Category: Strategy Implementation

What do you do when progress is slowing on your key strategic initiatives?  Leaving your strategic planning session, your team was motivated to get the key strategic initiatives completed.  Action plans complete, resources allocated, and everything was moving forward.  But now, after several months, forward progress has slowed.  Team members have gotten bogged down by the day-to-day requirements of their job.  What can you do?

Some thoughts:

Have one action plan team report per meeting

Most teams use a monitoring meeting to report on their activity monthly – this group is made up of the senior management team and is an effective way to keep action plans on track. However, if you are looking to re-invigorate, you should have one action plan team report per meeting, getting the whole action plan team involved.  When the action plan team prepares to present, they typically will make more progress so that they look better in front of the senior management team.  You will also find that that team is more committed leaving the meeting.  This is also good two-way exposure for action plan team members with the senior management team.

Ask challenging questions for re-invigorating strategic initiatives:

1. If we wanted to complete this project three months earlier, what would we need to do?
2. If we hired an intern to help you on this project, how much sooner would the plan be complete?
3. What is the expertise you need to move the action plan forward?

Have the team re-write the action plan

Have the team re-write the action plan, clearing out completed items and re-writing future steps.  This will help people get focused on the future and help them discuss any issues that come up as they re-think what is needed for completion.

Talk to the team about what should be delegated

Sometimes we see that the enemy is us…. what are we doing/not doing that is getting in the way?  Talk to the team about what should be delegated, so that they can spend more time on the strategic rather than the tactical.

These are some possible actions that I have seen work successfully.  What other actions have you tried?  If you have additional questions about developing a strategy or executing strategy, please call me:  910-264-1350 or harrision@thestratplan.com.

Do you want to learn how to re-invigorate your key strategic initiatives?  Attend the Simplified Strategic Planning Seminar for more instruction on re-invigorating strategic initiatives as well as all other aspects of Simplified Strategic Planning.

 

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

© Copyright 2018 by Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI — Reprint permission

 

 

In this series, we are discussing aligning employees with strategy.  Lets review how we get this alignment.  There are five basic steps that you must take to assure your employees are aligned with your company’s strategies.

First, employees must have the conceptual tools required for good strategic thinking about their work.

Second, employees must understand the strategy.

Third, strategic alignment needs to be built around the structure of the organization.

Fourth, strategy must be reflected in the structure of individual jobs – especially those in critical areas.

Fifth, you must have buy-in to the strategy.

Let’s look at the First and Second of these requirements in more detail.

First, strategic alignment can only work if the employees already have the tools required for good strategic thinking

This is because employees must be capable of making decisions with strategic impact in order to be aligned with the company’s strategy. Anything less than this calls for a strategy that treats people as machines. Although these strategies were the foundation of the industrial revolution, they cannot work in places where labor costs are above the absolute minimum. These tools include examples, role models, and training. This does not mean that every employee needs to be a great strategic thinker.  Employees, however, must be able to understand how their work fits into the success of the organization.

Make sure your people understand enough of the basics of business

Another thing to do to get people on board is to make sure your people understand enough of the basics of business.  Employees need to see how the strategy is going to make them better off, increase their job security, increase the likelihood that they get promotions, and increase the likelihood that they see pay increases in the future. Without these conceptual tools, it will be much more difficult to get buy-in and intelligent support of the strategy from an employee. Several companies with whom we have worked have had well-designed performance compensation systems fail simply because the employees didn’t understand income statements.

The second item, understanding the strategy, can only happen if employees have the conceptual tools covered in the previous paragraphs

This is necessary because good strategy requires focus. There are three main ways to satisfy customers: price, quality (in the broad sense, including product features, technology, packaging and a host of other value-adding features), and service (again, in a broad sense, including delivery, support, etc.). In a strategically focused organization, there are fewer ways to satisfy the customer. In simple terms, a company that targets specialty customers will excel in quality and/or service, but will likely be middle of the road or worse at price. Commodity companies excel at price, usually fall down on quality or service, and sometimes both. “Front line” employees – those that have contact with customers – often want to please customers by offering satisfaction in these three ways, but to fit with the focus of the company usually should be willing to leave some customers dissatisfied (for example, a Rolls-Royse salesperson should not get upset that a customer didn’t buy because he/she did not like the price). Without a clear understanding of the strategy, this kind of alignment is impossible, especially when “front line” employees are far removed from the strategic planning process.

Note:  This post is the second in a series of posts from Robert Bradford’s article Building Support for the Strategic Plan: Aligning Employees with Strategy originally posted in Compass Points in October 2001.  The first post introduced this series.  You can read it here.  The next post in this series will discuss the Third and Fourth steps.

How well are you aligning your employees with your strategy?  Attend the Simplified Strategic Planning Seminar for more instruction on how to improve your alignment as well as all other aspects of Simplified Strategic Planning.

Robert Bradford is President & CEO of the Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc.  He can be reached at rbradford@cssp.com.

© Copyright 2018 by Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI — Reprint permission

Execution failure is the most frequent cause of strategy failure.  Good execution makes all the difference in the strategic planning process.  This article will show you the key to good execution.

Near the completion of the strategic planning process, we select objectives

SMART objectives must be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, with Results stated in a Timely way.  The objectives are those things which must be accomplished in order to carry out our strategies.  They will not happen without a formal, step-by-step process to complete them.  This process is defined by written action plans.  Action plans consist of all of the actions required for the achievement of the objective.  The actions are arranged in proper sequence.  They must contain an active verb.  Action plans assign appropriate personnel  to each step.  Each step specifies the input time required (not elapsed time), the cost and the start and completion dates, which will be established later during scheduling.

The other component of execution is the monitoring of the action plans on a regular basis

Action plans should be updated once a month.  Although the action plan assigns times and dates to each step, it does not lock the team into a rigid situation.  When things occur that prevent the completion of one or more steps as planned and scheduled, the team has two options: Perhaps the time can be made up, so the plan can get back on schedule.  If the time can’t be made up, the schedule should be revised to reflect realistic completion dates.

If the team discovers new information which changes the objective or the actual steps in the action plan, monitoring gives the team the flexibility to revise and update the objective and/or action plan to reflect the current situation and to keep control over the process and timing of the action plan.

The combination of the action plan, scheduling and the monitoring process keeps things realistic and on schedule.  If you have problems keeping your planning and execution on time, please let me help you.  Contact me at 616-575-3193 or baldwin@cssp.com.

How well are you executing your strategic plan?  Attend the Simplified Strategic Planning Seminar to learn more about executing your strategic plan and other apects of Simplified Strategic Planning.

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 2018 by Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI — Reprint permission granted with full attribution

One of the most common difficulties companies face in strategic planning is turning their vision into a reality. To transform your organization into the one you envision takes more than great strategy and implementation, you also need to make the strategy an integral part of the very fiber of your organization. When we speak of this idea, we usually use the phrase “strategic alignment”. Aligning everyone in your organization with your strategy is one of the most important things you can do beyond formulating and implementing great strategies. Alignment will make it much easier for your management team to push the organization in the direction you intend. Without good alignment with the strategy, every bit of forward motion will be a struggle.

As an example, consider a retail computer store. If you are running such a store, you probably want employees who appeal to specialty customers. Helpful, cheerful and courteous employees will encourage these customers to return, even if the prices are a little higher than other stores nearby. Rude, sullen employees who don’t know how to help customers will drive customers away. If you have a good staff in a store, you won’t have to work as hard to get customers to return. If your staff is really excellent, you may even get some word of mouth advertising. While this may cost a little more in terms of the compensation you offer employees, you will get a payoff in the form of a loyal specialty customer base.

“Employee alignment with your strategy is one of the most important things you can do…”

Specialty stores need specialty salespeople – this much is obvious – but your strategies may introduce a twist into your thinking. Let’s say there are two kinds of specialty computer stores: those that appeal to neophytes and those that appeal to technologically oriented users. If your strategy is to be a neophyte-oriented store, you want your staff to be good at hand-holding, explaining technology, and patiently answering simple questions. Deep technical knowledge may be less important than the ability to reassure customers who might otherwise be fearful about computers. At the more sophisticated store, you want a very different sort of employee. Employees who are very knowledgeable about the product will be much more valuable, and a willingness to figure out answers to difficult questions will keep the specialty “power user” coming back. The wrong person in the wrong store will be a disaster in either case, despite the fact that both might be specialty computer stores. Imagine a new computer user encountering a sales person who is just right for the techie store. The techie salesperson will overwhelm the neophyte with information about AGP slots, Frontside bus clock speed, and BIOS configurability (most of which most computer users don’t need to – or want to – know). The new user will likely go along with this, but may not make the purchase, simply because the salesperson has only convinced him or her that this is indeed a very complicated purchase. Even if he or she does buy that day, you may never see that customer again (if there is a choice) because the experience was more frightening than reassuring. This is a problem in three ways: it’s bad for your store, it’s bad for the customer, and it’s bad for the career of a salesperson who would be really good – in another store.

How do we get this alignment? There are five basic steps that you must take to assure your employees are aligned with your company’s strategies.

First, employees must have the conceptual tools required for good strategic thinking about their work.

Second, employees must understand the strategy.

Third, strategic alignment needs to be built around the structure of the organization.

Fourth, strategy must be reflected in the structure of individual jobs – especially those in critical areas.

Fifth, you must have buy-in to the strategy.

Note:  This post is the first in a series of posts from Robert Bradford’s article Building Support for the Strategic Plan: Aligning Employees with Strategy originally posted in Compass Points in October 2001.  The next post in this series will discuss the first and second steps in more detail.

How how well is your organization aligned with your strategy?  Attend the Simplified Strategic Planning Seminar for more instruction on how to improve your alignment as well as all other aspects of Simplified Strategic Planning.

Robert Bradford is President & CEO of the Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc.  He can be reached at rbradford@cssp.com.

© Copyright 2018 by Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI — Reprint permission

Note:  This post is the final in a series of posts from Robert Bradford’s article Aligning Departments with Strategy originally posted in Compass Points in November 2002.  Part One (click here) introduced the topic and discussed the affect that the Purchasing and Accounting departments have on strategy.  Part Two (click here) discussed the affect of the Operations, Sales, Human Resources and Customer Service departments.  This part will discuss the affect that the Research and Development department has on strategy and will summarize the series.

Research and Development — Since R&D is often responsible for innovation in a company, it’s easy to see how it can support strategy. Strategic alignment in R&D may go even farther than we think. For example, the way the R&D department works may affect whether it develops a few big innovations, many small ones, or nothing at all.

It should be clear from these examples that you can find support or hindrance for your strategic vision in almost any department of your organization. As a general rule, the nature of this interaction boils down to five things:

1. The department has direct contact with the customer, or affects the employees who do.
2. The department has a direct impact on the attractiveness (quality, features, etc.) of your product or service, or affects the employees who do.
3. The department affects our ability to measure and/or manage any of the above.

In most of the examples above, I’ve pointed out that you will see marked differences between departments that serve specialty customers well and those that serve commodity customers well. Clearly, this means that departments must support strategy by being aligned with the type of customer you are targeting. This also means that, in those unusual cases where a company is pursuing both specialty and commodity customers under one roof, you may well need to separate some departments into specialty and commodity support units. Let me illustrate this point with an example.

For years, I have done business with a company that specializes in driving businesspeople to the airport from my hometown. They run a fleet of nice cars and vans which, for about the price of a cab ride (or two days’ parking at the airport), will reliably deliver you to the airport on time. Recently, this firm merged their phone lines with a taxi company that services a much broader clientele. As you might expect, the telephone service for the cab company was far below what one might expect from an airport limo service. Long waits on hold, dispatchers who didn’t know which customers had corporate accounts and mix-ups where cabs were sent in place of vans became common. While this was a slight headache for the taxi business, the limo business lost a significant number of their customers to a competing firm because the operational change was made strictly on the basis of financial merits, rather than strategic ones. Did this have a financial impact on the company? People at the competing firm — the only other one in town — reported significant growth in sales during a period when business travel was declining. I can only assume that this increase was the result of many specialty customers voting with their feet.

So how about your company? Are your departments looking at optimizing just one result, or are they asking how they can support your strategic vision? Here are a few steps that can help them move in the right direction:

1. Share the relevant strategies with each department.
2. Ask each department to enumerate how they are supporting your strategies
3. Ask each department to identify ways they might fail to support your strategies, and how to avoid such failures
4. Ask each department to think about ways to measure how well they are supporting your strategies.

Each of these steps can be as involved as you like. I have seen companies productively create separate strategic plans for individual departments, and I have also seen good results come from a two-hour coaching session where we asked the above questions. Clearly, you should match the effort here to your resources, as well as the potential payoff from increasing strategic alignment. The underlying concept — that increased alignment with strategy can improve the effectiveness of your strategy — will work either way.

How well are your departments aligned with your strategy?  Attend the Simplified Strategic Planning Seminar for more instruction on how to achieve alignment from your departments as well as all other aspects of Simplified Strategic Planning.

Robert Bradford is President & CEO of the Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc.  He can be reached at rbradford@cssp.com.

© Copyright 2018 by Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI — Reprint permission

Note:  This post is the second in a series of posts from Robert Bradford’s article Aligning Departments with Strategy originally posted in Compass Points in November 2002.  Part One (click here) introduced the topic and discussed the affect that the Purchasing and Accounting departments have on strategy.  This part discusses the affect of the Operations, Sales, Human Resources and Customer Service departments.

Operations — Naturally, since your operations lie at the heart of creating the product or service that your customer is paying for, the way operations is managed can greatly alter the way customers experience doing business with your company. Commodity customers should be supported by operations that focus on efficiency even at the expense of some value, while specialty customers are best served when operations add costs in order to gain even greater value. In addition, companies that are seeking to move into specialty markets may need to improve their effectiveness with lower volume operations, while commodity markets are usually dominated by high volume operations.

Sales — Sales is often seen as the “front line” in strategy, since people in sales usually have the majority of customer contacts in many organizations. The nature of your sales force and its processes will greatly affect the success of your strategy. As a rule, people in sales find their jobs easier when the company is pursuing a commodity strategy. This is because selling something for a lower price takes far less sales skill than selling it at a higher price. Expensive, skilled, knowledgeable salespeople are a necessity when you are pursuing specialty customers, while commodity customers — who are selecting vendors predominantly on price — are much more effectively served by low-pay telemarketing people, or even a simple website.

Human Resources — In some industries — especially services — human resources is appreciated as a strategic area. Even in manufacturing, we can see that a significant portion of value added must come from our people. What is sometimes harder to see is that some of the things that we do to keep our employees happy — such as HR, payroll and benefits — can dramatically affect employee retention and even what types of employees are retained.

Customer Service — Customer service —as a department — is sometimes treated as non-strategic because the customer contact here is not driving sales. The nature of this interaction can have a significant impact on customer perception of the value of your product or service. In addition, customer service should always be viewed as a key source of information about possible improvements to make in your products or services.

The next and final post in this series will discuss the affect that the Research and Development department has on strategy.

How do your Operations, Sales, Human Resources and Customer Service departments affect your strategy?  Attend the Simplified Strategic Planning Seminar for more instruction on how to achieve alignment from your departments as well as all other aspects of Simplified Strategic Planning.

Robert Bradford is President & CEO of the Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc.  He can be reached at rbradford@cssp.com.

© Copyright 2018 by Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI — Reprint permission granted with full attribution

Note:  This post is the first in a series of posts from Robert Bradford’s article Strategic Alignment originally posted in Compass Points in November 2002.  Part One introduces the topic and discusses the affect that the Purchasing and Accounting departments have on strategy.

Over the years, several companies have asked me how I would go about getting departments of their organizations to support the vision we created in the strategic planning process. To begin with, it’s important to recognize that this is a good idea: any department in your organization can either support your strategy by being aligned with it, or block your strategy by pushing against it. To see how, let’s take a look at how several different departments might affect strategy.

Purchasing — In many purchasing departments, performance is measured strictly by how well the department cuts costs. This is clearly useful for a company that is pursuing commodity customers, but it can be highly counterproductive when your target customer is a specialty buyer. The problem of measuring other values — such as the impact the purchase has on our operations or on our customers — sometimes makes purchasing a difficult department to align with the organization’s strategy.

Accounting — Accounting typically gives the company a way of measuring performance (financially) after the fact, as well as managing cash flow and, usually, budgeting. Some accounting departments also focus a good deal of effort on cost measurement and management. Naturally, the measurements that come out of accounting in most organizations are likely to be the easiest measurements to use for management. Since much of value creation is difficult to measure (except where it is efficiently translated into higher pricing), over-reliance on the easiest financial measurements for management can lead to commodity thinking, which is a potential disaster for companies who are targeting specialty customers. A general tendency caused by the ease of financial measurements is that accounting people like to focus on cutting costs and raising prices, which in turn can make the job of selling harder and harder.

The next post in this series will discuss the affect that the Operations, Sales, Human Resources and Customer Service departments have on strategy.

How do your Purchasing and Accounting departments affect your strategy?  Attend the Simplified Strategic Planning Seminar for more instruction on how to achieve alignment from your departments as well as all other aspects of Simplified Strategic Planning.

Robert Bradford is President & CEO of the Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc.  He can be reached at rbradford@cssp.com.

© Copyright 2018 by Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI — Reprint permission granted with full attribution

M Dana Baldwin

Does your organization have a tough time generating and implementing good opportunities for additional services or products?  Is there a major roadblock to approving them? We have written multiple articles about the importance of, and the good practices of, good idea generation for organizations.  Robert Bradford has published a series of papers on the practices of innovation (See the prior issue of Course and Direction for one of them).

In our seminars on Simplified Strategic Planning, we emphasize the importance of effective generation of opportunities by the planning team.  One area we have talked little about, however, is how these ideas get judged by the team.  Most ideas can be rated effectively by the process we introduce in our seminar.  Occasionally, there is one which simply doesn’t fit the mold at all.

In the Wall Street Journal of Friday, October 13, on page A13, is a book review entitled “Things You Don’t Tell Your Mudder” by Gregory Crouch about the book “It Takes A Tribe – Building the Tough Mudder Movement” by Will Dean (Portfolio, 228 pages).

The following quoted material tells an important story: “When Will Dean first submitted his perhaps-too-original business proposal to his Harvard Business School professors, they judged it “simplistic.” The most common response was, “Mr. Dean, do you really think anyone will pay you to run through mud?” Turns out, they would.”

“It isn’t difficult to imagine how preposterous the idea must have seemed in 2010: “Create a weekend adult obstacle course,” an untimed challenge that could only be negotiated with help from friends and teammates and strangers.” The article goes on to detail the success of the concept. “Today the Tough Mudder movement is a global enterprise, with more than 2.5 million participants and in excess of $100 million a year in revenues.” (WSJ, 10-13-2017, p. A13)

What are the lessons that can be learned here?  First: as we teach in our seminar, there should be no judgment of any idea as it is proposed in the session.  The rationale for this is simple: Any idea, proposed by anyone in the brainstorming session, may or may not have merit, but even ideas without direct application in the planning process might possibly trigger a winning idea in someone else’s mind.

Second: The process of judging the long-term worth of any idea needs to be objective, but must consider the “What if” of the idea. What if we really did follow through and use this wild idea?  What could happen to the company if we did this? Is the idea something which will have long-term value for us?  The team must step outside their zone of comfort to see the possibilities of the wild idea–not an easy trip but one that may be well worth the time to consider and evaluate.

Realistically, these ideas happen infrequently, if ever, to most organizations. Yet, it is important to keep one’s mind open to the possibilities generated in your consideration of potential opportunities so the one golden idea doesn’t escape your consideration.  It could be transformational.

If your innovation process needs some help, especially within the context of your strategic planning, please contact me to discuss how we can help you improve both your planning and your idea generation.  Dana Baldwin: 616-575-3193 or baldwin@cssp.com

I also suggest that you get a copy of our book, Elements of Innovation, here.

Have you been tasked with leading your organization through the strategic planning process?  Attend the Simplified Strategic Planning Seminar for in-depth instruction on this subject as well as all other aspects of Simplified Strategic Planning.

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 2017 by Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI — Reprint permission granted with full attribution

By Robert W. Bradford

One of the five key elements of getting better execution from your strategic planning is writing better objectives.  Ideally, the objective sets a clear target for implementation that helps focus the team and makes prioritization of action steps easier.

One of the trickiest parts of writing a good objective is stating the objective as a result.  Many executives struggle with this, as the easier way to write out your objectives tends to be stating the major action that will happen, rather than the result.  For example, if you want to introduce a new product, we could state that objective (poorly) as “Introduce new product”.  This is, unfortunately, an activity and not a result.  In practice, the issue with this distinction arises when your team is under time pressure (and when isn’t that the case?).    Why does time pressure make this a problem?  Simply because it is easier and faster to simply undertake the action (introduce the new product) instead of taking all the steps required to actually deliver the desired result (such as making the new product commercially successful)

At Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, we used to see companies set this type of objective and then wonder why the results were poor.  Since we started examining the quality of the result statement in the objective, we’ve noticed a couple of things that have greatly improved results.

First, the action plan is written around the actual intended result, rather than the activity.  This means the steps in the action plan are devised to answer the question: “How do we sell $40 million of this product?” rather than: “How do we get the new product out the door?”.

Second, the management of the implementation remains focused on the result rather than the activities, and often, as the action steps are modified during execution, the revisions become more relevant to the result.

Third, the team remains focused on the result, which sometimes leads to higher priority being given to the critical result-related steps in the execution of the action plan.

The only exception I routinely see to this which yields better results is when the action-type objective is about creating a strategic capability with extremely difficult-to-measure benefits.  In general, this difficulty often arises because of the cost and complexity of quantifying the costs and benefits of the capability.  The objective may be acceptable as an action because it is still highly critical to, for example, maintaining or building your strategic competency.

Take a look at your objectives.  If you’re like most companies, you may see some that have been stated as activities rather that results.  How can you fix this?  Here are a few simple steps:

1. Ask WHY you want to do the activity identified in the old objective.
2. Ask HOW you could do the old objective and end up unhappy with the result (and fix that).
3. Ask how you could PROVE that the objective was good for your organization.

Asking these three questions almost always leads to an improvement in the results-orientation of the objective.   If you’d like to see your strategic planning yield much better results, take a look at our seminars and strategic coaching services that have delivered billions in profit increases to companies like yours.

Do you struggle with writing results oriented objectives?  Attend the Simplified Strategic Planning Seminar for more in-depth instruction on this subject as well as all other aspects of Simplified Strategic Planning.

Robert Bradford is President & CEO of the Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc.  He can be reached at rbradford@cssp.com.

© Copyright 2017 by Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI — Reprint permission granted with full attribution

By Robert W. Bradford, President and CEO

Is it difficult to get your team on board with the planning process and the strategies developed?   When I started doing strategic planning, decades ago, I found myself frustrated at how long it took most teams to struggle through the capabilities assessment (Page 3.1 in the Simplified Strategic Planning Manual).  Over the years, we’ve made great progress in speeding up that part of the process, simplifying it to cover the most critical strategic strengths and weaknesses.  We’ve also reduced the time wasted on less-critical capabilities and capabilities where there is little disagreement among team members.  This still leaves us with a – sometimes lengthy – discussion over a handful of crucial strategic capabilities.

Today, I view those discussions as vital.  Not because we unearth mind-blowing new information, but because the process is a critical part of building strong buy-in from the team on the current state of the organization.  Over the years, I’ve noticed that the confidence the team has in the plan has a huge, positive impact on execution of the plan.  This makes perfect sense, because smart executives will focus their energy – and time – on those activities they believe will pay off in the long run.  Confidence in the strategic plan will increase the likelihood that their greatest efforts will go towards activities that will further the strategies you identify in your strategic plan.

The capabilities assessment discussion can be an invaluable tool for this – here are some pointers to get the most out of that part of the process:

1. Help your team recognize that disagreement may be the result of different perspectives.

In Simplified Strategic Planning, I refer to the “Tension Triangle”, based on real-world issues all organizations face.  (A typical organization will have a Tension Triangle having Sales, Operations and Finance as its three points.)  Team members often focus their work on optimizing one point on that triangle – and this can lead to disagreements.

2. Try to identify the source of disagreements.

Disagreements can come from differences of perspective, differences of information availability and differences in priority.  In rare cases, process may cause disagreements (for example, using a different analysis tool) – but identifying the root cause of the disagreement may be key to resolving it.

3. When disagreement seems difficult, identify objective means of agreeing on the facts

Usually, either externally sourced data or a simple experiment can help establish credible agreement.

4. Focus on facts and data, and understand when the conversation drifts into assumptions and opinions.

Saying “our customer service is bad” is vague and likely to cause arguments.  Saying “we responded to customer requests poorly” is less accurate and more prone to issues than “it took an average of 15 hours to respond to customer requests”.  Try to establish numbers and measurements, and push the conversation towards establishing objective ways to express what’s going on.

5. Try to remove the tendency to take things personally by focusing on facts and results rather than people and departments.

People will often respond with more emotion when they feel threatened or criticized.  By separating facts from people you can help build agreement on what the exact problems are without threatening people on the team.

Obviously, this isn’t an exhaustive list, but if you approach your capabilities discussion using these ideas, you should find the conversation is easier and a very productive way to build support for your strategic plan.

Do you have any approaches that you’ve found helpful for building support for your strategy?  Would you be interested in attending a webinar on the subject?  Let us know!

 

 

 

 

Robert Bradford is President & CEO of the Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc.  He can be reached at rbradford@cssp.com.

© Copyright 2017 by Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI — Reprint permission granted with full attribution

By M Dana Baldwin, Senior Consultant

Trust is a key element in business relationships.  Without trust, it can be much more difficult to get your people to engage effectively in your business.  It can be harder to get your message across to everyone in the business.  And it will most likely impede progress toward building the culture you want and obtaining the results you are aiming for in your strategic planning implementation.

Effective communications inside the organization are one of the keys to building trust. At the highest level, people need to see that you are willing to give them what they need in terms of information about the goals and objectives of the organization. Unless your people know what you want from them, and how those expectations impact what they do, it can be difficult to get everyone pulling their oars in the right direction. If you communicate to your people what is expected of them, and, importantly, why it is expected and how their efforts impact the results of the organization, those results should be better and more attainable. Included in this area should be two-way communications.  Do you value the input and ideas your staff can offer?  Do you listen attentively and respond fairly and objectively?  Do your people feel comfortable enough to trust you with their ideas, and to expect you will evaluate and value their input?

Do you keep your word?  Can people trust you to do what you say and to live to the standards you have expressed to them in your communications with them?  When you make a mistake, and everyone does on occasion, do you openly acknowledge your error and do everything possible to make it right?  Do you hold yourself to the same standards you expect them to attain?  Are you leading by example?

Do you share your strategies and plans with your people? People need to understand where the organization is going in order to make their own contributions to the overall results.  Have you effectively communicated with them so they know what is the overall course and direction of the company?

Focus on good results and contributions, and do so in public, so others see you supporting your people.  If you need to criticize someone, do so in private.  This helps the individual being criticized to understand that you respect them, and that you are trying to help them.  Criticizing someone in public is humiliating to not only the person being berated, but also anyone else who views the scene.

Concentrate on building long term relationships, built on values, basic principles and high level ethics. Think long term and how your actions affect everyone you are in contact with in the organization.  Building trust through effective communications at multiple levels will help build your team’s confidence and effectiveness.  This will help you attain the long term results you are aiming for from your strategic planning.  Your team will support you and give you the effort needed to move the organization in the direction you are striving to go.

We can help with your team building, strategy formulation and effective implementation.  Contact me at baldwin@cssp.com or at 616-575-3193 to discuss how we may help you.

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

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