Category: Strategic Planning

Note: This article was first published in Compass Points in May 2005

Dana Baldwin reviews:

Marketing as Strategy
Understanding the CEO’s Agenda for Driving Growth and Innovation
By: Nirmalya Kumar
Foreword by Philip Kotler
Harvard Business School Press, 2004, 270 pp

We employ a simple device, the Tension Triangle, to demonstrate the importance of including a balanced team in Strategic Planning, including Operations, Finance and Sales/Marketing. This book explores many of the options available to influence and form strategies based principally on the importance of Marketing.

In his book The Practice of Management, Peter Drucker wrote, “The business enterprise has two and only two basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.”

Many executives “are disappointed with the Marketing Function’s ability to produce measurable results.” Marketing must change what they are doing, including “the traditional four P’s of product, place, price and promotion.” Marketing “must start driving overall strategic change, helping CEOs to lead organization-wide transformational initiatives that deliver substantial revenue growth and increased profitability.”

To drive his point home, the author takes the reader through a series of examples, showing a variety of approaches to analysis and effectiveness of different approaches. One key concept is the idea of redefining (slightly) market segmentation into strategic segmentation. The implication is that herein the marketer provides a framework to inspire “greater strategic insights” that examines the cross-functional implications of serving different segments of customers. This allows identifying where any differentiation is being created anywhere in the organization. This concept incorporates a value network which is an “orchestration of all marketing and non-marketing activities necessary to create value for the customer.”

The result is that marketing, as shown in the book, can help lead the company from the process of selling products to one of providing solutions. This changes the value proposition of the company in the eyes of the customer, making the relationship tighter and more valuable in the long run. A complex subject, handled well by the author in a well written book recommended for most marketers and CEOs.

To learn ways to take your strategic planning to the next level please listen to our webinar:  Why my strategic planning isn’t working.

M. Dana Baldwin is a Senior Consultant with Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc. He can be reached by email at: baldwin@cssp.com

© Copyright 2016 by Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI — Reprint permission granted with full attribution.

By Denise Harrison

One CEO complained that his financial person was preventing his company from growing.  How was that possible?  Over the years when issues arose, the financial person would develop a system of checks and balances that would prevent the issue from occurring again.  While conceptually it is good to have policies and procedures to prevent issues from arising, continuously adding more and more can simply become cumbersome and impede forward motion.  The CEO knew the solution to cut through the red tape was to automate the check and balance systems and to delegate the responsibility so that more than one person was responsible.  The financial person had trouble giving up the responsibility and did not want to change.  Eventually the CEO hired a coach to help the financial person accept and embrace the required changes.

What about us?  What can we learn? 

While this looks like an obvious problem, are we guilty of similar behavior?  Do we create bottlenecks to our organization’s growth and success?

• Are we stuck doing things the way we have always done them, or do we continuously look for better ways? Do we listen to others’ solutions?
• Do we hold on to responsibility, stalling the growth of those who could use the challenges for professional development?
• Have we really assessed the risk and put the right amount of effort into prevention – rather than overkill, given the risk associated with a negative outcome?
• Are we tied up in the day-to-day rather than focusing on the big areas that will really position the company for future success?

Suggested Course of Action

If you find that you are constantly being pulled into the day-to-day firefighting or that you are the rate-determining step for moving things forward, you need to reassess: what is the best use of your time? Then develop a list of:

• What will you start doing? (E.g. more time on long-term strategic projects.)
• What will you stop doing? (E.g., resolving minor customer service issues, rather than allowing your customer service representatives to make decisions up to a certain amount.)
• What will you continue doing? (E.g. continue speaking at industry events to raise your company’s visibility.)

A Second Step 

Have your direct reports develop a similar list.  Will they be able to handle (start) some of the tasks you want to stop doing?  These tasks should appear on their “start” list.  Are there “stop” tasks being delegated to their direct reports?

Developing a START/STOP/CONTINUE LIST will cause you to reflect on how you spend your time and how you should be spending your time.  By comparing your list with others, you will be able to have constructive dialogue on tasks that need to be delegated and what skills need to be enhanced in order to do these well. These discussions will help the senior management team cease to be an impediment to growth, and, instead, free up their time to focus on the strategic projects, while enhancing middle management’s ability to participate and develop the skills needed to move into leadership positions.

To learn how to take your strategic planning to the next level, please listen to our webinar:  Why Isn’t My Strategic Plan Working?.

Denise Harrison is a senior consultant for the Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc.  She can be reached at  harrison@cssp.com.

© Copyright 2016 by Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI — Reprint permission granted with full attribution.

M. Dana Baldwin, Senior Consultant

In Strategic Planning, teams make decisions based on data and on the best knowledge of the planning team and organization.  Unfortunately, well-intentioned plans can result in incurring unintended results.  While analyzing what could possibly go wrong with a strategy or high level tactic, it simply is not possible to anticipate everything which could occur in carrying out the plan.  There are many factors outside of the organization’s control which can have unfortunate impacts on the efficacy and effectiveness of any action.  Of course, this is certainly possible with any action an organization could undertake, but in this analysis, we will be looking at analyzing each of our decisions about strategies for each market segment, new products or services, changes in our operations and outside resourcing.

In our core business segments, those market areas we are currently pursuing  actively, we will be making decisions about where we want to take each segment.  Do we want to stay on our current course, actively expand our efforts in this market segment or possibly even reduce our emphasis in the segment to put resources into more attractive areas, both other current market segments and possible new products or services we are considering offering?

The decisions we make in strategic planning will determine the future course and direction of the company / organization, so we want to be both aggressive and as safe as possible when we select what strategies and high level tactics we will be pursuing in the future.  To carry this out, we want to have the team look at decisions we make in our discussions about strategic issues and about the assumptions we have made in our future assessments of where each market segment is to be directed so that we can take into account the possible things that could go wrong with the actions we will be undertaking.

In our Simplified Strategic Planning seminar we give specific examples of problems encountered because the team forgot to look at the potential downside of well-intentioned objectives or strategies.  A simple example:  The goal decided upon by the city commission was to increase the ease of movement for people with physical disabilities by taking out the curbs at street crossings and putting in ramps so that wheel chair bound people and those who use crutches would be able to more easily negotiate crossing streets.  A noble intention, with positive impact on those people.  The unfortunate side effect was that it made it much easier for children on bicycles and skateboards to shoot across streets.  The potential for increased car-bike and car-skateboard accidents was increased as a result of this change.  This is a real example of a potential problem which could be caused by not taking all the factors into consideration.

While you won’t catch every possible problem, the intent of this analysis is to remind team members that things can go wrong with plans that have the greatest of intentions.  It will reward your  team by possibly eliminating or minimizing the impact of a well-intentioned action to review the decision with the mindset of trying to determine what could go wrong if not implemented properly, and , based on that analysis, deciding to proceed, with caution, or to change the objective or not to pursue it.

If your team needs guidance in performing this analysis or in your full strategic planning process, please contact me at baldwin@cssp.com or call me at 616-575-3193.

To learn ways to take your strategic planning to the next level please listen to our webinar:  Why my strategic planning isn’t working.

M. Dana Baldwin is a Senior Consultant with Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc. He can be reached by email at: baldwin@cssp.com

© Copyright 2016 by Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI — Reprint permission granted with full attribution.

By M. Dana Baldwin, Senior Consultant

How often have you gone into a store or a restaurant, called a service department on the phone, emailed a customer service unit of a company, and had anything but outstanding customer service results?  All too often, customer service contacts don’t address your problem directly, or don’t serve you well, or worse, serve you indifferently.  You can go through layers upon layers of automated phone attendants, only to have to start over when one of the buttons you pushed ends up putting you on a wrong track.

There is such a big difference between getting good service and getting poor service. Getting good service, however, is usually not that much more directly expensive to the organization which is providing the service,  when one considers the long term overall cost, including additional time needed to resolve problems, multiple customer contacts due to unresolved problems and, probably the most important impact on your business, the potential of lost opportunities for continuing business with that dissatisfied customer.

What can be done about correcting the problem of not having good customer service?  While no one remedy will apply to every company, there are some basic principles which could apply to many situations.

First: Good customer service must start at the very top of the organization.  The company leadership sets the strategies, goals and culture of the organization.  If the importance of good customer service is not recognized and supported openly by top management, it is unlikely that anyone at lower levels will have both the inclination and the decision-making ability to make the changes which are needed to raise the standards to appropriate levels.

Second: Once top management has bought in, good communication about the strategies and goals of good customer service must be developed and effectively communicated throughout the organization.  People will do much better when they know what is expected of them in sufficient detail and clarity that their purpose is understood and well-defined.

Third: Constant follow up on the progress toward good customer service is needed to raise performance and adherence to the goals and standards set by top management.  A part of this can be regular testing of the actual customer experience when they are contacting customer service.

One example:  We often shop at our nearest Meijer store.  While we know the store pretty well, there are occasionally times when we don’t know where to look for a specific item.  To date, over many years, we have always been able to ask someone in the store where the item is located, and had them not only tell us, but walk us over to the aisle and point out where the item is on the shelf.  On occasion, we have gone to other Meijer stores, and we have found the exact same dedication to customer satisfaction and results at the other stores as at our local store.  There is a culture in Meijer that consistently reinforces the importance of good service that comes from the very top, and we have never had one instance of having anyone we asked not responding positively and getting us to the result we were seeking.

If you need help in improving your customer service as a part of your ongoing strategic planning processes, we can help.  Please contact me at 616-575-3193 or email at: baldwin@cssp.com

To learn ways to take your strategic planning to the next level please listen to our webinar:  Why my strategic planning isn’t working.

M. Dana Baldwin is a Senior Consultant with Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc. He can be reached by email at: baldwin@cssp.com

© Copyright 2016 by Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI — Reprint permission granted with full attribution.

Today we have a guest post by Seanlai, Proclivities Founder.  Please see below:

Sometimes you’re just out of ideas.

It’s not a matter of desire — you want your company to scale, you’ve done it before. But now, what used to work isn’t working and you’re getting frustrated

Millennials have changed the game—they aren’t motivated by money, security or climbing the corporate ladder.

Yet they make up the 75% of the work force.

You can’t stay relevant and strategic if you can’t keep them happy and who really knows what makes employees happy anymore?

Retention is the part of strategic planning that most people don’t spend too much time on, human capital isn’t on the balance sheet and the impact of voluntary turnover costs companies millions of dollars every year.  It’s not just Millennials either, today more than ever, people are jumping on the entrepreneurial band wagon and you’re left hemorrhaging money after investing in recruiting, training, and onboarding not to mention loss of productivity and decreased morale.

Well, there’s good news: Engaging your team and getting them to hit it out of the park doesn’t have to be that daunting.  With the right tools at your disposal, you can easily create an engaging, team-centered group that wants to fulfill the company’s mission.

The secret sauce the best companies are using today is Proclivities: The Science of Connection.   Proclivities are the way that people operate, function and connect on an instinctual level.  Communication is a learned skill, something that our parents and teachers have taught us.  But connection is different.  Connection is an instinct you were born with.  When you were little no one taught you how to play or how to get your mom’s attention.  You came into this world knowing how to connect and just like other traits that we train out of ourselves; we’ve forgotten how to use this most basic instinct.

There are four Proclivity types and each Proclivity type uses different language patterns, different thought processes; they require different rewards, different reprimands, and vastly different support in meetings, instruction, and motivation.

After decoding the science of connection, I created a classification system.   I use the acronym PLAY, because remember, connection is an instinct, just like playing.  Therefore, the four Proclivity types are PLAYERS, LIGHTERS, ARTISTS, and Y’ERS.

Each Proclivity type has traits that are indigenous to them.  For example, we found that in meetings:

PLAYERS need to play, they need to move, fidget, take notes, stand in the back of the room etc. or they are unable to stay engaged.

LIGHTERS need to see it to believe it, so they need handouts or PowerPoint to stay engaged and focused.

ARTISTS need to be able to listen to the presenter; they will physically be unable to hear if the presenter is monotone.  If the presenter is monotone, it would help the Artist if there is background noise or music during the meeting.

Y’ERS need the freedom to ask questions.  If they are unable to question the process or the reason for it, they will have a difficult time both understanding the tasks and staying present in the moment.

The way to motivate, train, reprimand and reward are also Proclivity based.  What works for one will not work for the other.  This doesn’t mean that companies have to take each one of their thousand employees by the hand individually, but it does mean that knowing the employees’ Proclivity gives leadership the edge it needs to put together high functioning teams, to finally solve the mystery of why some employees engage and some don’t, and to create a culture where the employees you hire produce at a high level and want to be working for your company for a long time.

The first step in fostering engaged productive happy employees is knowing your own Proclivity.  You must know this so you can learn your own connection style, why you do what you do and what you must do to understand and lead your employees better.

Is your company struggling to stay relevant and strategic?  Let us know how you are dealing with it – or, better yet, attend our amazing, data-driven workshop on Simplified Strategic Planning.  Our highly acclaimed Simplified Strategic Planning approach has helped many hundreds of organizations improve their strategies and bottom line results with effective, actionable strategies.  Please listen to our webinar:  Why my strategic planning isn’t working.

By Denise Harrison, Senior Consultant

“Follow the plan; don’t get distracted by seemingly large opportunities,” replied one CEO when asked the question “What was one key lesson learned from following a systematic approach to strategic planning?” How did he learn this?  The hard way, of course.

For years, this CEO and his team used the Simplified Strategic Planning process.  That approach uses data and information to help teams focus on the areas that will optimize their future results.  In his case, we identified small-medium sized organizations as one target segment.  We also identified that the larger organizations in this industry had requirements that were beyond our core capabilities.  By focusing our efforts on the smaller organizations, we would match our core capabilities with the requirements of this business segment.  This strategy proved to be successful.

What happened subsequently?

Well, a Board member had connections to a large prestigious organization and wanted the CEO’s company to become its supplier.  The opportunity for revenue growth was significant; the Board member pushed and this CEO’s company took on the large organization as a customer.

Outcome

Resources were pulled from all areas of the company to meet this large organization’s requirements – pulled away from serving the smaller targeted organizations.  The large organization may have increased top line growth, but it had a significantly negative impact on the bottom line and hurt relationships with the customers that we had determined were the best fit with our core capabilities.

Lessons Learned

It is important to stick with your strategy unless something has changed in the business environment and/or your core capabilities.

Can You Make Exceptions?

Of course, but ensure that your exceptions make sense.  For instance, in this example the following question should have been asked:”Do the requirements of this large prestigious organization map to those of large or small-medium sized organizations?”  If the answer is the requirements look like the large organization segment, then we should say “no.” If the answer is that the requirements look like the ones we usually find in our small-medium sized organizations and map with our core capabilities, then this exception is acceptable.  Sticking to your strategy may require discipline in the face of a large revenue opportunity. Use your strategy to determine its fit with your organization’s capabilities.  Once you have a strategy, use it to assess a specific situation to see if an exception is warranted.

For information on strategy development please contact Denise Harrison at: 910-763-5194 or harrison@cssp.com.

To learn how to take your strategic planning to the next level, please listen to our webinar:  Why Isn’t My Strategic Plan Working?.

Denise Harrison is a senior consultant for the Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc.  She can be reached at  harrison@cssp.com.

© Copyright 2016 by Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI — Reprint permission granted with full attribution.

M Dana Baldwin, Senior Consultant

What is there about strategic planning that keeps companies from making the effort to plan their futures?  Why are companies afraid to plan?  We have some experience in overcoming this hesitancy through exposing companies to strategic planning in our seminars: Simplified Strategic Planning.

Let’s look at some of the reasons why companies avoid going through the work of building a strategic plan.  One example is that some companies feel planning is superfluous.  Why do they feel this way?  There probably are many individual reasons, but here are a couple of thoughts which may be useful for analysis.  Some feel strategic planning is for big businesses only.  Every company, no matter how small, should be planning for its future.  Failure to plan means both your customers and your competitors will have significant influence on where and how you will be allowed to compete.  You could be shoved into competing in areas which are not utilizing your sustainable competitive advantages, resulting in higher costs, lower margins, reduced sales and profits.  Failure to plan also often limits the vision for the future to the CEO and misses the synergistic opportunity to do strategic thinking as a senior management team.

Some may be afraid that strategic planning will be overly time-consuming.  This can be overcome relatively easily.  While this may seem somewhat self-serving, bringing in an outside leader to guide and monitor your strategic planning is often the most effective and lowest cost, both in investment and in time, for your company.  An experienced facilitator well-practiced in leading companies through strategic planning, having led dozens of companies through an effective, efficient process, can save you time and money.  Yes, you can do the process yourself, but there are risks, which an experienced leader can help you avoid or minimize.  An effective leader will keep your team on task, avoid the various pitfalls which can arise, and challenge your team to deliver an effective, actionable strategic plan in a reasonable time frame.

Another impediment can be fear of failure.  When companies do a good job of strategic planning, they often end up with benchmarks for their strategies.  If they don’t meet these benchmarks, they could take this to mean they have failed.  But what they have really done is to determine where they have strengths and where they have weaknesses, and they can then determine what they need to do to meet their ongoing expectations.  The process gives the company the means to take corrective actions, sometimes even during the period of the strategic plan, to overcome weaknesses in their planning and execution of their plan.  Much better to address these problem areas as early as possible, rather than to ignore them and end up in a slow death spiral.  The way of the ostrich with his head in the sand is a recipe for failure.

Finally, some simply don’t get around to actually planning.  This is where most companies that don’t plan are.  Getting started must be driven from the top in order to change the approach of the company.  Planning for your future is one of the highest level responsibilities of top management, and failing to do this can lead to diminishing competitiveness, lower profits and sales and shrinking market share.

When getting started in strategic planning is so easy, not doing it is effectively letting the company wither, albeit slowly, until it is no longer viable and competitive.  We can help.  Please contact me at baldwin@cssp.com or at 616-575-3193 so we may discuss how to help you get started with strategic planning, or help you improve what you are doing with your current strategic plan to make you more competitive and drive a bigger market share and improve your profitability.

To learn ways to take your strategic planning to the next level please listen to our webinar:  Why my strategic planning isn’t working.

M. Dana Baldwin is a Senior Consultant with Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc. He can be reached by email at: baldwin@cssp.com

© Copyright 2016 by Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI — Reprint permission granted with full attribution.

By Robert W. Bradford, President & CEO

In a word, no.  There is no perfect strategy, and even the best strategy can become obsolete given time.  Strategy is about finding what works, and in a world of imperfect information, that can mean experimentation.

This fact makes good strategy a daunting prospect to some entrepreneurs and managers.  Many of us have succeeded in our lives by seeking perfection – perfect scores on tests, perfect assessments and even “perfect” strategies.

In the world of strategic planning, these are traps.  Sure, you can perform well, and sometimes even “perfectly”.  But for every customer that thinks you are perfect, there are going to be some who consider you awful.  If this isn’t true – if you don’t have some customers who have a clear reason to dislike your product or service – you aren’t pushing hard enough, and you are very likely leaving money on the table.

How can I say this?  It’s a simple rule of design:  anything that performs perfectly for a given set of criteria must perform worse in another set of criteria.  In the real world, these trade-offs – price vs. speed, quality vs. convenience, technology vs. ease of use, for example – are ubiquitous.  Successful companies work partly because they find an appropriate balance of attributes that make them the preferred choice for a group of target customers.  Unsuccessful companies often attempt to be the best at every attribute.  This is a losing proposition, as competitors can beat you at one or two attributes, making them the preferred supplier for some customers.  The focused approach – optimizing your product or service for one or two attributes – frees up resources which can be used to further surpass you while you vainly seek perfection.

Most real-world customers, fortunately, do not analyze forty-seven different attributes of all competing products and service.  Most people, conveniently, only look at their top two or three criteria, and choose a supplier based upon those.  This means that a focused approach – if you choose the right criteria – will give you a significant advantage with that specific customer, and those who share his or her preferences.

How can we strategize better knowing this approach?  There are three things I hope you’ll do differently:

1. Abandon the idea of perfection. There is no such thing as a perfect product or service, and no, you won’t be the first company in history to achieve this milestone.  If you have products or services that are close to perfection, ask how you can improve them for the benefit of some customers by backing away from perfection in some of the attributes.
2. Clearly identify a distinct, identifiable customer type by segmenting your market around purchasing behaviors. Avoid the trap of looking at market share in the entire market, and instead seek share with a specific type of customer that will reward your excellence.  Learn what their top two or three decision making criteria are in your market
3. Take a close look at the cost of each attribute you build into your product or service. Not every attribute carries equal weight, and some have a poor relationship between cost and benefit.  Consider the market benefit of cutting back on the least important attributes and building up your performance in those your target customers find most critical.

Does your company suffer from perfectionism?  Let us know how you are dealing with it – or, better yet, attend our amazing, data-driven workshop on Simplified Strategic Planning to learn how to wrestle perfectionism to the ground.  Our highly acclaimed Simplified Strategic Planning approach has helped many hundreds of organizations improve their strategies and bottom line results with effective, actionable strategies.  Please listen to our webinar:  Why my strategic planning isn’t working.

By Denise Harrison, Senior Consultant

How do you anticipate unexpected outcomes from good ideas?  Flint, Michigan under financial duress made many decisions to improve its financial condition.   One decision was to change its water source from Detroit Water Sewerage Department (DWSD) to an alternative, cheaper source.  The three year transition plan was put in place.  What happened?

• DWSD stopped selling water to Flint before the pipeline was complete to the alternative source
• Flint chose to use the Flint River as an interim measure
• Flint chose not to put in an additive to prevent the corrosion of pipes costing about $100.00 a day, even though it was federally mandated
• Immediately people noticed that the water was discolored, smelly and had a funny taste
• Even when people raised red flags about high lead levels, warning signs were ignored
• After finally owning up to the problem, the cost is estimated to be about $100 million to fix, and the negative damage to the health of Flint residents will be long reaching

How could we shoot ourselves in the foot?

Often good ideas have potential negative outcomes, but these outcomes can be mitigated if they are anticipated up front or caught quickly as warning signs develop.  This risk mitigation assessment is important if you want to really benefit from the good idea, rather than getting caught up in the unexpected consequences as Flint did.  What could Flint have done?

• First, assessed whether or not DWSD would cut the water supply before the infrastructure for the alternative source was complete. Three years is a long time, so having a plan B developed as an interim measure would allow a switch to be made with some forethought rather than as a last minute stopgap measure.
• When switching to the Flint River source, taking time to truly understand the implications.
• Comply with federally mandated standards – use the additive!
• When early warning signs developed, hire an impartial third party firm to truly assess the damage and fix it quickly.

Sadly, we know that none of this occurred.  When you develop a strategic plan with good ideas, be sure to recognize the human tendency to view the ideas with rose-colored glasses and engage in wishful thinking.  Force yourselves to envision and discuss possible negative outcomes and, if you can, mitigate the risk upfront.  Also identify early warning signs of what might indicate a problem and take the necessary actions to insure that you do not have the negative consequences the problems might cause.  There are often unknowns with good ideas, but a proactive approach to resolving problems will allow you to capitalize on the good idea, without bearing the brunt of unexpected outcomes.  Like Flint, you just put the additive in, understand you may not have as much financial benefit as anticipated, and move on.  Sacrificing public health and safety due to financial constraints will hurt Flint and the decision-making leaders far into the future.

If you have questions about how to make your strategic planning process more robust please email Denise Harrison at harrison@cssp.com.

If you are interested in taking your strategic planning to the next level, please listen to our webinar:  Why Isn’t My Strategic Plan Working or contact Denise Harrison; 910-763-5194, harrison@cssp.com .

Denise Harrison is a senior consultant for the Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc.  She can be reached at  harrison@cssp.com.

© Copyright 2016 by Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI — Reprint permission granted with full attribution.

By M. Dana Baldwin, Senior Consultant

In strategic planning, we often talk about “SMART” objectives.  But when it comes down to actually picking our objectives, are we really being smart, or are we simply reaching for an easy way out?

We define an objective as a task or project that is necessary to accomplish, but for which we do not have an established procedure.  The task is supposed to be strategic in nature, meaning that it is necessary to accomplish the task in order to further our progress in our strategies.

What are the characteristics of a “SMART” objective”?  Convention says that each objective should be: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-related.  We will examine what each of these characteristics means and how they contribute to the overall strategy of the organization.

SPECIFIC: When an objective is specific, it is well-defined about what has to be achieved to accomplish the task.  This requires the objective to be stated well enough that everyone who works on completing this objective understands what is to be accomplished, how it is to be accomplished and why it is a part of the overall strategy of the organization.

MEASURABLE: When an objective is truly measurable, it means that the outcome of the task not only is well-defined (specific), but that its contribution to the overall strategy of the organization is clear and unambiguous.  There should be some form of metric which can measure how well the objective’s results contribute to the success of the organization.

ACHIEVABLE: The resources of the organization must be sufficient to actually carry out the objective.  If the company can’t dedicate both the capital and people to execute the steps of the action plan which provides a roadmap of the steps necessary to achieve the objective, then it really doesn’t meet the goal of being achievable.  Appropriate inputs of funds and time must be allocated in order to actually complete the action plan covering the objective.

RELEVANT: Is the objective appropriate and necessary to carry out the strategies of the organization?  If not, it is not relevant to the goals of the organization and likely should be dropped in favor of an objective which will further the organization’s strategies.

TIME-RELATED: Every objective, indeed every step of every action plan, should have a time for action and dates for completion.  Without the guidance and pressure of these time-related factors, actions will often be postponed and neglected.  The efficacy of the objective will be compromised and the strategies of the organization hindered.  These are not the outcomes desired when the organization started strategic planning, and should be avoided whenever possible.

If you are having difficulties achieving your objectives, contact me at baldwin@cssp.com or at 616-575-3193 to discuss how we may help you be more effective in your strategic planning and in the execution of your strategic plans and objectives.

To learn ways to take your strategic planning to the next level please listen to our webinar:  Why my strategic planning isn’t working.

M. Dana Baldwin is a Senior Consultant with Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc. He can be reached by email at: baldwin@cssp.com

© Copyright 2016 by Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI — Reprint permission granted with full attribution.

By Robert W. Bradford, President and CEO

In the thousands of strategic planning meetings we’ve conducted, we’ve run into a fair amount of threats.  Interestingly, some of those threats – even those deemed extremely unlikely – have come to pass with some clients.  One unlikely benefit of these otherwise bad experiences is that I’ve been able to notice three things about threats that will be useful to you in your strategic planning.

First, threats DO happen.  Plane crashes, tornadoes, murder, unionization – they may all seem unlikely when you do your strategic planning, but I’ve seen them all.  Some attention to the truly strategic threats may make the difference between an awful experience and one that destroys your business.  That being said, I’ve noticed that many companies tend to spend an inordinate amount of time on some types of threats, usually seeking to prevent them, while paying far too little attention to the bigger, more strategic threats, which can drive some excellent thinking in your strategic planning.

This leads to the second observation:  Big threats are not always truly strategic threats.   By this, I don’t mean that big threats won’t hurt you, because they will.  But a threat that takes a bite out of your income statement (or worse, balance sheet), pales into insignificance compared to a threat that attacks your market, your product, or your service.  Merely big threats hurt us because of the cost of dealing with them, while truly strategic threats may threaten your ability to continue with the value proposition upon which your business is based.

Not convinced?  Think about what happened to Kodak.  The rise of digital photography – and the depressing impact that had on the film business – was clearly anticipated decades before Kodak’s bankruptcy.  Kodak – despite having the tremendous resources of a Fortune 500 company, simply could not re-engineer their business model in a way that enabled them to remain a viable player.  This threat wasn’t just expensive, it destroyed an entire industry.  If you think this couldn’t happen to you, please remember that every product, service and supply chain is built upon a specific way of doing things that works, profitably, for you today.  There is no assurance that the same, often fragile structure, will survive major changes in technology, distribution and marketing.

Fortunately, there is a third observation:  if you view threats as bad things to prevent, you’ll sometimes get run over by the very steamroller you are trying to stop.  But if, in your strategic planning, you can find ways to turn the threat into an opportunity, you can possibly find a way past every threat you – and your industry – face.  I’m not saying you won’t have to undertake scary and expensive reframing of your business model and value proposition, here, but I am saying that I’ve seen some highly threatened companies survive and thrive by accepting the inevitable threats to their industries and embracing a new approach.

Strategic competencies are inevitably the key to working past industry-destroying threats.  If you are using Simplified Strategic Planning today, you are probably already paying attention to your competencies and how they can help you survive strategic disasters.  If you aren’t, sign up for one of our public programs and learn how you can harness your competencies for greater profitability AND survivability.

If your company needs to improve its strategies, contact us for great, experienced leadership through the strategy development process.  Our highly acclaimed Simplified Strategic Planning approach has helped many hundreds of organizations improve their strategies and bottom line results with effective, actionable strategies.  Please listen to our webinar:  Why my strategic planning isn’t working.

By Denise Harrison, Senior Consultant

Many folks take time to make resolutions at New Year’s to better themselves: lose weight, exercise more – you know the usual suspects.  But do you make resolutions for what you will do as a business leader?  If not, you may want to take some time to reflect on last year’s successes and disappointments and look at trends that are changing the workplace.  Then think through what you would like to resolve to do this year.  What do you need to change?  What do you need to do more of?  What do you need to stop doing?

Food for Thought:

40% of the workforce is made up of Millennials (people born 1980 to 1999).  How is this impacting your business?  Do you or your management team have what is needed to motivate this group?  (Hint: asking why they don’t behave more like you is not the answer here.) As a leader, you are tasked to get the most out of your team.  Some thoughts:

• Millennials will need more coaching (we call this hand holding) than previous generations; have you revised your on-boarding process? Set up one-on-one mentoring?
• Millennials will need more frequent feedback (once a year evaluation does not usually fit this group’s expectations) – how are you ensuring that feedback is more frequent consistently
• Millennials want to be involved; ensure that you are not only explaining “how” to do the job by “why” we do it this way and “why” doing it is important (ideally for our customers)
• Millennials may have different communication preferences; texting feedback for a job well done will take little time, but will fulfill the need for frequent feedback in a manner that usually works for this cohort
• Millennials enjoy variety; think through how your leadership team is changing things so that millennials stay engaged

Invest in the high potentials. Often our time is spent managing the bottom tier of performers, looking for ways to improve performance and setting up performance improvement plans. While you do need to handle this group, time spent here is often to the detriment of spending time with the top performers to see how you can help them.  Are there obstacles that you can get out of their way?  Do they need other technology tools?  Resolve to spend more time working with the top performers to ensure that the company is supporting their performance.

Take time to work “on” the business not “in” the business:  One CEO makes sure that each member of his leadership team takes 10 days for professional development offsite.  He believes outside stimulation allows the team to come up with more creative solutions.  This occurs by attending workshops and seminars or joining an executive group like Chief Executive Network (CEN).  Often other companies have solved the same problems that you face and can move you up the learning curve faster by sharing their experience.

Harness the technology within your company: Are you utilizing the technology tools that you have in house?  Most CEOs agree they are using only about 40% of what is available.  Resolve to learn more about the capabilities and decide which of these would enhance your company’s productivity, and then learn how to use it/them.

Focus on the few:  A lack of focus is still one of the most prevalent issues among senior management teams.  For example, one CEO cut the number of strategic projects in half and led the company to higher growth and profitability.  Really, you can do more if you are focusing on less.  Have you really selected the key strategic initiatives for this coming year?  Have you communicated them throughout the company?  Does the company understand the “why” behind each objective?  Resolve to keep these initiatives out in front so that when you end the year, you are in a significantly better position.

These are just a few resolutions that I have seen work successfully in the past. What are the business resolutions that you are going to achieve this year?  Please share your thoughts on our blog.  For more on strategy development please call Denise Harrison at: 910-763-5194 or harrison@cssp.com.

To learn how to re-invigorate you strategic planning please listen to our webinar:  Why Isn’t My Strategic Plan Working.

Denise Harrison is a senior consultant for the Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc.  She can be reached at  harrison@cssp.com.

© Copyright 2016 by Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI — Reprint permission granted with full attribution.