The organization needs a road map to move toward the desired future state of leveraging acquisition more strategically for better mission outcomes.

Planning provides that roadmap to translate strategy into a logically sequenced set of actions that define the way forward. Individuals must come together as teams for organizations to move forward. Not surprisingly, a natural first step in planning for successfully moving an organization to new futures involves establishing cross-functional teams that will assume responsibility for core strategic initiatives. To promote collaboration, those teams will develop charters that will confirm commitment to the scope, objectives and outcomes of the initiatives as well establish provisions for communications, metrics and governance.

The teams will develop project plans to implement the initiatives which assign roles and responsibilities to individual team members, define discrete chunks of work to get the initiative moving and establish a master schedule with overall milestones and timelines for key component actions. In addition, initiative teams will create or select tools and processes to monitor progress and manage completion of tasks to keep the initiative on track.

One of the hallmarks of successful strategic change initiatives is robust communications to reinforce value of the change initiative. Maintaining alignment and commonality of purpose over time demands a very intentional, deliberate and disciplined approach to maximizing two-way communications in ways that promote candid, positive interaction. Communications planning may contemplate exchanges in multiple media and forums. Targeted training and web technology provide means to bring individuals throughout the organization rapidly up learning curves and maintain alignment. Finally, the project plan ought to include provisions to identify, anticipate and manage risk, including contingencies for change.

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