I would sum up the pain that senior executives feel around the strategic planning adventure with the statement, “Here we go again.” Strategic planning is a requirement. People accept the idea that we must have a plan, we need to prioritize. Stakeholders expect to see a plan and it makes sense that we organize around a plan. However, our real experiences are that we go away for a couple of days and we have some rich, meaningful conversation. We spend some money, and three months later we can hardly remember what it is we even discussed. We feel a sense of disillusionment or disappointment because we get excited about our aspirations but we do not have a good track record for implementation. When the time comes again that we are going to talk about the strategic plan, we see a lot of eye rolling, heavy sighing, and again, “ Here we go again,” because it is so painful. It is the recurring nightmare of many a senior leader.

Primer Michaels helps senior leaders get over this hurdle of, “Here we go again,” and the recurring nightmare of strategic planning that does not get traction. We have a highly proven, very efficient process for getting the right conversations going, for seeing the most meaningful conversations to completion and for vigorously prioritizing so that the senior leadership team does not leave the room with a highly unrealistic menu of initiatives that are going to go no place. We prioritize, we make specific action plans and we equip senior leaders with a way to monitor progress so they can always answer the question, “Where are we now relative to where we hoped to be?”