Strategic Planning for 2024: New Considerations for Legal Industry Leaders

How Should Legal Industry Leaders Approach Strategic Planning Differently?

Here are some considerations leaders should take into account when embracing a strategic planning exercise:

1. Embrace dynamic, agile planning: Traditional, long-term plans do not hold up in today's fast-changing and, at times, volatile environment. Leaders need to adopt agile methodologies, with shorter planning cycles and a focus on adapting quickly to changing circumstances. Focus on priorities and guardrails rather than detailed long-term plans.
2. Focus on cultivating resilience: The American Psychological Association defines resilience as "the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands." Another definition is "bouncing forward" after a stressful, challenging, or difficult situation. In other words, resilience is about taking what is thrown at you and coming out better, stronger, and more creative. Resiliency is about asking ourselves:
   • How can I bend but not break?
   • How can I take this moment in time to get better, not bitter?
   • How can this time of transformational change add to my personal development and growth?

On an individual level, the more resilient we are, the faster we will recover. The same is true for our businesses. A strategic plan, therefore, should incorporate business resilience strategies that will allow the firm to anticipate, prepare for, respond, and adapt to disruptions to maintain continuous operations.

3. Plan with transparency: Being open and transparent throughout the planning process will help to cultivate valuable buy-in from those who will ultimately be tasked with the strategy execution. Transparency is particularly important for the younger generations of professionals – especially Gen Z. "Today's younger workers have grown up with the belief they have an inalienable right to participate and have their voices heard wherever they find themselves in life; and smart managers are encouraging their people to find their voices at work," writes Adrian Gostick, who covers organizational culture, mental health, and employee engagement for Forbes magazine. Communicating the "why" behind the strategies helps to build trust and engagement, ensuring that the strategy will actually be implemented. Being transparent, however, doesn't mean sharing everything. As Martin G. Moore pointed out in his Harvard Business Review article, "How Transparent Should You Be with Your Team?": "Confidential information should only be shared on a need-to-know basis. It's simply not appropriate to be transparent with everyone about everything. This advice applies to managing up, sideways, and down."

Which Strategic Planning Framework Promotes Agility?

Ask 10 consultants what the best strategic planning framework is, and you will get ten different answers. And they will all be right in their own way. In other words, there are numerous frameworks that can help you develop your strategy and set clear goals. But setting goals is just half the battle. You also want a system that helps you stay agile so you can adapt when circumstances change unexpectedly, make clear execution decisions, and measure progress.