Planning, whether for long-term strategy or just the coming year, tends to suffer from a Moses complex even though we have learned that having the team at the top come down with tablets from on high rarely works. It takes broader involvement than that.by consultants Lenny Rachitsky and Nels Gilbreth in their work at Eventbrite and Airbnb.
“Planning is hard because it's inherently different from other exercises your organization takes on. Rather than focusing on day-to-day execution, it requires a large number of people to think about a variety of possible futures, align on one single future, and then plot a concrete course to get there,” they write on First Round Review.
In their framework, they cleverly divide the work between the leadership group atop the company or business unit and the people executing the actual work, such as the marketing team or the smaller task teams overseeing each product. Work will zigzag between leaders and doers, going up and down the organizational hierarchy, as if along the sides of the letter W, which is how the framework was named. The four steps:Good planning requires top-down guidance.
The W Framework gives some logic to what can be a chaotic process. It also separates the right-brain steps of crafting strategy from some of the left-brain, analytical efforts that follow. Failing to separate those right-brain and left-brain activities hinders strategic planning, McGill professor Henry Mintzberg has noted. The process merits some consideration if your planning process is clunky or ineffectual. It clarifies responsibilities and encourages collaboration rather than conflict.
Globe_Careers yep, and put it behind a paywall... hope you charge them royalties :)