Build a Flexible Strategy Plan

The word “strategy” is from the Greek strategia, which means “office of a general” which itself comes from the Greek word strategos, meaning “general”.

The military roots of the word “strategy” and the actions taken to fulfill a strategy create your battle plan for achieving success. When you evaluate the training actions in which you are currently engaged, what do you see? Do you find areas of fault? Are there places where improvement is important? Do you see several areas of complete success?

The key to building a strategic plan is to include flexibility as part of your strategy.

Consider this 4-minute video from www.strategicframing.com about how decisions are rewarded and viewed.

Then consider how you can use information from this video to affect how you view past decisions as you start to build future strategies.

Three Questions Video Review

1.What stood out for you in the video?

2.What did you already know?

3.What do you want to apply right away?

It is true that we can only make a decision based on the information we have at hand.

When you are tasked with building a strategic plan for training and development, you must work with the data you have today. The data in the future may look different than you expected, knowing this is a possible reality is why flexibility must be part of your strategic planning results.

How to Ensure Flexibility in Your Strategic Plan

The best way to ensure flexibility in your strategic development process is to avoid pretending that you can see the future. What may look certain today, can and will change. With that in mind here is a simple strategy for building flexibility into your planning process.

1.Plan for expansion (+)

2.Plan for neutrality (=)

3.Plan for contraction (-)

These three factors are a minimum number of variables that should be part of your strategic planning process. When you are seeking to train and develop your personnel, if you are only planning for contraction, when demand increases growth will take you by surprise, you will find yourself understaffed. The ability to have at least three paths in mind allows you to apply the most effective strategy to the situaion at hand. It is important to avoid judging past decisions as good or bad based on emerging information. This can be a challenge, but is one worth addressing.

Your Next Move

As you begin to craft a strategic plan for training your personnel, stay focused on the desired outcome, the facts you have now, and the ability to remain flexible as you gain new information. There is no error in making an informed decision as long as you are prepared to self-correct if new information demands a different response.