“Implementation Ready” Is Better than “Implementation Plan”
Almost every organization I’ve talked to about strategic planning includes a request for an implementation plan as part of the work of external consultants. Whenever I see that, my standard response is, “You probably don’t need an implementation plan.”
The typical reply to that statement usually includes a shift of the head and a skeptical, “What do you mean?”
As I’ve written here previously, there’s a point in a strategy development process where additional planning becomes superfluous and a team’s time would be better spent shifting to action. In my experience, much of implementation planning has this dynamic.
That’s why I argue for replacing implementation plans with creating implementation-ready initiatives. In Strategic FUEL for Nonprofits, I define an implementation-ready initiative this way:
A specific person is named as the owner.
The owner develops the plan for the initiative (as opposed to senior leaders or strategic planners doing so).
The initiative owner has the right to identify the tradeoffs or additional resources required for success, and the initiative cannot go forward without agreements.
There are a few reasons why this is important.
1. The implementation-ready approach is more respectful.
Often, strategy development teams create a detailed implementation plan and then hand it over to the doers. The implicit command on that handover: “do this.” A more enlightened organization might involve the implementers after the strategy is decided by asking them to develop specific plans. However, this approach is still disrespectful because it tells the implementers, “We have made the decision. Now you tell us how you will get it done.”
The implementation-ready approach, on the other hand, involves the implementers before a strategy is decided. It says, “We both must agree that this is reasonable.”
2. The implementation-ready approach builds greater alignment and realism.
When analyzing why their previous strategic plans failed to live up to expectations, people within the organization say things like, “We didn’t have the capacity or resources to do that,” or, “The timelines were never realistic.” This is particularly the case in the nonprofit sector, where resources are often constrained, and new initiatives usually require reallocating existing resources.
The implementation-ready approach is more effective because it forces teams to address the practical issues upfront. When they wrestle with the tradeoffs forthrightly, their plans are much more likely to be feasible.
Moreover, the process of negotiating what’s feasible allows for greater accountability for implementing the plan. It becomes much harder for people to claim later that they should not be responsible for the results!
3. The implementation-ready approach models a healthy strategy dynamic.
Finally, the back-and-forth dialogue about the strategic direction and the practical limitations of the organization to create implementation-ready initiatives mimics the ongoing, inclusive conversations that the most strategic organizations have. That dialogue blurs the lines between “strategists” and “implementers,” which pays longer-term dividends in alignment, psychological safety, and communication, up, down, and across the hierarchy.
The implementation-ready approach is surely more difficult than simply handing over an implementation plan—in part because it requires handing over power. But the strategic capability benefits to both the team and organization make it worth it.