“Giant timber bamboo can grow 90 feet in 60 days – that’s a foot and a half a day!  Some claim that you can hear it grow…What’s even more amazing…is that once it’s planted, it takes a least three years to break through the ground.” – Greg Bell – excerpts from his book Water the Bamboo

Recently my leadership team and I met to update, challenge, refine, and if necessary, revise our long term strategic plan for 2016. A precursor to the annual budgeting process, the strategic plan is meant to set the long term objectives for the company, map a path backwards toward those objectives, and define the interim priorities that will be necessary to achieve that plan.  We call it our Three Year Strategic Plan, or TYSP, and it’s what feeds our Strategic Execution Framework (SEF), our Plan to Win, and our annual budget process. 

To be fair, we as a leadership team don’t wait for some annual “alarm” to indicate time for our strategic plan review.  In fact, we revisit and discuss our strategy on at least a quarterly basis (if not monthly), and we review our progress on a weekly basis.  Committing to a strategy and executing against it is hard work and it takes persistence and diligence to reach your objectives.  Continue reading →