Turn Vision Into a Strategy Planning Template

How do you take a vision for a future possibility for your organization and put it into a strategic planning template that other people can access and use to guide their own actions and projects? For example, let's say I have this vision and one component of the vision I have for my company is that it can grow and operate without me having to be in it every single day in the weeds. I think that's a vision many of us can relate to. That vision of having my organization systemized and being based on process instead of human memory or one particular human being is a vision I have for the company. But vision is kind of a personal thing, right? I can see it, but I need everybody else to see it in order for it to become a reality. So how do I get this out of my head and into something that my team can understand and reference? For that, I need to ditch the whiteboards, ditch the hopes and prayers, and actually build out something inside a digital tool such as this one. To organize all this information, we need some kind of cloud based tool that allows people to get on the same page even when they're not in the same conference room. Which brings us to the sponsor of today's video, SmartSuite. Everything inside SmartSuite, including their AI functionality, here is something that you can try out for free to get them to write documentation and help you capture your strategy in one place. It's all free to try out. So go ahead and follow along with me as we go through it here. To create this solution, I went inside of SmartSuite and on the homepage I clicked add a new solution, Start with template. In this case, counterintuitive as it might seem, I am choosing the objectives and key results template. Now, not this one here that we've talked about previously on the channel, you can find that up here. But this one, I believe this one is actually mislabeled because when you look inside this template, it's got a lot of powerful stuff that goes way beyond just okrs. So what we're going to do is click Use Template to install this in the account, make a few adjustments and this will become our strategic planning template. We should see something like this appear inside your account. Now I'm going to briefly go through what each of these areas are so you're familiar with what our baseline is. Then we're actually going to add a brand new app by merging in some other templates to incorporate more of the strategic component. Because as we all know, strategy and planning are not the same thing. But what do we have here? As our baseline. The first area we have, which is an app in SmartSuite is our company story app. Here is where we have our mission, vision and values all broken down inside of SmartSuite. We can see these in these collapsing sections and expand to learn more. We can view these in a lot of different ways inside of SmartSuite in case we prefer to see things as cards, which is my preference. Or maybe you prefer to see things as a kanban. Whatever your style is, you can view it here using the views inside of SmartSuite. Once you have these pieces in here, we've got our baseline operating system installed next to the story. We also have company objectives. Now, company objectives are what you think of when you think of okrs. These are the third things we're trying to accomplish. Inside these objectives we have a name, the key results we need to accomplish in order to complete this objective. Where we're at currently using a pretty cool lookup field, a description and some connections. Now, what are these connections? These are called linked records in SmartSuite and all they do is connect things, you see here, these rows in the spreadsheet, if you can think of it in that way, and connect them to other rows in other spreadsheets. In this case, we're connecting key results, which is a list, think of it almost like a spreadsheet on steroids, of all of these different key results we're trying to achieve. And we're connecting them back to objectives. We're doing these same things with individual objectives and department objectives. In fact, if I go over to say individual objectives, you'll see if I expand this in one. We have very similar fields here, showing us the description where we're currently at. If there is a current value here and a connection to these key results, company objectives, individual objectives and department objectives, which I'm actually going to reorder for the sake of making sense there. These allow us to track the actions we need to take related to our plan. In order to take advantage of this, all we need to do is install this template just like we've already done, delete the demo data and then add in our own objectives, Add in our own key results using the big old plus button in each one. Connecting them together becomes super easy because we simply just fill in the information, you know, what objective is this related to? Select the option, click link, and there you go. Now, we've talked about each of the objectives area. They're all formatted very similar. We've talked about how they connect to these key results area, what is inside the key results area. Well, key results look something like this. As you might notice, this record in SmartSuite, which is this modal we're seeing here, which is also the same as the row that we're seeing here. When we open this record, we have a bunch of different fields. And in our key results, we have some different fields than what we've seen in the objective side. Up at the very top, we have key result information where we have the name owner, the current attainment, meaning how far along are we? 2589, whatever that is. By just dragging this little bar across the status, the due date and the risk level, which is one I really love. So we can rate how risky is it that we're not going to achieve this goal? Like, are we on track? Are we feeling good? We can have that here. If you're someone who uses a different system, maybe you do red, yellow, green. For your risk level, you could also replace this field by modifying it with a different type of field that works for you. For example, maybe you'd rather have a text area where someone just writes out the risk level. Or if I just exit without saving there, maybe you'd rather go ahead and delete this field, which you certainly can, and then add a new field where it's a dropdown of how risky is it. Whatever your preferences are, you can customize SmartSuite to your needs. Below that we have measurement and this is a field that is a text field that telling us how we measure it. But what I love about this field is it also has a help text, a little info icon that reminds us how exactly to fill this in. A lot of the fields you'll see inside this template, if we go into field settings, have the option to set up this kind of help text. And I don't know about you, but I find this super, super helpful. We can adjust how it's shown, whether it's as a tooltip or below the field name. But this just makes sure that we don't lose track of the meaning behind each of the fields we have here. Now, below this key results information area, if we scroll on down, we have a section for objectives and I can collapse or expand this. But all this is is the opposite side of the connections we've already seen connecting to departments, individuals and so on. If I collapse objectives, I also have conversations, feedback and recognition. This is a connection to our CFRS app. The one last spot we have and then an attachments area. Let's go into that CFRS area and show you what that looks like this is our last app to review. And inside CFRs we have this situation. Let's open a record to show you what it looks like. Inside the cfr, we've got the name, the date, the confidence level, the type of discussion it was and who was involved in that call. Below that we can talk about which key results we actually discussed and any progress notes. SmartSuite's got a cute little line there and that will allow us to track again how we are progressing, what communications we're having. And we have the reminder once again with help text telling us what to do in this area below, general information, which I can collapse here and honestly I may just collapse it by default. So that way it's always showing as closed. We have an issues and actions area. So if there are any issues discussed, we can log them right here. And then if there is action steps from the meeting, we can create that task right here and at the same time assign it and give it a due date. This is one of those unique things about SmartSuite when it comes to strategic planning. Most templates you're going to see for objective and key result tracking or for strategy, like we're going to be incorporating, so do not have that task component. They are a word doc, they are a PDF, they are a worksheet. And so when it comes to taking action on these things, it's, you know, a hope and a prayer that people go in and look at, you know, the EOS software you've built out or look at your workbook from scaling up. We don't need to do that guesswork. When we use a template like this, all of these owner fields, all of these dates that we have assigned for different things automatically show up for each user inside an area called my work. Now, don't judge me. I'm in a demo account here. But every single user has a section like this and everything we assign to them, including those little checklist items like you see the one right here and objectives and key results, anything we have an assignee and a due date for will show up inside this, my work area for that relevant person. This means SmartSuite will notify them when it's overdue. Depending on their settings, the person will have visibility into them. You no longer need to have your okrs and strategy plan outlined and just hope people actually check it out. Nope, it's all baked right in. So that is our OKR template. We've got our story, our objectives, our key results and how we're going to communicate them. But where is the strategy? Well, let's add that in next. I recently watched this video from the Harvard Business Review that was a great reminder of how strategy and planning are not one in the same. So right off the jump we know this template is going to need to be modified to include more of the strategy as opposed to where it's at right now, which is more so on the plan planning side. So how exactly do we do this? Well, in addition to Company Story, which is kind of like our ethos, our objectives for each group, the key results we're looking at and check ins that we have, we need to add some kind of element into this OKR template to include strategy capturing what our vision is and why that vision matters. To do that we're actually going to create two new apps and add them into this objective and key results area. I promise it's not as hard as it sounds. The first app we're going to create is a SWOT app, an area for us to track strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats which is basically going to become our area for growing strategy. To do that we don't have to create it from scratch, we are actually going to load another template and merge things together. So under the create a new template area in Strategic Plan, once we've added that brand new app, we need to fill it in with fields that reflect our preferred way of capturing some strategy. To do that we're going to open up a new record like the one you see on the screen here and by default it's going to have all these default fields in it. But I want to delete the fields that come into this, all these ones that come in by default I'm going to delete them and instead I'm going to use the add new fields to this app button to add in fields that capture strategy in the way that I like to think about it. And actually, quick question for you guys. Would you mind leaving in the comments below what strategic framework framework you like to use when you're thinking about the future? Do you use Vivid Vision? Scaling up eos something else Love to hear and just kind of swap notes in the comments if you don't mind. So drop that below. Here's an example of some of the fields I would add if I wanted to add in some of my preferred exercises. Up at the very top I'd have a component of the vision. What's something I would like to see something that's exciting that we want to head for. I would give that a name up here at the top status target Date those kind of make sense. When do we want to have this by? Below this we have connections to SWOT now. This is an ideation tool actually was inspired by from CEO Entrepreneur. So you can check out more about them up here or we'll have it in the description. And one of the things that they recommend is using a SWOT analysis as a tool for ideating new strategies. You know, look at the strengths you have, look at the trends in the market, combine those things together and that's how you can come up with new creative strategies. If anything, I went over in this section of setting things up felt a little tricky. It may be a good time to tell you about our how to SmartSuite mini course. It's a in the description below. It's our super affordable course that will teach you all you need to know to get up and running inside a SmartSuite in less than one day. So if you're someone who would just like to save the time, not go through all the YouTube videos and just figure out how to get this all set up, check out that link in the description below. I thought that was a great idea. So that's something that I have here in my own little strategic planning template where I can connect the strengths, the weaknesses and so on that I have already tracked in that SWOT database that you and I had added previously and use those right here to connect them to the vision. So what about our current marketplace, our current context that we have in that strengths, weaknesses, opportunity and threats analysis inform this strategy? From there I actually have a description area which is just where I tell the narrative of why this component, this little piece of vision, is so compelling here. For me personally, I think writing down a vivid vision style, if you haven't read that book, it's a great one. Writing down a narrative description of what that would feel like is what I would do here, following again those vivid vision exercises. If you haven't read that book, please do. It's great. Below that I would have a section called Logic, which is simply what must be true for this to be a reality. This Logic piece is kind of where we start transitioning from vision to okrs, because Logic is going to ask us to look at our desired end result and identify what are the things we need to have in order to make this possible. Now, all of this I created just by using different fields inside of SmartSuite. You can add these fields for yourself by clicking Add New field. But what I love about this is that you can tailor this particular record right here to whatever exercise you like to use. For example, if you like the one page strategic plan from scaling up, you could create fields inside this record here to reflect that worksheet. Or if you're someone who prefers more of an EOS approach, you can do the same thing. For more about EOS Entrepreneurial operating system and SmartSuite, you can watch this video up here. But once you have your fields reflecting your preferred strategic framework or all you need to do is click Save and now you have this template of a layout ready for every other type of strategic planning you are doing. And I should say, even if you're someone who saw this strategy section and you're like ugh, I don't know if I want to type all that. Maybe your planning starts here on a whiteboard like this and you brainstorm out all your grand ideas, but then they end up inside this strategy area when they are complete, allowing one easy spot for your whole team to see. Hey, what is our go to strategy right now? For this, for that, for the other. What are we driving towards? We can have that piece right here. Now we have one source of truth for our company story, our SWOT analysis. At any given moment in time, the strategy and vision we have based on our favorite vision casting exercise. Then based on that strategy, we can directly connect this into the objectives and key results we're looking to see and communicate along the way to make sure those key results can be achieved. This defines who we are, the context we're operating in, our plan for success, and how we will make it happen all inside one solution template. We can then create, share with our friends, and put inside of SmartSuite. If we want to make this even easier than the My Work section we've already talked about. We could even use things like the email automation feature or the automations available at the record level to communicate with our team about this change. So for example, if there's a finding from the SWOT analysis we want to make sure we share, we could tag a friend and discuss that inside of SmartSuite right here. And if you're someone who's like wow, this is a lot, I want to simplify things a little bit more. Note. You can simplify this even further by deleting some of the more refined and detailed objectives that you may not necessarily need in this moment in time. For example, we could cut down individual and department and just keep it simple like this. However detailed you want to be, this gives you one lightweight one time setup template for organizing your forecast for the future. You've got the unlimited flexibility that SmartSuite provides. And whether you like to attach an image of your whiteboard picture, record a quick video, write things out, or use AI to generate your ideas, whatever your method is for generating that vision and communicating it in the way that works best for your brain, that this gives you one cohesive way to communicate that vision in a way that your team can understand. Because again, vision is something you can see. We need this as a way to get that out of our head so others can see it too. If you'd like to see more videos like this, be sure to like and subscribe. Use our affiliate link in the description below to support the sponsor of today's video, SmartSuite, and get your account set up. And if you contact SmartSuite after using our affiliate link, unlock a little bonus discount. So who doesn't like to save money? Check that out in the description below. Thanks so much for watching and if you enjoyed this video. The next video I'd recommend is this one over here. It talks about how you can track a competitor analysis inside a smartsuite. Very similar to what we did here, but talking more about your competitive landscape. Definitely check that one out. Until next time, enjoy the process.