Without a structured approach, strategic planning fails to touch the ground. Here are the three ways a well-structured brand strategy workshop — and importantly, the deliverables — give you everything you need to turn your vision into an organized, almost-tangible set of tasks.

https://youtu.be/db369Hm7FhE
Intro
Strategic planning is great, but what happens when everyone leaves the planning meeting? The excitement is gone and the work needs to start.

Stakeholders change their minds. As time passes, stakeholders forget the focus they brought with them.
Stakeholders never bought in. People didn’t really understand the purpose when real life hits because they were never really involved.
No follow-through. Ideas were exchanged, but nobody had a plan and a clear process.
Nobody really gets it. Nobody has time, especially since they don’t know which part was theirs.

Explanation:

It’s a bummer when people show up not really understanding the meeting topic and then are expected to be involved. They soon lose interest, failing to contribute and take ownership. Especially when their comments are off-target. But a good workshop offers an explanation, creating consensus, accountability, and confidence.
Consensus Among Leaders
Without agreement among leaders, nothing downstream can be done with any confidence. And without the ability to examine ideas and communicate them — test them against goals, running them through the gauntlet of several points of view from your team and ours — it can be difficult to a) feel like you’re in agreement and b) actually be in agreement, even if you think you are.

The solution:

Define the goal. A conversation that leads to a strong idea of where you are and where you need to be.
Verify unanimity. Diversity is great for some things; but you need everyone on the same page when it comes to goals. There’s just not much room for interpretation here. So ideas about the goal need to be brought quickly from the various versions that are in everyone’s head, in a step-by-step fashion, onto a whiteboard.
Refine. Once you’re sure you have clear agreement within the leadership, you need several opportunities to clarify, object and refine.

Deliverables:
To reach this goal, you need a clear process that brings the thinking onto a whiteboard with clear decisions having been made for each thing. At Resound, the typical brand workshop brings together brand values, personality traits and brand story, so you know how to tell everyone about your brand.

How do we do it? Without getting into detail, let’s just say we use Sharpies, Post-its, a slideshow, whiteboards, worksheets and a lot of hard work and engagement on the part of the participants. And there’s no reason you can’t do the same for content strategy, brand strategy or even product development.
Accountability for Leaders
Without agreement and involvement, leaders can’t be held accountable. They can go their own way, letting someone else make the decision. And if it doesn’t work out, they can parachute in and accuse the other person of failing.

And this doesn’t just happen in big, evil corporations full of self-serving executives. It’s also practical. Remember, everyone’s trying to do a good job, and when you’re busy, you can’t do everything. So if some bright-eyed marketing director sends you an email with brand values, colors and a logo, you have to decide, “Is this really worth a bunch of my time and energy?”

But a brand workshop invites everyone to collaborate, in real-time. It’s a chance to make decisions for the company and to engage with colleagues. It brings all of the leaders on the same page. And if they don’t engage, everyone in the workshop knows it. But if they do decide to engage, bringing their unique point of view to the table, you now have consensus, on which you can build accountability.

Now that the leaders have participated in the day-long workshop and have had the chance to disagree and tes...

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