Plan & Land: A Strategic Planning Framework for General Counsel

When the C-Suite launches an enterprise-wide initiative to harmonize business and corporate functions, a GC and their leadership team are charged to renew strategy and operations to remain aligned with enterprise goals.

This presents an opportunity for the GC to showcase the legal function’s leadership and business acumen.  Because Legal has a broad company view, it is tempting to skip exploration and jump straight to solutioning. Lawyers, as a group, test high on urgency and low on advance planning, appropriate to the nature of their role (see Dr. Larry Richard, lawyersbrain.com). However, the planning process provides an important opportunity to revisit stakeholder relationships, check assumptions, and grow understanding.  Shortchanging this period will surface as misalignment and gaps later. 

In fact, General Counsel (GC) face rising tenure risk from misaligned strategy and C-Suite disconnect. A recent Russell Reynolds Associates report found that GC short tenures have become increasingly common over the past four years. Over the next few posts, I’ll share a practical framework to diagnose gaps, benchmark performance, and execute a data-driven strategic plan that demonstrates business partnership and secures legal’s seat at the C-Suite table.

Adopt a simple three-phase strategic planning framework to achieve this goal: 1. Gather Information; 2. Analyze and Present Findings, and 3. Execute Against the Plan.

This is a cyclical process the legal team can take forward once established.  Following initial deployment, and a more compressed version to establish the 2nd and 3rd year plan, the legal team can adopt a three year cadence to set common direction and remain aligned with where the business is headed. 

Early stage preparation sets the team up for success and is well worth the upfront investment in terms of downline effectiveness and alignment.

Gather Information: Start with review of documentation including org charts, key revenue and supplier contracts, legacy legal tool contracts, in flight project charters or RFPs, as well as spend, compliance and aggregate matter reports.  Collect observations and questions. 

Next, initiate stakeholder conversations across the full legal team, key business clients and partners in service departments.  To encourage open conversations at all levels, weigh whether an outside legal operations professional consultant (faster and more neutral) or an internal team member (builds relationships and institutional knowledge) should lead them. If a small group is assigned, checkins and a common questions list foster consistency. The goal is to gain an initial picture of what each stakeholder does, how they interact, their work cadence, and preferred approach to intake and joint projects. 

Benchmarks | Early Indicators: Benchmarks help identify areas for attention, directing data gathering, formulating questions, determining the potential solution set, and prioritizing projects. Company-specific nuances matter, but when a company deviates significantly from peers, the gap is worth understanding and, if needed, remediated. Relevant case studies and KPIs round out this analysis.

Inventory & Prioritize Projects: Once you create a potential projects inventory, survey the full department to prioritize findings.  Have one or two people pilot test the survey for clarity first. Force-ranking projects by category is one good option, but leave room for write-in feedback so that everyone has the chance to be heard.

Final Projects Selection: Once you have formally analyzed your projects inventory against a risk/reward framework, take a quick scan against the following buckets:

• Quick Wins: Identifying a low-hanging fruit project can help build trust, establish a track record and inspire new ideas. This will be the first project you focus on.
• Quick Sand: Watch out for quagmires disguised as quick wins. If something appears to be a quick win and has not yet been done, it is worth probing why. You may learn of a significant obstacle that you need to overcome before taking on the project.
• Scale Best Practices: Keep an eye out for best practices within the department  or business that you can scale at low cost. Take those small independent innovations forward to learn before making new investments.

Mission Statement: If the department does not yet have a mission statement, this is an opportunity to create one. If it does, use  this process to refine it. A mission statement aligned to the company’s helps position legal as a business partner by defining what the team does, and does not, do.  Including a supporting identity statement and team capabilities up front creates space for constructive feedback and lets legal advertise its strengths.

TLDR: Developing a strategic plan is a bit like composing a painting.  First you need to sketch out the overall picture on the canvas before honing in on the detail. If you hone in too quickly on one component, you run the risk of that piece being out of proportion, or fitting poorly, into the overall composition.

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