“The plan has been approved.” ‘I hear that sentence at the close of planning offsites,’ I said, feeling relieved. It marks the end of the planning event. In the subject Lead Strategic Planning Processes for an Organisation, it marks the start of the element that decides whether the plan works: monitoring and review.
A strategic plan is a set of assumptions written as targets.
Rita McGrath and Ian MacMillan made this argument in Discovery Driven Planning, published in Harvard Business Review in 1995. Where a plan moves into uncertain territory, they argued, it should be judged by how quickly its assumptions are tested and converted into knowledge, not by how closely early results match the projections.
Read your own strategic plan with that lens and underline each sentence that depends on a workforce outcome. Consider a plan that commits to opening two regional sites by the third quarter. Underneath that single target sit four workforce assumptions:
- We can hire 40 qualified staff in the regions by 30 June.
- New hires will be fully productive within eight weeks.
- Our current site managers have the capacity to mentor them.
- Attrition in the existing team will stay at this year’s rate.
In that plan, none of the four is written as an assumption. Each one is written as a fact.
The workforce assumptions belong to HR.
In the planning processes I design, finance owns the revenue assumptions, and operations owns the capacity assumptions. HR should own the workforce assumptions, because HR holds the evidence: time to hire by role and location, time to competence, manager span and load, and attrition by team.
In August I wrote about translating strategy into capability requirements. That is the design question. This article concerns the review question: once the plan is approved, which of its workforce assumptions are proving false, and who sees it first.
Build a workforce assumption register, and give each line a test date.
One page. Five columns.
- The assumption, written as a testable sentence: “We will hire 40 qualified staff in the regions by 30 June.”
- The evidence today, drawn from your own records: last year’s time to hire for this role in regional locations.
- The early signal, meaning what you would see by month two if the assumption is wrong: applications per vacancy, offer acceptance rate, first month resignations.
- The test date, meaning the planning review at which the assumption is confirmed or revised.
- The consequence, meaning which strategic target moves if the assumption fails, and by how much.
The fifth column is the one that turns the register from an HR document into an executive one.
Run a premortem on the workforce assumptions before the plan is signed.
Gary Klein’s premortem asks a team to imagine that a project has already failed and to explain why. Apply it to the workforce assumptions alone.
“It is next September. The regional expansion is six months late. What happened in the workforce?”
Each answer the team gives becomes a line in the register, with an early signal and a test date attached.
The quarterly review is where the register earns its place.
Picture the first quarterly review after the plan is approved. The HR leader opens with the register:
“Two of our four workforce assumptions are holding. One is at risk. One has failed: time to hire for regional clinical roles is running at eleven weeks against the eight we planned. If we do nothing, the second site opens in November, not August. I am recommending we second four experienced staff from the metropolitan team for six months. Here is the cost, and here is the cost of the delay.”
That is element 4 of the subject Lead Strategic Planning Processes for an Organisation in practice: identify progress that has not been made against the timeline and key performance indicators, then work with stakeholders on the actions required.
This is the planning capability that moves HR leaders into the enterprise seat.
The HR leader who brings that register to the quarterly review is no longer reporting on the plan. That HR leader is steering it.
Last week I argued that a transformation is tested by whether the scorecard changed. A strategic plan is tested by whether its assumptions hold. In both cases, HR holds the evidence.
The subject Lead Strategic Planning Processes for an Organisation is one of the two core units of the Graduate Diploma of Strategic Leadership, alongside Lead Strategic Transformation. This is the second article in my October series on the Grad Dip capabilities that move HR leaders into enterprise roles. Next: leading and influencing ethical practice.
Are the workforce assumptions in your strategic plan written down with a test date, or written as facts?
If you are serious about leading strategic planning rather than resourcing it, our Executive Master of HRM with the Graduate Diploma is one development pathway to consider. Leaders outside HR can start with the Graduate Diploma of Strategic Leadership. Speak to EDUK8U.
Start the conversation on WhatsApp: AU +61 420 457 883 | MY +60 12 988 0370.
#StrategicHR #HRLeadership #StrategicPlanning #WorkforcePlanning #ChiefPeopleOfficer #HRBP #HRStrategy #ScenarioPlanning #RiskManagement #ExecutiveLeadership #LeadershipDevelopment #ExecutiveEducation #GraduateDiploma #FutureOfWork2026 #APACBusiness #AustraliaHR #MalaysiaHR #SingaporeHR #EDUK8U #ICQA #StrategicTransformation #OrganisationalDesign #ChangeLeadership #WorkplaceCulture #EmployeeWellbeing
