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"You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before." – Rahm Emanuel

”Once upon a time” is the a good starting point for many exciting stories.

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Learning topics

• Understand the overall PLOT framework
• Referencing related information to get started
• The importance of Storytelling

Starting point

There is always a back story to any situation, and it is vital to acknowledge the nature of this before assuming that all participants are of one mind that something significant needs to be done.

It is dangerous to assume that everyone sees things the same way and you must ensure that this is recognised in preparation to discuss the Strategy to take your forward.

As humans we are all different in how we respond to this backstory, some just want action, others a more considered process. We need to be respectful as we start the strategic planning journey.

Quite often there will have been numerous steps in the lead up where issues and data has been discussed at length that has informed the decision to take a strategic approach to address the issues.

Key Concepts

We have already shared our view that whilst strategic planning is a step-by-step process to take you from strategy through to a roadmap, it also involves storytelling, since we as humans communicate most effectively that way.

So, before we leap into defining the direction, we need to set the scene that describes what has led us to this point.

Usually, the sponsor is best placed to provide two key inputs:

• Overview - summary of the company, its history to-date and nature of its business.
• Context - summarise what has led to this situation - perhaps in terms of performance or overall issues that necessitate a top-down planning process

So, we start the PLOT process by capturing these 2 baseline data points in the style of:

Overview - “Once upon a time we had a company X that was established in 19xx selling products and services.”

And,

Context - “12 months ago, the company reached a crisis in performance through a deterioration in sales and corresponding loss of profitability.”