Strategic Planning: A Systemic Approach
Setting a successful strategy is one of the most challenging and important tasks for any executive team. However, strategic planning is often a solitary endeavor, primarily shouldered by the CEO.
A top-down approach can miss valuable insights and reduce overall buy-in from the team.
So, what happens when strategic planning becomes a team effort? How can a systemic approach enhance the process?
In this article, we will discuss ways to align your strategy with your company’s mission to unlock creativity, boost engagement, and drive sustainable growth. But we’re going beyond that by exploring how to adopt a purpose-driven, systemic approach to your strategic planning.
At Fierce Up, we believe that healthy relationships are the foundation of thriving teams. Organizations that foster psychological safety, celebrate diverse perspectives and prioritize collaboration are better positioned for long-term success.
WHY STRATEGIC PLANNING NEEDS A COLLABORATIVE APPROACH
From our experience at Fierce Up, when strategic planning is a shared effort involving the entire C-suite team, the results are far superior. As Zuzanna Borek, founder of Fierce Up, explains:
“Strategic planning too often rests solely on the shoulders of the CEO. Shifting this process from individual to systemic brings numerous benefits, including improved resource allocation, enhanced creativity, and reduced stress. While a solo effort may seem faster, leveraging collective intelligence delivers significantly better results.”
Thus, a collaborative approach will enhance both the quality of the plan and its implementation, because it brings different perspectives to the table. Here are some of these advantages:
1. Improved communication and alignment
Every member of your team has a unique perspective of the company. Bringing them together offers a great opportunity to bridge the gap between departments and understand their concerns.
Exposing them to a broad perspective will foster collaboration, and unify efforts to find better solutions aligned within departments and with the organization’s overall goals.
2. Improved Decision-making
A collective discussion, where every leader brings their unique lens, transforms decision-making into a more insightful, balanced, and strategic process.
It’s the perfect environment to uncover blind spots and risks that otherwise could remain hidden if looked at solely from the CEO’s perspective.
3. Increased buy-in and ownership
When the C-suite is actively involved in planning, they are more prone to feel ownership of and commitment to the strategy. This shared responsibility, where everybody owns the strategy, creates a culture of accountability and trust, improving the implementation process.
4. More creativity, innovation, and effective implementation
Different perspectives bring different ideas and creative solutions together. A systemic approach encourages input from all the organization's departments, allowing the exploration of multiple scenarios, development of different plans, and ultimately, accelerating the organizational performance when they face setbacks.
WHAT IS STRATEGIC PLANNING?
Strategic planning often gets misinterpreted as simple goal-setting or creating a to-do list. In reality, it’s a dynamic process that combines vision (strategy) with actionable steps (planning).
Renowned strategist Roger Martin emphasizes that strategy and planning are distinct but interdependent:
Strategy is the “why” — the overarching purpose or hypothesis guiding your organization.
Planning is the “how” — the specific actions your company will take to achieve its goals.
Think of strategy as the big picture and planning as the roadmap to achieve that vision. Together, they form the foundation for successful organizational growth.
HOW TO ADOPT A SYSTEMIC APPROACH TO YOUR STRATEGIC PLANNING
Your organization includes people, processes, and resources, but also depends on external factors, like market trends, regulatory frameworks, and technological advances.
How to ensure that every part plays a role in strategic planning?
1. Listen to your stakeholders
Are your stakeholders part of the process? How do you engage everyone (employees, customers, partners, and regulators) in the conversation?
For the employee’s perspective, a systemic approach can support or elevate their psychological safety, which has endless benefits for the companies, like more engagement and a better sense of ownership.
Our suggestions:
Conduct interviews, surveys, or workshops to understand your stakeholder's needs and perspectives. Use techniques like stakeholder mapping to prioritize inputs and identify key players in your strategic planning.
2. Foster collaboration between departments
How does a decision in one area or department impact another?
Our suggestions:
Consider building cross-functional teams to work on strategy development and implementation. They can use collaborative tools and platforms to share insights and updates, ensuring that everyone in the organization understands the strategic plan and their role within it.
Develop clear communication channels and materials, and hold regular strategy check-ins to ensure everyone is on the same page.
3. Analyze the external factors and mitigate risks
How do external factors affect your company’s goals?
Our suggestions:
Use tools like systems mapping to have a broader view of your company, understand the relationships between its components, and identify areas of improvement that will impact your organization’s outcomes.
Consider assessing how Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental (PESTLE) factors influence your company’s overall goals, and use scenario planning to prepare for different outcomes.
4. Use data and metrics to guide your decisions
A systemic approach considers the broader ecosystem, going far beyond financial metrics.
It englobes sustainability, social impact, employee well-being, and customer satisfaction. A deep understanding of how these factors are intertwined enables you to pinpoint emerging opportunities, threats, and points for intervention.
Our suggestions:
Incorporate quantitative and qualitative data to give you a full picture of your organization’s performance and opportunities. You can use dashboards and analytics to track KPIs and apply systems thinking by linking the metrics to broader organizational goals.
Treat strategic planning as an ongoing process, rather than a once-in-a-year task.
Schedule regular strategic check-ins and analyze the metrics regularly.
Make sure to track progress against strategic objectives and goals, monitor changes in the external environment, and ask for feedback from stakeholders, whenever possible.
At Fierce Up we offer a 4-step process to guide companies in implementing a systemic approach to strategic planning:
Meet → Reveal → Align → Action
1 - Meet
First, we analyze your company’s achievements, well-being, and challenges. The goal is to understand its current position compared to where it was in the last year or planning.
2 - Reveal
Then we gather new information, e.g., feedback from all departments and levels, and plan for the future with a shared vision in mind. At this point, we help you answer these questions: - “Where do you want to be? What are you dreaming about?” - and draw a co-created picture for the future of your company.
3 - Align
We make sure to actively engage all stakeholders in the process, fostering buy-in, shared ownership, and a collective commitment to success.
4 - Action
Finally, we develop actionable plans, whether guided by traditional KPIs or agile, adaptive goals making sure to track the progress.
NEED HELP WITH THE STRATEGIC PLANNING PROCESS?
At Fierce Up, we specialize in helping organizations develop purpose-driven strategies that foster collaboration and sustainable growth. Our holistic approach combined with systemic coaching tools makes the whole process easier and faster, but also much more light and fun.
Our half or full-day facilitations are excellent opportunities to strengthen relationships among your executive team, foster creativity, and enhance their contributions during the meeting.
And if you’re ready to break down the barriers of your company and go to nature, whether for strategic planning, a quarterly meeting, or a middle-of-the-year check-in, our executive retreats may be the right solution.
It’s a fun and creative way to break the ice and harness the power of teamwork. Schedule a consultation with us today to empower your organization with a successful strategy and its implementation.
SUMMARY
In summary, strategic planning is a holistic process, involving many variables, like active listening, goal-setting and analyzing, and teamwork.
To make it more dynamic and turn it into a living process, consider to:
Break down goals into manageable steps with short-term milestones.
Schedule regular check-ins to review progress and adapt strategies.
Build shared ownership for each initiative to ensure accountability.
Always root decisions in your Why to maintain alignment with your company’s purpose.
Consider long-term goals alongside immediate objectives to maintain a clear vision for the future.
Bring systemic approach to enhance its quality and implementation, and to change stress into ease.
This way, you are creating a better, more sustainable environment, paving the way for long-term benefits, and reinforcing resilience to the constantly changing markets.
EXTRA TIPS:
For EU-based companies, especially SMEs and scaleups, aligning with frameworks like the Horizon Europe Strategic Plan 2025–2027 can unlock funding and foster innovation. Connecting your strategy to EU priorities—such as the green and digital transitions— increases the potential for external support while staying ahead in addressing global challenges like sustainability and resilience.
If your company operates outside the EU, explore local funding opportunities tailored to your region. National or regional programs often offer grants or incentives designed to support innovation and growth, aligning with your strategic goals.
This approach enhances innovation and ensures that your strategy remains aligned with broader policy goals, providing a foundation for long-term growth.
RESOURCES
“How to Build a Collaborative C-Suite Team?”. Available at: https://digitaldefynd.com/IQ/build-collaborative-csuite-team/
“Aligning the C-Suite to Optimize Organizational Performance”. Available at: https://www.thematrixpoint.com/resources/articles/aligning-the-c-suite-to-optimize-organizational-performance
“A plan is not a strategy”. Available at: https://youtu.be/iuYlGRnC7J8?si=aRV07UtO7zi-o2bM
“A Systemic Approach to Strategic Planning: Navigating Complexity with Clarity”. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/379833454_A_Systemic_Approach_to_Strategic_Planning_Navigating_Complexity_with_Clarity
“The complete stakeholder mapping guide”. Available at https://miro.com/blog/stakeholder-mapping/
“3 Areas Where CEOs Can Boost Their Strategic Planning”. Available at:https://www.vistage.com/research-center/business-leadership/strategic-planning/20240311-strategic-planning-areas-improve-galvin/
“How Leaders Can Improve Their 2025 Strategic Planning”. Available at: https://www.vistage.com/research-center/business-leadership/strategic-planning/20241107-strategic-planning/
“Eight Shifts That Will Take Your Strategy Into High Gear”. Available at: https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/eight-shifts-that-will-take-your-strategy-into-high-gear