Strat Plan Acronyms - Choosing Your Favorite, Pros and Cons

Are you looking for a Third Growth Option ℠ ?

Strategic planning works best when you treat it as two jobs: setting the big vision and mapping the step-by-step path to get there. The right framework—whether EOS, OGSP, or the 1-2-3 process—can make the difference between plans that collect dust and plans that actually deliver results.

• Separate “where we’re going” (strategy) from “how we’ll get there” (execution)
 • Bring 5–12 people who cover your customer, operations, and finance angles
 • Communicate with the 3 I’s: inform → involve → inspire
 • Line up quick wins first so you build momentum while bigger projects take shape
 • Roll out with a crawl-walk-run pace—don’t sprint into burnout
 • Skip the usual traps: fuzzy communication and impossible deadlines

What’s worked—or flopped—for you in strategic planning? Let’s swap notes.

Always growing.

Benno Duenkelsbuehler

CEO & Chief Sherpa of (re)ALIGN

reALIGNforResults.com

[e-mail]

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
I see a lot of business folks, executives,
struggle with strategic planning, right.
So a couple of quick thoughtson strategic planning.
First of all.
It is not a thing.
It is two things.
Things separate the strategy,the you know 30,000 foot view of

(00:31):
you know how can we win better,you know a year from now or
three years from now.
So separate that strategy fromthe planning part, which is the
sort of reverse engineering,time and action calendars, gantt
charts of how do you executethe strategy this week and this

(00:53):
month and this year.
You know one person at a time,one activity at a time, one
department at a time, one monthat a time.
Secondly, you want to pick aprocess.
There's lots of good strategicplanning processes, frameworks.
I think EOS has a very good one.
You know the vision tractionorganizer, the big rock meetings

(01:19):
makes a lot of sense.
You have the OGSP framework,which is objectives, goals,
strategy and plans, budgets goodframework.
I'm partial to the strategicplanning framework in my
business, which is the one, two,three process.
One is big picture strategytakes about a week or so to put

(01:45):
together.
Then the road mapping is thestep.
Number two, usually a month orso of reverse engineering and
time and action calendars.
And three is execution, whichfor us is not an afterthought
but the whole point of doingstrategic planning.
So I'd like to have between ahandful and no more than a dozen

(02:10):
people in the room developingthe strategic plan or being in
the strategic planning meetingsso that you have all the main
functions of the businessrepresented, from customer
facing to operations tofinancial perspective on the
business, represented from, youknow, customer facing to
operations, to financialperspective on the business Also

(02:33):
helps with buy-in and helps youmake sure that you're not
missing Important insights intothe business.
So have at least those threeparts of the three-legged stool
basically sales, operations andfinance at a very high level,
represented in the process.
And then some pitfalls to avoid.

(02:53):
Poor communication is the bigone, obviously, and you get poor
communication if you don't havea good process.
You don't have a good process,you don't have the right people
in the room and you're notcommitted to starting and ending
the strategic planning process.
So you know really I like thatthe book in the book think

(03:20):
outside the box bestseller 30years ago that he talks about
the three I's of communication,which is inform.
You have to inform people inorder to involve them.
You have to involve people inorder to inspire them.
So inform them to involve them,involve them to inspire them.

(03:43):
So the three I's aroundcommunication I I think are an
important part of strategicplanning.
Avoid another pitfall to avoidis bad sequencing.
You know.
Make sure you identify somequick wins.
Make sure that you know youadapt.
Adopt a sort of crawl walk runthought process to executing

(04:06):
strategic planning ideas so thatyou have some quick wins and
you leave it more complex.
You give them the time that isrequired.
Don't try to execute a one-yearvery complex't.
Don't try to do it in two weeks.

(04:27):
It's going to fail, right?
Um, don't be intimidated bystrategic planning.
Um, pick a good process.
Have the right people in theroom.
Uh, would love to hear yourthoughts on uh different uh
things that have worked reallywell for you, or or a disaster.
We can learn from those as well.
Put your thoughts in thecomment section.

(04:50):
Dm me.
I'd love to help out and makesure that you have a successful,
a well-thought-out strategicplan that you can successfully
execute.
Good luck.