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It’s one thing to teach a strategic planning process, but it’s another thing altogether to actually practice what you preach. Here at The Great Game of Business®, not only do we talk the talk, we walk the walk.
The Great Game™ Team believes using our High-Involvement Planning™ (HIP) process is the best way to not only create a company vision and devise a specific plan to achieve it, but it’s also the best way to involve your employees in the process.
Every trimester GGOB dedicates two days for our HIP process. Of course, there’s lots of work leading up to it but during those two days, we meet to discuss our Critical Number™, our strategy for growth, our 5-year plan, the yearly financial plan and, last but not least,the bonus plan for the upcoming year.
We talk about key drivers that we think will help us achieve our goals. We gather insights and ideas from the team on what we can do better or how we can improve from the previous years. We focus on our quarterly goals, what we call Rocks, and agree on what steps we should take to push the company to the next level. We focus on our BHAG (our “big hairy audacious goal” a concept coined by Jim Collins in the book Built to Last.) of reaching 10 million lives in 10 years. It’s a goal that’s important to all of us.
The first session of High-Involvement Planning for 2020 was hosted last week. It’s such a valuable time for us all to come together as a team to reflect on the past, celebrate our wins, and discuss opportunities and hopes for the future. It’s also an important time to zero in on our weaknesses and discuss things we anticipate a need to overcome throughout the year.
We’ve done this long enough to know when companies (including ours) really engage employees in the overall plan, they’re more likely to be comfortable sharing their innovative ideas or helping us shine lights on possible threats in the way. We know the people closest to the job are our biggest assets in overcoming challenges in the future, so we listen to them. Great Game’s parent company SRC Holdings Corp., used High-Involvement Planning to build a $100 million war chest to help remove employee fear around the country’s next looming recession.
The HIP process takes time to develop and it might not always seem easy or important, but we know there are huge benefits of making sure it happens on a regular schedule. It’s magic when everyone in the company has a direct line of sight on overall company goals AND they fully understand how they can help the company achieve those goals.
Our High-Involvement business planning meetings include every employee. No matter their department or tenure, every person has an opportunity to share ideas and thoughts or ask questions about the plan. We question ideas (not people) and use market research to thoroughly vet which actions to take. It’s a process that we value heavily and have come to rely on to help us stay focused and realize our day to day actions are always a part of a bigger plan.
Other articles you might like:
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How High-Involvement Planning Accelerates Your Company’s Growth
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Capture the Power of Your Employees Through High-Involvement Planning
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