Strategic planning

The challenge for in-house teams

Many in-house legal teams acknowledge the importance of strategic planning, but admit that they are so busy ‘putting out fires’ on a daily basis and managing short term priorities that they simply don’t have the time or resources to plan adequately for the future. Any planning that is done tends to focus on basic financial metrics and may lack well defined and measurable actions to support the organisation’s wider strategic objectives.

Even with a structured strategic planning process in place, it can be challenging to translate an organisation’s aspirational and often ‘lofty’ goals into tangible initiatives to support those goals and then to unlock the capacity needed to achieve them.

How can in-house teams prioritise work, make resourcing decisions or know that they are meeting stakeholder needs if they do not have a clear view of their purpose, vision and strategy?

Strategy in context

In order to ensure alignment, measure success and articulate the value the legal department is bringing to the business, it is imperative that in-house teams develop their departmental objectives and tactics within the context of the organisation’s strategy and through engagement with key stakeholders.