Candor is a core value for many small business owners. But in the face of marketing spin and client expectations, it can be harder to hold onto than some other priorities. Here is what candid strategic planning means, and how you can keep candor at the center of your business planning.
What Does Being Candid Look Like in Business?
The Merriam Webster Dictionary says “candid” means “marked by honest sincere expression.” In the context of photography it also includes “acting naturally or spontaneous without being posed.” In the context of your business, candor means putting honesty at the center of your strategic decisions. It prioritizes truthfulness and transparency. Unlike honesty, candor has a casual air to it. It is un-calculated, and avoids relying on technicalities. It doesn’t have to be brutal, but it is often unfiltered.
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Being candid in business means embracing a sometimes vulnerable transparency. It avoids double-speak and prioritizes saying what is true over what will look best to employers, investors, or even clients. Candor can be difficult to maintain in competitive industries, but committing to this kind of truthfulness can help your company build a reputation for honesty and no-nonsense interactions with clients and employees, so they know they can trust what you say.
How to Build Candor into Your Strategic Planning
If your business is centered on candor and honesty, then it should be reflected in your strategic planning. In this context, transparency takes center stage. Unlike in other companies, where corporate heads make strategic planning decisions behind closed doors, a business with a candid workplace culture will invite people at all positions in the company to play some role in the strategic planning process.
Candor isn’t just about how you talk to your employees, or your clients. It also requires you to be willing to receive candid criticism without retaliation. While strategic planning must be done by your key decision makers, you must make space for honest communication between you and your staff in coming to those conclusions.
Candid Strategic Planning Questions
- Where Are We Now?
You cannot make a meaningful strategic plan toward growth or business development if your plan is based on assumptions or rosy expressions about what you hope will be true about your company. To overcome this, your company decision-makers need to take a candid, honest evaluation of your current situation, based on objective facts and unfiltered feedback about where you are now, and how you got here.
- What Does Success Look Like?
You must also embrace candor in defining where your company is going. Your key decision makers need to honestly and explicitly describe the destination for your company’s journey. Success, in this context, could mean many things. But unless you can clearly and candidly explain your company’s goals, you will not be able to communicate it to your employees, or yourselves.
- How Can We Include Others in Our Strategic Planning?
If candor is a core value of your company, that requires a give and take of communication built upon trust. That means your top decision makers can’t create a strategic plan entirely on their own. Employees can be very involved in company policies and procedures that impact them personally. Involving employees in the strategic planning process gives them a safe time and place to raise concerns and provide suggestions for the future of the company as appropriate to their roles.
- What Do We Need to Do Better?
Candor also requires you and your fellow decision makers to accept the bad along with the good. Asking your employees what the company can do better provides an opportunity for them to identify bottlenecks and obstacles that prevent them from doing their work. It is best for these questions to be open-ended and asked in ways that promote candid responses. Building in safeguards to protect employees’ anonymity can help to promote candor and help your team collaborate to develop a better way forward.
- How Can We Adopt the Feedback We Receive?
It isn’t enough to just ask for suggestions. You need to be willing to listen to them. Seriously consider the feedback you receive from your team. Trust their candor and appreciate the vulnerability it takes to tell someone with more power that they are doing something wrong. Treat your employees’ feedback with respect. Adopt what feedback you can, and be transparent about the changes you are unable or unwilling to make and why.
Get Help Building Candor into Your Company’s Strategic Plan
Candid strategic planning isn’t comfortable, and it often isn’t easy to do without outside assistance. Because candor depends on transparent vulnerability, it is often best achieved with the help of a neutral facilitator or organizational coach who can act as a buffer between employees and the decision makers who will hear their honest, sometimes negative, feedback. By working with an experienced organizational coach, you can help your workers speak freely, without fear of consequences. Then you can use that feedback, and your own candid reflections on the company’s current status and goals, to chart a course that is based on candid honesty and truth.
David Stanislaw is a leadership and executive coach with over 30 years’ experience helping managers and leaders prioritize their core values in their business’s strategic planning. Contact us to meet with David to develop your company’s strategic plan today.
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