Are you at a crossroads?

New CEO?

Merger?

Major changes in your business environment?

Facing a major new business opportunity or threat?

Is your team worn out from working through the Great Recession of 2008 (2009, 2010, 2011)?

How will you get everyone aligned to your organization's strategic intent?

Time for an i2a: Strategic Planning Session. 

i2a (Insights to Action) is designed to engage your team in strategic thinking around a five step process that includes:

1. Sight - what do we know about how the world is changing? It involves looking back at what made us successful and how we got here. Looking inside to understand our SCOT - Strengths, Challenges, Opportunities & Threats, and looking forward to identify and prioritize the major future trends that are likely to have the biggest impact on your organization.

2. Insight - This is the "so what does this mean to us" phase. Each exercise under the "sight" step involves probing questions about what these trends and issues mean to your organization's future. It helps get everyone on the same page before we go to the future.

3. Create - This is where we take you and your group to the future to identify a Bold Vision of the future and then work to identify how to get there. Then we "make it real" by pulling the top five steps to achieve our Bold Vision from your team. The group has created a shared vision of the future and the major strategic priorities to get there. Further work can be done to drive down to action plans with specific time-lines and team assignments.

4. Communicate - This is often what is missing from a good strategic planning process, thinking about who needs to understand the strategic plan and how to communicate it in a way they can easily grasp. Here is an example of a "one page" plan that we created for the CPA Profession in the Vision 2011 Project and the updated CPA Horizons 2025 Project. Another example is the one-page plan of the Maryland Association of CPAs (our parent company).

5. Inspire to Action - Too many strategic plans end up in binders on shelves. Not our i2a strategic plans. They are simple, visual, and easy to share stories from. We work with you to design an engagement process to expose the strategic plan and mobilize consent to move forward with the plan. Inspiration is what will give you the discretionary effort needed to move your organization forward.

Check out this video to see what the process looks like. 

Here is what participants say about our strategic planning sessions

a "wordle" from a recent i2a: strategic planning session

if you are standing at the crossroads, call us to schedule an i2a: Strategic Planning Session and let us help you find the right direction and get moving toward your bold future faster.