Discover Human-Centric Strategic Planning
Human-centric strategic planning prioritizes people - our customers and our employees - as the main focus of our organization and our strategy. By considering their needs first, we can then explore how we can best meet those needs and create value. This approach leads to better results, stronger profitability, and a thriving culture.
Check out this 5-minute video of Trina speaking on human-centric strategic planning. You can also download a one-page overview or read the transcript below.
Trina is speaking in Edmonton, Alberta at DisruptHR, an international event series that shakes things up, makes you think differently, and leaves you inspired. Each speaker has exactly 5 minutes and the slides automatically rotate every 15 seconds: “teach us something, but make it quick!”
Video Transcript:
Human-Centric Strategic Planning
Slide Number (20 slides that auto advance every 15 seconds) and Text
[Series of photos of faces showing sour and unimpressed expressions from the show, The Office]
These are some of the most common reactions whenever “strategic planning” is mentioned. Show of hands – have you ever felt this way? I get it. I get it.
For some employees, strategic planning has been a handful of powerful people going into room for a day and at the end, announcing a new focus for the organization. For some executives, strategic planning has been boring, painful, and absolutely useless.
Thank goodness we have found a better way - human-centric strategic planning! This approach centers people first – not programs, initiatives, or Departments. It is meaningful, very practical, and even fun.
So what is strategic planning? It is your organization intentionally selecting choices to create value for your customers – and might I add - your employees.
The human-centric approach to strategic planning produces better results that drive profitability and builds a thriving culture.
Would you prefer to work at a place that uses the traditional top-down model or the new human centric approach? Where do you hope your kids will work one day? How do you want to lead your organization to create impact and legacy?
There are three main components of human centric strategic planning: 1) Give a Damn 2) Actually Listen and 3) Keep It Real. Let’s dive in.
Number one - give a damn. It’s crucial in our strategic planning to give a damn about our customers not only our internal processes. This means that we first focus on meeting their needs and improving their customer experience.
At the same time, we must recognize that over the long-term, our customer experience will never exceed our employee experience. So we also need to consider our employees’ perspective and analyze how our strategy choices impact their work experience.
We all know we’re competing for exceptional staff to deliver our products and services. In human-centric strategic planning,
we take the time to build meaningful relationships with our customers and employees, so that we can see the world through their eyes. Then we can figure out how our organization can best create value for them.
The second component of human-centric strategic planning is to actually listen. The world is complex and rapidly changing… we need to hear diverse perspectives for how to effectively create value.
We can gather this intel directly from our customers, employees at all levels, key partners, and other stakeholders. When strong, trusting relationships are in place, we can hope they can feel safe to contribute their ideas for improvements and innovation.
We deeply listen and learn from them, appreciate their input, make good use of their time, and have some fun with it.
Most importantly, we really consider their suggestions and follow up with them (whether or not we’re able to act on their ideas right now). JUST PLEASE don’t send another survey you don’t do anything with.
Last, but not least – keep it real. After we consider everyone’s input and analyze the data and financials, a Steering Committee or Executive Team will make the final strategy choices and allocate limited resources.
This involves taking risks to select which options will hopefully create the best value. This decision-making is really hard, isn’t it? To make these tough trade-offs, it’s important for the team to keep it real.
i.e. to be real humans. They don’t need to be perfect or know everything. What they do need is strong trust and safety to have open conversations about their insights and concerns for each strategy option.
Then this team can make choices that they believe in and will persevere to implement. The end goal is to create value that will drive profitability and build a thriving culture.
[Series of photos of faces showing happy and excited expressions from the show, The Office] So in your next strategic planning, I invite you to use a human centric approach: give a damn, listen, and keep it real. And watch reactions change from grim to great.