Having the smartest and most knowledgeable industry experts sitting around a blank white board won’t necessarily produce an effective strategy.

Most strategic plans fail because everything hinges on a workshop.

Strategic planning for many companies involves taking the board or management team off-site for a two day retreat with a facilitator. Such facilitators usually have Post-it Notes and butchers paper but rarely have strategy expertise.  Although the facilitator may be adept at chairing the workshop, this process does not usually produce sound strategy because:

• Most facilitators don’t understand strategy
• Most facilitators draw on theoretical frameworks rather than commercial insights
• The strategy document becomes simply a summary of the workshop
• Few managers have the perspective of more than one industry
• Ideas tend to be introspective and are not challenged
• The same old ‘corporate myths’ surface each year
• Every organisation believes it is at the cutting edge and is invincible and the facilitators do not have the experience (or guts) to challenge the internal beliefs.

At McKINNA et al, we don’t do facilitation!

Well . . . not in the sense of what most people think facilitation is. We do facilitate a process, of which leading a strategic planning workshop is just one of the steps.
Before we facilitate any planning sessions, we go to great lengths to understand the issues so we can participate in the discussion and add value to the problem solving.

The McKINNA et al strategic planning method is a proven step-by-step process with a component of customised prior research, consultation and analysis so that we bring a clear framework and purpose to the strategic planning workshop rather than just knowing how to run a good meeting.

The intention of the workshop is to draw together a helicopter view of what is going on then apply our own objective insights to the situation analysis for discussion with the workshop participants.