Hackbraten Consulting Approach to Strategic Planning

August 26, 2014 by Leave a Comment

I find conducting an effective strategic planning effort starts with assessing previous strategic plans and the effort it took to produce the strategy. Like most everything else, the success of a strategic planning session is leader driven, no matter the size, net worth, or business endeavor. Strategic vision and operational execution equal success.  The SWOT analysis is only part of the process.

My approach to a Strategic Planning Seminar includes determining your objectives for drafting a new strategy; ensuring the required and relevant data and information is used; and makes sure that vastly different stakeholder requirements are address with caution.

A sound strategic plan comes from a crystal-clear understanding of where your organization’s current place in the operating environment compared to the future operating environment your organization will find itself.

And for each strategic issue that is formulated, you have adequately answered these five key questions.

1. What are feasible alternatives we could pursue to address this issue?

2. What potential barriers exist in the realization of the alternatives?

3. What action steps might we take to achieve the alternatives or over-come the barriers to their realization?

4. What major actions must be taken within the next year (or two) to implement the action steps?

5. What actions must be taken in the next six months, and who is responsible?

Filed Under: Strategic Planning

Plans, Programs, Projects and Strategic Initiatives.

April 15, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Plans, Programs, Projects and Strategic Initiatives,…What are we really trying to accomplish?

A senior executive once asked me how strategic initiatives should be developed. I’m suspect he was fishing for an impetuous to get his senior staff to look at what the organization was doing to make progress on the strategic plan. Well, after considering I had no idea how his current strategic initiatives were developed, I scheduled an office call to lay out the purpose of these important activities, and elaborate on how life is breathed into them.

First, a little background on the subject; I think the most credible information on the subject of Strategic Initiatives comes from Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton use of the term in their book The Execution Premium, Linking Strategy to Operations for Competitive Advantage. Harvard Business Press, Boston, MA, 2008. They define strategic initiatives as “collections of finite-duration discretionary projects and programs, outside of the organization’s day-to-day operational activities that are designed to help the organization achieve its targeted performance.”

It appears to me that in 2008 Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton were writing with regard to how an organization can effectively connect a strategic plan and (map) to the operational level. Essentially, tactics, techniques, or procedures aimed at executing strategy. The Project Management Institute defines a project as “A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.”

I couldn’t find the process map of how, exactly, these initiatives are developed beyond an over-arching construct. “Soliciting project ideas from leaders and frontline employees and/or bundling a set of identified programs to convert the strategic vision into reality or (bundling programs into one overarching strategic initiative.)” I did find discussion that says a strategic initiative is not the same thing as a strategic goal, objective, or vision.

Kaplan and Norton also provide three tools regarding Strategic Initiatives; (1) Initiative Management Process Model, (2) Initiative Alignment Tool, and (3) Initiative Portfolio Model. 

Initiative Portfolio

Given this demonstration you can immediately draw a comparison to how Baldrige addresses Action Plans in the Performance Excellence Criteria; in none other than, Category 2.2—Strategy Implementation: How do you implement your strategy?

  • 2.2a(1) How do you develop your action plans? What are your key short- and longer-term actions plans, and what is their relationship to your strategic objectives?
  • 2.2a(2) How do you deploy your action plans throughout the organization to your workforce and to key suppliers and partners, as appropriate, to ensure that you achieve your key strategic objectives? How do you ensure that you can sustain the key outcomes of your action plans?

The 5-Step Action Plan Development Process shown below can be used to develop your organization’s action plans, or Strategic Initiatives.

ActionPlanDevelop

The link between Action Plan or Strategic Initiative development is in step 1, 2, and 3. Here is where action is linked to strategy. The essential elements of an Action Plan include: (1) Objectives, (2) Tasks, (3) Success Criteria, (4) Who, (5) Time Frame, (6) Resources.

ActionPlanElements

When the essential elements of the action plan are complete, you have effectively connected your strategic plan and (map) to the operational level in your organization.

 

Filed Under: Baldrige Excellence Criteria, Strategic Planning Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Is your Educational Organization Sustaining its Performance?

March 9, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Do you have a sound strategy to empower your organization to reach your goals, improve results, and become more competitive by aligning your plans, processes, decisions, people, actions, and results?

Having a systematic and effective way to go about achieving all this may seem overwhelming for sure.  If the major focus on is the next board meeting, the next tax levy, the next teacher that is retiring and will need replaced, or the changes desired for next school year, then maybe a proven, comprehensive approach would help.  After all, aligning plans, processes, decisions, people, actions and results may be easier said than done.  And how do you really know if you’re being successful if you don’t see a spike (up or down) in your performance measures and they seem to just move along at a steady state; no real improvement and no real decline.  Is your organization reaching it’s full potential?  What about the future? What changes are on the horizon that you know will take shape and have an impact on your organization by the time your district has to go to the ballot box again for renewed funding?  Will it be enough, and are you prepared to ensure it will be?

Where is your organization along the improvement continuum?  Reacting to problems as they arrive with fortitude and precision.  Or, implementing preventative measures learned from previous experience along the way to a proactive approach to operations.  Better yet, has a systematic evaluation system been implemented to predict the most likely situations that are most susceptible to breakdowns; augmented by sensors that show indications of needed attention at the earliest possible signs of trouble.  Or has your organization implemented systematic, repeatable methods of organizational assessment,  analysis, and innovation as the primary approach to prevention of organizational stagnation or dis-function? Try this short quiz to see where you may be on assessing your organization.

A simple test of where you may be along the improvement continuum would be to write down what you believe are the answers to the following questions.  Make your answers quick and simple.  You shouldn’t take more that a couple of moments to answer each question.  Once you’ve completed the quiz and select “submit quiz” please scroll down to the bottom of the next screen.

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[mlw_quizmaster quiz=1]

 

Filed Under: Baldrige Excellence Criteria, Strategic Planning