The college football season is well underway, and so is the strategic planning season. This article will draw parallels between the two, and provide some key take-aways that can help turn your planning efforts into a winning formula.
The strategic planning process is much like planning a college football season. You start with your coaching staff (senior management and the board). Prior to recruiting, you assess your needs. Who graduated? What key positions need to be filled? What are your personnel needs? These decisions will help shape the kind of team you can put together, which in turn will influence what kind of offense and defense you’ll run. Combined, these factors will help shape your goals for the season (planning horizon).
Legendary coach Lou Holtz noted, “Every team is uniquely different. When you lose a player, it’s not about who you lost, but who you replace them with.” During my 15 years as a CEO, I lost some very talented people. But every time, we were able to upgrade the position with the replacement hire. The key is recruiting.
Recruiting involves trade-offs. You’ll get some of the players you hoped to get, you’ll miss some others, and you’ll wind up with some unexpected positive surprises. You’ll recruit some athletes that you know can contribute, but you’re not sure yet just how. Maybe it’s a star high school quarterback who can convert to a solid defensive back or receiver, a defensive lineman who can switch to the offensive line, a defensive end who can play tight end, or a fullback who can make the change to linebacker.
You also have to plan for depth (succession planning). If a key player goes down, do you have someone with the skills and training to fill that role? “Next player up” should be a key part of your strategy.
Once you know what personnel you have available, combined with the strengths of your coaching staff and the resources available to you, you can set goals for the season and establish a strategy. If you’re Alabama, your goal, year in and year out, is nothing short of a national championship. If you’re Kansas State University, your goal might be to make a bowl game. If you’re the University of Kansas, you might be thrilled with a .500 record to tide you over until basketball season.
In addition to goals focused on wins and losses, your vision should consider other factors – impact on the campus (membership) and community, graduation rates (career paths), etc.
Your personnel and coaching strengths will also help to determine your strategy. Will you run a West Coast offense, a more balanced pistol attack, or a run-first campaign? Will you go with a 4-2-5 defense, a 3-3-5, or a more traditional 4-3-4? This is not unlike determining whether you’ll be an aggressive market leader, a fast follower, or whether you’re relegated to maintaining the status quo, at least for now.
Next, you have to consider the competitive landscape. What is the makeup of your conference (local market)? What does the schedule look like (what’s the velocity of the changes coming your way)? Do you face the meat of the schedule early in the season, or do you have the benefit of some “tune-up” games to prepare you for the challenges to come?
Once you’ve established a strategy, built on your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, in full consideration of the competitive landscape and the velocity of those threats, you have to execute the strategy. This, too, is a key component of the planning effort.
While the goals are long-term, focused on the season (planning horizon) – and beyond, for successful programs – you execute your strategy one game at a time, one play at a time. You don’t look ahead. As Coach Holtz says, “You don’t need to make great plays every time, you just need to eliminate the stupid plays.” Also, you need to emphasize to every player that they’re ultimately responsible for doing their 1/11 on every play. It’s okay to occasionally fail, but don’t put your teammate in a position to fail. If every player does their 1/11, one play at a time, the team will succeed.
The initiatives you’ll undertake in attempting to have a successful season have to be viewed in light of your appetite for risk. For example, building a successful program requires money, but are you willing to raise ticket prices (fees) in order to generate needed revenue, even if it means losing some season ticket holders? If you have a new coaching staff working with the previous staff’s recruits, are you willing to risk going 0-11 for one season as you build for future success, even if it means not being able to fill the stadium?
At Rochdale Paragon, our approach to strategic planning is to go beyond the traditional SWOT analysis, focusing on the risks on the horizon and the velocity of those risks, consistent with the analogies presented above. Too many planning sessions are feel-good retreats, intended to provide a pat on the back for the status quo. That won’t keep your credit union relevant in the challenging season ahead.
To ensure you remain relevant – and competitive – throughout this season and for seasons to come, you don’t need cheerleaders, you need a challenger, and we can help with that. We can also help with your “next player up” succession planning, assessing your risk appetite, and identifying gaps in your coaching staff (executive management and board).
For more information, contact Jeff Owen at (913) 890-8011, jowen@rochdaleparagon.com.