A strategic plan for any business is an exercise in resource allocation. The main objective during the process is to determine how best to use time, staff, and money to accomplish business goals. One of the frameworks that you can use in strategic planning is structured in three parts: Goal, Stretch, and Capacity. In this first blog post on strategic planning, I will define the Goal, Stretch, Capacity framework in detail. And in future posts, I will provide example cases of how this framework can be used effectively for the workspace services industry and specifically for the customer growth objective.
Goal
The Goal component of this framework consists of outlining a strategy to reach a simply measurable target during a defined period time with the resources currently available and all other major objectives being equal. I’ve included in bold text the most important features of the goal set during this phase. I’ll explain the advantage of each as the strategic plan is composed.
During the goal stage, your target should be measured without high-level evaluation techniques. This ensures that everyone involved in planning has the same picture of success in mind when crafting the plan. Having a set time limit for the established target further narrows the plan and focuses it on efficiency. You avoid planning action that would take longer to implement than the time allotted to reach the goal. And, when the time limit is part of the strategic plan from the beginning, you know that the final evaluation of the success of that portion of the plan must happen. When there is no defined time period, it is common to see plans drag on and on without really measuring whether or not it’s effective for reaching the target. It is equally common to see what could have been good plans abandoned when they weren’t carried out long enough to see the intended result.
Now that you understand the characteristics of the goal, I’ll explain a more about the Goal stage context: using currently available resources and all other major objectives being equal. The context is the major distinguisher between Goal stage and Stretch stage. Goal stage is about planning to use the budgeted amount monetary resources and not over prioritizing the target so that time and staff resources are not taken away from equally important and urgent tasks. When you keep this context in mind, you are able to plan strategic action that is realistically accomplishable and that does not over extend any of the resources most essential to your business.
Stretch
The Stretch phase of the Goal, Stretch, Capacity strategic planning system is all about having a calculated means of “striking while the iron’s hot”. This phase raises the priority level of the goal phase target and is only implemented when the established target is met as a result of the planned goal phase action. When planning for the Stretch phase, you decide how the resources of money (if the goal phase was under budget), time, and staff can be shifted to further drive success in the goal target area. The Stretch phase target should be to accomplish at least 10% more in half the time. That means that staff must dedicate more time to the goal during their working hours and/or more staff should make the target their priority. You shouldn’t necessarily hire more staff unless it makes financial and organizational sense to do so. Keep in mind that the intent is not to necessarily reach the stretch goal, but to push the available resources to their limit.
The Stretch plan should focus on the most successful activities from the goal phase and completely remove activities that did not at all contribute to reaching the goal phase target. You can’t truly know what those are until after the completion of the goal phase. Before even the goal phase is implemented you must write into your strategic plan that any remaining budget from that phase is earmarked for activities during the stretch phase. If you don’t have a plan for the extra funds, they will likely get absorbed by other business objectives. At the completion of goal phase, all of the staff involved in carrying out the stretch phase activities should be involved in the stretch phase plan. This way you are more likely to have total buy-in from those staffers who are going to be asked to work harder and longer than usual on the target.
But what happens when you don’t accomplish the goal phase target in the set amount of time? At this point it is important to conduct an After Action Review and evaluate what parts of the planned activities were effective, determine which parts were ineffective, and decide how to adjust the plan and target with the resources now available.
Capacity
Your capacity phase should put a plan in place to monitor the indicators that show that you have reached capacity and that further progress toward the target would in fact be crippling to your organization or service level. The capacity phase should also address how to adjust the allocation of resources in the event that you reach capacity. For example, consider the target to grow your reception service customers by 30% and at 23% increase your on-site receptionist responsible for providing the service begins to miss 15 calls per day where he or she had only missed one call per week previously. Your capacity planning would establish a reporting system for keeping track of calls missed and provide options to resolve the capacity problem perhaps by outsourcing receptionist services.
Unlike the goal and stretch phases that are carried out in succession, the capacity phase is really an ongoing component throughout the implementation of the strategic plan. If your organization has an individual or team who is primarily responsible for customer service or satisfaction, they would be the best to handle setting up and carrying out the capacity plan component.
Final thoughts
I hope this overview of the Goal, Stretch, and Capacity framework has been useful to you. Future posts will discuss how this plan can be implemented for the workspace services industry. Please share your thoughts on this framework on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
