may or may not be shared with the public.

Step 2: Develop a strategy for achieving the vision

Once you’ve defined your vision statement, it’s time to create the business strategy, or approach to achieving your vision. 

1. Strategy – How will we accomplish our vision? This involves developing a roadmap to get you from where you are today, to where you want to be 3-5 years from now. Your strategy should be kept private.
   1. Choosing your strategic objectives – These are like little mini 3-5 year vision statements for different areas in your organization. See below for an example. Generic strategic objectives could be:
      1. Financial aspect – Improve our profitability
      2. Customer aspect – Grow our market share
      3. Internal processes – Enhance operational efficiency
      4. People – Develop our workforce
   2. Building the strategic plan
      1. Building your strategic plan means creating a couple 1 year quantifiable, outcome-based corporate goals for achieving each of your long-term strategic objectives.
      2. Your goals state what you want to achieve in year 1, year 2, year 3, etc.
      3. The goals should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timebound).
      4. Measuring the level of success and goal achievement is done using key performance indicators (KPIs) for each goal.
         1. KPIs are the heartbeat of your performance management process. They tell you whether your making progress in your goals and strategy.
         2. The 4 things you need to have in a KPI are:
            1. A measure (expressed in English): # of new customers this year
            2. Target (the numeric value you want to achieve): 1000 new customers by the end of the year
            3. Source (where is the data coming from): CRM
            4. Frequency (how often are you gonna be reporting on this KPI): Monthly
         3. There are different types of KPIs
            1. Raw numbers (widget counting)
            2. Progress (expressed as percent completed toward the goal)
            3. A change (expressed as percent increase or percent decrease as compared to last year)
      5. Once you have created your yearly goals, you then move into annual operating plans. This involves taking the high-level corporate goals and cascading them down to all levels of the organization. Smaller and smaller goals need to be set as you move down each layer within the organization. This means corporate goals are translated into department goals, and department goals are translated into goals for each individual contributor. For example, all the goals of employees in a certain department should combine together to achieve the goals of the department manager. The goals at each layer should merge upward in the organization all the way up to the executive level with their high-level, corporate goals.

Step 3: Execution

Now we have a plan, next comes execution.

1. There are 3 things you have to have in place in order to effectively execute:
   1. People – Every person in the organization should have an individual action plan that expresses ownership and accountability for what they have to get done and by when
   2. Performance management
      1. Measuring employee performance and the status of progress toward goals at every layer in the organization on a monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis.
      2. Executives should be holding strategy reviews at least once a month to report on the progress of the plan. They should review the KPIs for the corporate goals to see if the organization is on track to achieve the yearly goals. If not, some course correction is required.
   3. Process – A set of processes in each department and at each layer of the organization for achieving their goals.