The first discovered use of strategy was way back in 200 B.C. based on the need for nations to defeat their enemies. Strategy has been around a long time and as a result many companies already have a strategic planning process in place.
The objective of your strategic planning process is to address the greatest obstacles holding your company back from fulfilling its full growth potential. The #1 issue limiting the growth of most organizations today are people shortages and issues. However, almost all strategic planning processes do not address the talent challenges facing the organization. As you prepare for your annual planning process, I want to provide you the simple steps to add talent plans to your upcoming process.
Multi-year talent plans tie your talent decisions to your strategy and drive the growth of your people and business as you execute it. Talent planning includes your strategic plan, talent plans and execution plan. In order for you to know what talent you need, you first have to know where you are going through your strategy/vision.
Let’s say your company has annual sales of $30 million in 2023. And in your 2024 planning process you create your three-year vision (by 12/31/2026) to include annual sales of $45 million.
Once your vision/strategy is in place, the next step in your planning process is for the planning team to design the functional structure that needs to be in place to support a $45 million company by 12/31/2026. You split your planning team into three homework teams and each homework team presents their recommended 12/31/2026 functional structure/talent vision. Using the ideas presented in recommended structures, start at the leader position and work your way down through every department to create the future functional structure.
Once your 12/31/2026 future functional structure is finalized, now you can put 3-year talent plan in place for the Leadership Team, each department and for each team member. Your talent plan is the bridge that takes your team and structure from where it is today to your 3-year functional structure. It includes all the talent strategies and actions to build high performance teams and leaders to achieve your vision – $45 million in sales as an example. Your talent plan includes all the actions to develop and retain your high performers, prioritized new hires and promotions and succession plans that need to be put in place.
The company leader puts a 3-year talent plan in place for the leadership team first. Then the leader works with each department leader to put a 3-year talent plan in place for their department.
As you prepare for your strategic planning process:
- If your organization does not have a planning process in place but you want to implement one for the upcoming year, keep it simple. Define what you want your organization to look like in 3 years and then develop the 3-year talent plans to make it happen.
- If you already have a planning process in place, it’s time to evaluate and update it. So, to address your people issues add talent plans to your planning process. Once you define your strategy/vision, then create the talent plans to achieve them. It is an additional simple step that will dramatically increase the return on investment from your planning process.
A great process leads to a great process. If you want to win the battle for talent and dominate your industry, then add talent plans to your planning process. Talent planners build high-performance teams and leaders across their organization and achieve their goals/vision. Those Who Talent Plan – Profit!
Steve Van Remortel is Founder/CEO of MyTalentPlanner, Chief Strategist & Talent Advisor at Stop the Vanilla, LLC and is a speaker, trainer, advisor, and 3x author.
