Welcome to the 32nd edition of The Pulse, your bi-weekly newsletter of Insights for Strategy Leaders. And welcome to all of the new subscribers since the last edition!
In this edition:
- 🛠️ Building a Foundation for Strategic Success with HEAPY
- 📅 Join us next Tuesday for a sneak peak of Insights, our latest feature
- 🎥 Blueprint live recordings
- 🍪 Strategy Snacks
Let's jump in.
I can always tell when a Pulse resonates with folks because the number of responses indicates we’ve struck a nerve.
Last week’s Pulse—Why 2025 Planning Must be a Priority—generated the most responses/thoughts I’ve received in 30+ editions to-date.
From driving executive alignment, to asking about the framework we recommend deploying, folks were hungry to apply some of the learnings from last week’s Pulse to their organization.
While all of the questions were great, one in particular that stood out to me…
“Do you have examples of companies doing this well?”
While my first instinct was to start drafting up a response to this Pulse subscriber, I realized that this is something that we get asked about all the time at Elate. For those that meet with our team, they’ve likely heard firsthand how we see organizations reframe Strategic Planning to gain Executive buy-in and ensure there is alignment along every step of the way.
But I wanted to bring an example to life for all of our Pulse subscribers.
So today I’m excited to highlight HEAPY , a leader in sustainable and resilient engineering design, and share how they’ve placed a renewed focus and emphasis around building their 2025 Strategic Plan.
🛠️ Building a Foundation for Strategic Success with HEAPY
With an incredible company purpose aimed at building a sustainable, well, and more resilient society, HEAPY set out to take a more intentional approach to their Strategic Planning process.
Like so many other organizations, HEAPY had fallen into the trap of creating a Strategic Plan that turned into an unwieldy 1,000+ page document. Rather than creating a Strategy to be brought to life in a dynamic, proactive way, they had unintentionally created a static plan that prevented them from taking a colleague-first approach to success.
Heading into 2024, HEAPY knew this process needed to change.
As Heather Elliott, PACE, one of the Strategic Plan sponsors, shared, “Our previous Strategic Planning metrics weren’t set intentionally, and they didn’t have as much of a basis in the goals the organization wanted to achieve…The shift that we made in Planning for this year, not only emphasizes the impact of reaching financial goals, but also building a more sustainable, colleague-first culture.”
However, in order to make this transition, Heather and the rest of the HEAPY team knew that they would need to revamp their entire outlook and process for Strategic Planning.
A New Way of Strategic Planning
Change Management.
For so many Leaders, we hear this phrase and think of all the pushback we will receive from our internal teams.
Yet, we can’t shy away from the fact that to level-up Strategic Planning across our organization, change management will likely be required.
For HEAPY, change management was a focus from the onset.
While the investment in a platform like Elate certainly helps, HEAPY also invested in the right people and process to bring their strategy to life. By expanding internal roles and responsibilities, HEAPY revamped the way they communicated with colleagues about their strategy, the rhythm in which they tracked execution, as well as the framework for the Strategic Plan itself.
“We wanted to put our Themes and Core Values into a practical framework, the day-in and day-out operations of our business where we could absorb our Strategy and weave it into our business practices, our conversations, and our goals,” shared Heather. But it wasn’t just about creating a different place to store their Strategic Plan, it needed to be actionable.
Which is why the revamped Strategic Plan needed to accomplish four things for HEAPY.
- Ensure Business Leaders were set up for success cross-functionally to deliver company goals
- Create alignment on financial goals and colleague development
- Empower Managers by integrating technology with innovation to improve productivity and improve company culture
- Execution of the Strategy with a colleague-first focus
In isolation each of these areas could have a positive impact on an organization’s ability to reach their goals and execute on their Strategic Plan. But done in unison with an embracing of change, these four areas of focus can unlock results and efficiencies that empower team members.
A Colleague-First Focus
As we head into 2025, we’re seeing a growing trend at Elate—strategic plans are increasingly people-focused.
Not in a fluffy feel good way, or even an over-the-top approach to employee benefits that we saw a few years ago.
Today, the focus for many organizations is helping provide clarity and direction for employees amidst a number of uncertainties within the market and economic landscape.
More and more employees want to see how their work is connected to the Strategy, and more importantly, how they can control the controllables in their day-to-day.
So when HEAPY shared that they took a colleague-first approach to building their Strategic Plan, my ears perked up.
“We wanted to instill a colleague-first approach to our Strategic Planning to ensure deeper-deployment of the Plan, while signing colleague development with company success. The two aren’t disconnected,” shared Heather. “They go hand-in-hand in creating a healthy culture.”
However, for many organizations this is easier said than done. Which is why HEAPY had to focus on two key parts of their Strategic Planning process to get this right:
First, they were incredibly intentional about the amount of objectives owned by team members across the entire plan, sharing why it matters and how it could impact the ability to execute. Heather and the Plan owners took a very methodical approach to build objectives in a consistent, thoughtful way, ensuring they were prioritizing what truly mattered within their strategy. While it is easy to just keep adding layers of work to the plan, they set firm boundaries for themselves to stay focused and re-prioritize the "not nows" along the way.
Secondly, they embraced the idea that Outcomes drive success. We’ve shared a lot about the difference between outcomes and outputs, and HEAPY brought this to life by not only identifying the difference, but leaning into the importance of measuring business impact. What were they left with? Objectives with clear outcomes, rather than a laundry list of actions to take. While this takes a lot of discipline and effort at the onset, it pays off when teams begin to execute and are reviewing the metrics that matter to avoid costly setbacks.
With these two areas top of mind throughout planning, this allowed the team at HEAPY to understand the importance of the strategy itself, but also their connection to it, helping empower colleagues in their day-to-day work.
Set Up for Success in 2025 and Beyond
While it didn’t happen overnight, HEAPY has brought more clarity, buy-in, and focus towards their Strategic Plan than ever before.
But we have to emphasize the effort and intentionality their team spent building their Strategy. This wasn’t something that just got thrown together in a Planning offsite.
Rather, HEAPY thought about the change management to ensure long-term adoption of a new framework intertwined with their culture.
“Change management has been a focus for us, but empathy has helped create the cohesiveness,” highlighted Heather. “Aligning our company metrics with Planning will help our Leadership have more accountability by linking colleague Objectives with overarching company objectives.”
And now as HEAPY heads into 2025, they have the opportunity to see their plan brought to life within the Elate platform. With it, comes the opportunity to amplify their Strategy across all parts of the organization.
“We’re excited to leverage Elate to help monitor the health of our Strategic Plan,” shared Heather. “With Elate’s ability to track execution and continuously monitor key results, we can ensure Leadership has a real-time view into how the organization is performing against our Objectives.”
But it doesn’t stop at just having a unified view. HEAPY sees the impact of Elate as a solution to drive efficiency and alignment in Leadership team meetings. “Leadership meetings will be more data-driven with Elate, enabling faster decision-making and more focused discussions around bottlenecks or opportunities”
For HEAPY, this cadence is more important than ever before. And it serves as the rhythm for how they drive the business forward.
For example, if there are any shifts in their Strategic Plan, those shifts can be very dramatic and not easy to just change course and resolve it. Which is why they cannot operate how they had previously. Their team has to be laser focused on the lagging and leading indicators to help them make better, faster decisions.
With a living and breathing Strategic Plan brought to life across the organization, HEAPY has done what so many organizations struggle to realize: Vision connected with Execution.
If you are looking for help or guidance as you and your organization head into 2025 Strategic Planning, please reach out to myself or our team. We’d love to share more on how Elate can help serve as a partner to set your team up for success in 2025 and beyond.
📅 Join us next Tuesday to see Insights!
I'm incredibly excited for next Tuesday as we walk through our latest feature - Insights. While it might seem oriented just towards customers, I think non-customers will get a lot of value from it as well.
Here are the details and the link to sign up and grab your spot.
Whether you're a customer and want to learn what's coming, someone considering Elate as a solution or want to take a look at what we're building, or just interested in leveling up your skills heading into planning season, there will be value for all.
🎥 Blueprint Live Recordings
As a reminder, this upcoming session is the third in our four-part installment. And the first two we're incredibly valuable, so I wanted to share those recordings with you:
🍪 New Strategy Snacks Series
Along the same lines as above - we've been clipping up some valuable snippets from these sessions. If you don't already, follow us on LinkedIn to get bite-sized strategic planning tips over the next few weeks in you feed. Also, here is a link to the Youtube playlist.
That's all for today, have a great rest of your week.
