Strategic Thinking
Success in today's business environment requires that a company's leaders have the ability to create a vision of the organization's future direction as well as the course it needs to get there.
While various business improvement techniques such as Total Quality Management and Re-engineering are often extremely beneficial to the ongoing progress of a business, correct Strategic Focus remains the single most important element in a company's success.
Since 1981, the Center for Simplified Strategic Planning (through its Strategic Focus on strategy and strategic management services) has provided client companies strategic planning tools and leadership required to obtain superior strategic results.
We understand the challenges typically faced by our clients in installing systems and practices necessary to support growth, while maintaining day to day operations.
Our work with client companies is built around our proprietary planning model. It is a streamlined, hands-on methodology designed to ensure that course and direction are well thought-out, and that the resources of the organization are sharply focused in support of that course and direction.
We do not tell you the solution to your problem or the prescribed strategy for your company. We stimulate good strategic thinking and lead your team along a logical path that will allow you to discover and communicate your own unique vision of the future and to take the steps necessary to turn that vision into reality.
A Few Simplified Strategic Planning Testimonials
"Simplified Strategic Planning provided us a straightforward process that helped our already successful organization set a much clearer direction for the future."
Ed Engle, Jr., President, Rima Manufacturing Company
"A system that is very well honed. Important for those who are serious about planning but need to make every second count."
Dean Arnold, V.P. of Public Operations, Kenco Group, Inc.
"Our company is just completing its 2nd cycle of Simplified Strategic Planning. We are expanding the process to additional divisions for the 3rd cycle."
Scott Christensen, Project Manager, Hormel Foods
"Thank you for providing me with what I firmly believe to be the two most productive days of my business career. What you provided us was a clearly developed step by step process for developing a strategy. We now have focus, commitment and high employee morale. In short, we now know where we want to go and how we are going to get there. This focus, commitment and morale has resulted in our company achieving the INC. Magazine list of the 500 fastest growing companies."
William J. Costello, President. Accu Bite Dental, Inc.
"As the chairman of [the strategic planning] effort your program has given me the tools I will need to clearly move our organization through the development and ultimate implementation of our strategic plan. I'm confident that I am now ready to lead this effort for our company."
Kevin Lapanne, Executive Vice President, Dooley & Mack Constructors Incorporated, Sarasota, Florida
"Simplified Strategic Planning provides a logical and timeless framework for analyzing our industry, our company's place in it, and the goals we need to meet in order to achieve our strategic objectives. Using this process for three years, we have doubled our sales volume and have also doubled our operating profit percentages."
G. Alex Bernhardt, Sr., Chairman and CEO, Bernhardt Furniture Company
"What we accomplished...was unprecedented in our company's history...we have defined a consensus among the top management as to what kind of a company we will be for the next five years. Establishing this shared vision and the means to achieve it would not have been possible without strategic planning. This process is extremely well organized and compelling while allowing the special human attributes of our organization to flourish."
Harris C. Footer, President and CEO, Easy Day Manufacturing Company
"A process that is based on years of experience - not ivory tower theories. Appropriate for com- panies with no time for 'fluff'."
Ruth Ann Church, Project Manager, Great Lakes Trade Adjustment Assistance
"Using Simplified Strategic Planning, VPI tripled sales over 5 years. It has helped us identify opportunities, better understand our markets, and focus our resources to attain the business results we desired...it has contributed in a significant way to VPI achieving our growth and profit objectives."
T. Godfrey Mackenzie, Vice President, Vinyl Plastics, Inc.
"The Simplified Strategic Planning process...provides a solid theoretical approach that is applied in a very 'real world' down-to-earth manner. The program does an excellent job of providing a defined framework for the planning process without turning it into a mechanistic 'fill out the form' exercise. The framework helped us make sure that we were identifying and analyzing the key issues; it did not do our thinking for us. Finally, I felt the emphasis on the development of specific objectives and action plans are the keys to ensuring that strategic planning isn't just an interesting annual exercise that subsequently collects dust on a bookshelf. I know the strategic plan we produced will make a major difference in the performance of our business."
Roger A Carolin, President and CEO, CFM Technologies, Inc.
"Simplified Strategic Planning provides a framework for creating direction in a manner that moves away from guesswork and toward intelligent selection. The end result: a destination of choice, not chance."
Jack Lowe, Jr., Chief Executive Officer, TD Industries
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