Strategic Planning Kit For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

Inviting Everyone

The old cliché that too many cooks spoil the broth couldn't be closer to the truth. Although it's imperative that key employees have a voice in planning, not everyone has to literally be at the meeting table. Too many people in the room can lead to chaos and confusion, resulting in a strategic plan by committee instead of through educated decisions and leadership.

If you have a lot of people who want to participate in the process, include them in a couple different ways:

• Collect employees' thoughts and opinions via an employee survey. Check out the Employee Business Purpose Questionnaire on the CD (from Chapter 5) for an example you can use in advance of your strategic planning meetings. In Chapter 5, you find a set of actions to take with the information you collect.

• Hold a series of meetings. Perhaps the first and last meetings are with your senior management team, and a couple meetings in between are with key employees and staff. In either case, you collect ideas and opinions that are valuable to developing your plan, but you reserve the right to make the final decisions about what actions you take.

How many is too many? Seven people is the optimal size of a decision-making group. Each additional member reduces effectiveness by 10 percent, according to Marcia ...