Each year, sometime between Labor Day and Thanksgiving, the senior leadership of SGA Design Group attends a strategic planning retreat. We go off-site for a few days to take a comprehensive look at our firm and examine where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going. Lots of reflection, lots of analysis, and lots of talking. We have sometimes referred to this time spent together as leaders as “organized forced sharing.” We’re able to get outside of our individual bubbles of client demands and project deadlines to focus on the big ideas and overall firm health.
Rolled into these discussions are updates on revenue forecasting, business development, and short-term & long-term goals. We debate changes in the economy and our profession which might have an effect on our future, and we make plans to develop leaders within our firm to successfully respond to those changes. Firm culture, career planning and ownership succession are all topics which rightfully consume a large portion of the time spent during this retreat. As has already been said, there’s a LOT of talking over the course of these few days, but the real value is in what happens AFTER the retreat. It’s exciting and fun to plan for the future, but it requires hard work and consistent commitment. We develop actionable items to propel these discussions forward to realize tangible results, and we involve everyone in the firm in some way to help with defined goals.
Strategic planning at SGA Design Group is not a one-time event that only happens during this fall retreat. For us, it’s an ongoing process that happens daily. While it may not be as overt as going off-site for a few days, every decision we make and every action we take are informed by and vetted against our Vision, Mission and Core Values. This year’s retreat reignited our enthusiasm for where we’re headed, and we laid the ground-work to help us get to where we want to go during 2019 and beyond.