Far too often, leaders find themselves overwhelmed by unfocused strategic, management and individual plans, inundated with too many priorities that consume far more capacity than is available. In the Lean Strategic Planning program, leaders will have the opportunity to refine their leadership approach with this innovative 1-day program tailored to streamlining the annual planning process. This practical, action-oriented program provides leaders with a strategic approach and a comprehensive toolkit to reduce the number of priorities they take on, with greater focus and better execution, saving capacity for unexpected events, better execution, and a more humane pace of work.

Elevate your learning journey by exploring our complementary program, the Lean and Agile Leadership Program.

• Who Should Attend?

Leaders (Senior Managers to Executives) who:

• Are charged with creating and implementing strategic plans for their organization, branch, department, or work unit.
• Wish to create better, more realistic, plans and strategies that make breakthrough progress.

• What you will learn

1. What Lean Strategic Planning and Deployment are and how they differ from traditional planning and execution.
2. Key shortcomings of traditional strategic planning (the cost of too many priorities, starting with the solution instead of the problem, lack of consideration of true capacity, low ownership of the plan, lack of an effective retrospective routine and visibility throughout the year) and how to address them.
3. How to gain consensus on the “must-do, can’t fail” versus “should do” versus “don’t do” priorities, and how to say “no, not yet” to lower-value priorities.
4. How to respond to unplanned, unexpected events throughout the year.
5. How to create ownership and alignment of the plan at all levels, from the highest executive levels to the front lines.

• Program Takeaways

1. A practical toolkit for implementing a Lean approach to planning and techniques for utilizing this toolkit in your planning process.
2. A better understanding of how to assess available capacity , and how much capacity the plan will consume, enabling the creation of more realistic and achievable plans.
3. How to use the concept of “Catchball” to create broader and deeper ownership of the plan across various organizational levels and silos, enhancing the likelihood of successful execution.
4. How to manage and optimize execution of the plan throughout the year, including how to get the “critical few” priorities completed ahead of all others, and reduce the amount of effort priorities require.
5. Strategies for building organizational buy-in and support for this Lean approach to planning and execution.