Article by SmartDraw – January 2014

A new year is a great time for re-thinking your organization’s strategy. But all strategic plans are not created equal. Successful strategic planning involves awareness and avoidance of common, critical mistakes that doom many plans to failure.

Here are 10 pitfalls you must avoid in order to develop a strategic plan that you can successfully execute

1. Lack of Total Team Commitment

Having a valid, executable strategic plan is in everyone’s best interest. But it is crucial to get buy-in from leadership throughout the organization. Without this shared vision and commitment, even the best strategy is unlikely to succeed.

2. Not Getting the Right People Involved

Who are the right people in the strategic planning process? The simple answer is anyone who is crucial to setting forth the organization’s vision as well as those responsible for carrying it out. Having all of the key stakeholders involved in planning helps ensure team commitment.

3. Failing to Focus on the Big Picture

Strategic planning is intended to focus on high-level thinking. What is the organization’s vision? Is the mission clearly defined? Make sure to give priority to those major, over-arching issues critical to the organization’s success.

4. Not Making an Honest Assessment of Where You Are

It’s easy to see ourselves as we want to be seen, or how we envision ourselves down the road. But it is absolutely crucial to make a real, honest assessment of internal and external issues as they exist today. This may even involve bringing in one or more third parties. But without an accurate assessment of where you are, your strategic plan will be flawed.

5. Failure to Consider the Realities Around You

Changing forces, both inside and outside of an organization, require you to constantly assess what is happening around you. Management teams must be acutely aware of these forces. Assess how they affect the organization, its markets, its customers, and its future.

 6. Unwillingness to Change

It is crucial to constantly assess and adapt to change. A good plan yesterday may no longer apply today. Successful leaders must be nimble and ready to adjust with change, rather than fight against it–or even worse, ignore it.

7. Failure to Set Reasonable Goals and Timelines

A good strategic plan sets forth a vision, but also provides a working framework within it. Make sure that goals and milestones are set, and develop a timeframe for achieving them.

8. Failure to Put the Plan into Action

If you don’t put your plan into action, then you are just wasting time. Too often, organizations fail to take the vital next step of transforming knowledge into action – “The Knowing-Doing Gap”[1]

9. Lack of Accountability

It’s pretty simple. If no one is held accountable, nothing gets done. Putting the plan into action is only the beginning. To make sure things get done, assign areas of accountability to specific people. Share the plan openly with the entire team, so all members are openly held accountable.

10. Failure to Monitor and Follow Through

Set regular intervals for formal review of the strategic plan and action items. Most strategic planning experts suggest this be done at least on a quarterly basis.

 [1] The Knowing-doing Gap – 2000, Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton

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Municipalities know that a competitive procurement process is integral to ensuring the products and services they purchase offer the best value for the public. It’s well-known that the process for procuring consulting and professional services, differs from the process for purchasing goods because, among other differences, it is more difficult to compare the responses received in the two scenarios. That’s why it’s first and foremost imperative that care is given to the design of the Request For Proposal (RFP) or solicitation document itself, before it is posted. There are two approaches in particular that I’ve noticed being used to develop RFPs or solicitation documents.

On the one hand, I’ve witnessed municipalities that simply ask another municipality for a copy of the RFP they used for a similar project, and then they copy and paste their municipal information into the RFP without really reading the clauses and ensuring that they apply to their own situation. While there is nothing inherently wrong with using someone else’s RFP template to ensure you’ve touched on all the criteria you want in it, what worked for municipality “A” most likely will not be identical to what municipality “B” needs. If the wording is incorrect in the solicitation document and you award the work based on that wording, you’ve incurred risk and you may be stuck with the results.

Alternatively, I’ve also witnessed that in their quest to develop thorough solicitation documents, municipalities end up creating a document that is so lengthy and cumbersome that they are inadvertently eliminating some experienced and knowledgeable consultants and professionals from being able to respond, and driving up the price quotes of the ones who do respond, as a result. It takes time to fill out a lengthy RFP and the costs for doing so will no doubt be added into the quote.

Here are some tips that may help you find a happy medium between these two extremes and increase the number and quality of the responses you receive.

Reduce the length of your RFP whenever possible

More and more consultants I’ve spoken to report that they no longer respond to RFP documents that are too long and cumbersome. It simply takes too much time and time is money to them. I could almost guarantee that you will receive more responses and ultimately more competitive quotes by simply reducing your document and posting it on correctly targeted platforms.

Only include the criteria you need in the RFP

Be sure to carefully examine the scope of your project and include only those criteria you absolutely need to meet your needs, because more is not always better. If you have too many requirements that are not absolutely critical to the success of your project, you may be missing an opportunity to work with smaller firms and/or highly experienced professionals, simply because they cannot possibly meet all the criteria. This results in limiting the responses you will receive and you may end up paying more for the work.

Provide enough time for responses

Responders need a reasonable amount of time to fill out a RFP and ensure they can meet the criteria. Thirty (30) days is considered to be an acceptable standard and is a reasonable amount of time to allow for responding to a services RFP.

Include opportunities for responders to add alternative solutions

Give responders some opportunity to apply a creative solution or alternatives in your RFP. If the RFP is too rigid you could be missing out on other solutions you were not even aware of, but they can still meet your needs and provide potential cost savings or efficiencies to boot.

So how do you know your solicitation document will appeal to potential bidders yet still mitigate risks for the municipality? If you do not have trained procurement personnel in house, you may want to consider outsourcing the RFP development, and in some cases the entire RFP process itself, to a RFP project manager. There are costs for doing so, but given the increased legal challenges municipalities are now facing on the manner in which contracts are awarded, the cost of a legal challenge will be much greater than paying for an expert to do it right in the first place. You can find some of these experts on muniSERV.ca.

Finally, to increase the number and quality of the responses you receive, make sure you post your final document on as many sites as possible that target the service providers you’re trying to reach, including muniSERV.ca. Doing so will ensure you’re reaching as many potential bidders as possible.

Remember, whenever a prospective bidder decides not to bid, it’s your loss!