The Strategic Planning Team

Strategic planning is a team process. This chapter discusses how to pick and set up the team; later, under Meetings chapter, I discuss several meeting timelines to use their time wisely. In the best of all worlds, the team leader gets to pick his or her team, that seldom happens.

The best team size, five to seven members - an odd number so you can vote to break a tie.

The best team membership - the smartest folks you can find, a mix of adapters, positioners and aligners.

The best team motivator - a piece of the action, the responsibility to implement an idea.

I've set up and worked as the facilitator for many teams, but often:

• Team size is usually determined by the number of people who must be involved and can easily grow too big.
• Team membership is assigned solely by a job position and not skill, yet
• Some team members are only fill-ins for the folks with the real power, so they can't take responsibility for their decisions.

The reality is that the team is made of those who will implement the plan and often strategic planning is not the strong suit of all involved. The reach their level of responsibly by getting the job done.