Wednesday, October 2, 2019
If you develop an annual plan for your consulting firm, there’s a decent chance you sit down with your senior team and/or advisors for a day or two to hammer out your objectives, strategies and tactics.
(If you don’t engage in any strategic planning for your consulting firm then, as the old saying goes, “When you don’t know where you’re going, any road could end up in Newark.”)
The annual rigmarole requires substantial effort, time, M&Ms and endurance. It’s a chore.
Plus, if your team is sizable, you pull everyone together for an expensive couple of days–no mean calendaring feat, after which your team walks out tired rather than fired up.
Do you want to trudge into your consulting firm’s future tired? Heck no! You want to be excited. Raring to go. Totally juiced up.
There’s a better approach.
The problem is viewing strategic planning as a point-in-time activity that should be mostly completed in one, fell swoop.
Stop felling and swooping. (Kvelling is okay.) You’lldevelop a more effective, more energizing strategic plan for your consultingfirm if you build it in small pieces, over eight weeks.
Commit to eight, 90-minute sessions over eight weeks attended by you and any senior team or advisors at your consulting firm.
You can run the sessions via Zoom or a similar platform,which means no travel time involved. Though, depending on your consultingfirm’s culture, you may need to shower and dress (from the waist up).
8 Weeks to Get Juiced
Week 1: Report the Facts
Present key data about your consulting firm. If you have ateam, then different people can be responsible for different facts.
The key here isn’t to debate the implications—it’s to gainclarity on reality.
Of course, during the 90-minute session you may identify afew data gaps that you’ll want to fill before the next session. That will betrue every week.
Week 2: Lessons Learned and Implications
Each member of your consulting firm’s strategic planning teambrings questions and conclusions from the previous week’s data review.
Having had time to sit with all the data for a week, eachparticipant can express his thoughts coherently, and in priority order.
It’s tougher to create those clear, prioritized conversations when everyone’s reacting to the data in the moment.
Week 3: Revisit Mission, Vision and Values
Missions and visions change in response to the environment,which is why you review them in Week 3.
Ideally, of course, your values don’t change over time; however, if Week 1 revealed you have alarming churn at the analyst level, and Week 2 you concluded you need to be more family oriented, then you may want to revise your values.
By the end of this session, agree to any changes in your consulting firm’s mission, vision and values. You can make final tweaks, etc. in Week 4.
Week 4: Goals, Gaps and Objectives
Agree on your:
- Goals. These are the results youwant to reach over the next 12 months. Achieving your goals is largely a resultof your consulting firm’s behaviors and activities, but the goals are notnecessarily within your firm’s control.
- Gaps.These describe the difference between your goals and where your consulting firmis now. Focus on the meaningful gaps you want to close.
- Objectives. Your objectives are theactivities that are at least 90% within your consulting firm’s control. Suchas, for instance, your marketing activity and your staff.
In all three areas, you and your team should prioritize from most-to-least important.
Week 5: Strategic Initiatives and Success Metrics
One month into the process you have everything you need todrill down into the handful of strategic initiatives that will guide your consultingfirm’s efforts for the upcoming 12 months.
What are the key projects, undertakings and focus areas thatwill help you nail your objectives, and close the gaps to your goals?
I recommend no more than 10 initiatives, and at least one in each of the major contributors to consulting firm success: Business Development, Profitable Value Creation, and Infrastructure.
Week 6: Quarterly Objectives
After addressing any lingering questions on your strategic initiatives, your strategic planning team can break each strategic initiative into three-month sprints.
I’ve found that setting quarterly objectives establishes a good cadence for most consulting firms. The objectives are not so far out as to be ignorable, nor so immediate as to conflict with pressing client issues.
Week 7: Budgets and Resources
Now that your consulting firm’s desired activities are welldefined, you can calculate your budget and plan for any resources required tohit your objectives.
During this part of the exercise, devote ample time to considering outside partners, automation opportunities, and other investments that will help your consulting firm thrive.
Week 8: Desserts
Finalize your plans. The budgeting phase may have raised challengesin your objectives or your strategic initiatives.
After a week of individual thought and deliberation, your consulting firm’s planning team will come together to resolve any challenges, finalize the details, and celebrate with chocolate fondue.
The eight-week approach offers your consulting firm a coupleof key advantages:
- You have time to think, to react, and raise new questions between sessions
- You don’t have to find two days to pull everyone together. Full days are tough for consulting firm leaders. Ninety minutes a week, though, isn’t so bad.
What changes would you make to the eight weeks outlined above?
Text and images are © 2019 David A. Fields, all rights reserved.