Category Archives: Strategic Planning

Critical Keys to Success

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From my associate, Janice Giannini.

Today, businesses face unprecedented shifting sands upon which to build and grow.

‍While I would like to opine that there are a few more significant challenges, and the others are potentially less compelling and volatile – that doesn’t reflect reality. Think for just a moment about a few of these challenges:

  • The advent of quantum computing: while not imminent across all verticals, it is undeniable and will disrupt technology, people, and cyber security.
  • Maintaining a cyber-secure environment: currently a very challenging objective to achieve and becoming more so by the day.
  • Incorporating technology shifts: navigating the turbulent waters of disruptive technologies, robotics, and diverse systems integration across multiple verticals.
  • Impact of Generative AI: Momentum will increase as GAI matures and impacts all aspects of our lives.
  • Globally complex supply chains: impacted by economic stability, foreign  relationships, and politics.

The most significant leadership imperative to build and grow in the above environment is recognizing and incorporating effective strategies to coalesce:

  • Workforce demographics are changing and will continue to do so.
  • Global competition for top-talent recruitment, deployment, and retention of talent.
  • Generational expectations are changing and vary widely.
  • There is a greater need to address purpose and value-driven plans and operations.

‍The 200 words above are enough to scare anybody. Please sit back and ponder where we go from here.

Insufficient trust, understanding, communications, connections, development, and connectedness among the people who matter overwhelmingly contribute to many business issues, challenges, and failures. The people who matter are everyone involved in the success or failure of the enterprise. 

No one can build and grow an enterprise alone. Ideally, everybody needs to row in the same direction at the same speed. The more complex the technology, business environment, and conflicting values become, the more critical the people become.

How is this accomplished? You get what you prioritize and reward. Leaders are not doing this to be friendly people. They must do this to stay relevant and build and grow their businesses. Change and growth start by looking in the mirror and honestly assessing the current state.

It has never been more urgent for leaders at all levels, primarily the executive level, first to improve their communications and connectedness capabilities. Here are a few suggestions for strengthening trust, communications, and connectedness:

  • Listen to hear and learn and not explain and defend, perhaps even asking what questions you should be asking.
  • Prioritize building trust up/down and across the connected enterprise.
  • Reach out to a broader scope of voices, especially the voices with whom you disagree or least understand.
  • Demonstrate the purpose and values of the business and be adept at flowing this message from strategy to execution so the staff can understand how their particular work is directly related and essential.
  • Recognize that continuous learning in today’s world is not just for new employees but everyone.
  • Consider apprenticeships to help develop people as well as effective communication and connectedness.
  • Consider buddy systems and reverse mentoring as a standard practice. The newer people learn about the business and its past growth, and the more     experienced people gain effective cross-generational communications and capabilities.
  • Formal leadership development is essential for business leaders. They may or may not have the title, but they are leaders, nonetheless.

‍Past lessons are an excellent foundation as businesses navigate a rapidly changing business, economic, social, and global environment. However, continued growth is a function of standing in the moment, embracing the future, and helping all of us lift the tide!

‍Helping raise the tide for everyone requires not only developing an attuned sense of what to do but also learning what to stop doing-and then stopping doing it, even if it has been successful in the past.

Demonstrating the honesty and humility to share that we need to change, and we may not have all of the answers right now, can be incredibly motivating if everybody feels like part of the team working together to move forward in a positive growth direction.

Please take a few moments to consider the following two questions.

  • How will you use newly gained insights if you see something useful?
  • If it offended you in some way, why?  How are you going to use that information?

Navigating the Road to Success: Strategic and Operating Plans Explained

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In the world of business management, the secret to a company’s ongoing success often lies in adequately assessing vulnerabilities and careful planning. This planning usually splits into two crucial paths: the strategic and operating plans. Understanding these distinctions, differentiating between these plans, and using them effectively is vital when leading an organization.

Cracking the Code: Strategic vs. Operating Plans

Strategic Plan

Top management usually crafts a strategic plan, laying out the long-term direction and goals of the organization, generally stretching over three to five years. It contains the organization’s mission, vision, and central values. It serves as a clear roadmap, aligning the company’s resources and efforts to reach set long-term objectives.

Strategic thinking includes a deeper analysis than is customarily used day-to-day. It typically examines external elements such as market trends, competition, and economic forces, intending to guide the organization through these factors to achieve or maintain a competitive edge. Examples such as a SLOT (Strengths, Limitations, Opportunities, Threats) or PESTLE (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental) analysis help foresee and prepare the company for potential challenges, vulnerabilities, and opportunities within the broader market. This part of the process should also assess existing internal organizational competencies, longer-term succession planning, and human resources elements.

Operating Plan

On the other hand, an operating plan focuses on the organization’s inner workings and digs deeper into the day-to-day activities and operations of the business. Updated yearly, it splits the strategic plan into short-term, doable steps and tasks. This plan spells out significant initiatives for the upcoming period, resource and budget allocation decisions reached, timelines, and who is responsible for what. It transforms the broad objectives of the strategic plan into specific targets and measurable KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) or GKRs (Goals and Key Results) for different departments and teams.

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Making the Most of Strategic and Operating Plans
Strategic Plan
  1. Vision Alignment: Ensures that the organization’s actions and decisions align with its vision and mission, creating a united effort to reach long-term success.
  2. Resource Optimization: Helps tune resource allocation, centering on projects and initiatives that align with the organization’s strategic aspirations.
  3. Risk Management: Equips organizations to spot potential risks and vulnerabilities early on and develop strategies to counter them effectively.
  4. Innovation and Adaptation: Fosters innovation and enables organizations to change and grow in line with shifting market dynamics or conditions.
Operating Plan
  1. Resource Allocation & Budget Management: Aids in carefully determining and monitoring budgets, clearly reflecting the financial impacts of various activities and projects.
  2. Organizational Alignment: Ensures the organization has the optimal operating structure to execute the strategy successfully. (Think boxes on an org chart)
  3. Task Management: Streamlines task management by clearly defining roles and responsibilities for team members.
  4. Operational Efficiency: Supports operational efficiency by designing streamlined processes and procedures, minimizing inefficiency and wastage.
  5. Performance Measurement: Paves the way for evaluating individual and departmental performance by setting up KPIs and targets.

In conclusion, the synergistic relationship between a strategic and an operating plan is crucial in guiding an organization’s future. While the strategic plan lays out the long-term vision and goals, the operating plan breaks these into practical steps, offering an organized and clear approach to business management. Both plans are essential in navigating the intricate business world and guiding the organization toward success.

Don’t Be Afraid of Strategic Planning

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From my associate Janice Giannini.

Emotions drive most peoples’ actions; we don’t like admitting that. We want to believe that reason and logic drive our business decisions. And in some cases, that is true.

There is one case where that needs to be on point. That case is the “job” of strategic planning. Why does it strike fear in the hearts of some? Let’s get the easy answer out of the way; it takes a lot of time and resources and is not fun.

There are many tools to assist with developing the Plan, so we don’t need to focus on that. Discussing the uncomfortable and risky part of the job is our intent.

The reality is that no one has a crystal ball, and there can be severe consequences for making the wrong choice, no choice, or missing the window of opportunity.

Looking through a critical lens might help us focus on the uncomfortable part of the job versus staying in our collective comfort zone. The questions are simple, but the answers are not.

  • First, we must understand our collective comfort zone, which typically surfaces in conversations about what we do and don’t control. This causes us to entertain the most appropriate balance point, even if we think we can’t get there. A strategy typically has many unknowns and touch points out of our control.
  • Do we understand the difference between a Strategy and a Strategic Plan? The risk is the Strategy. The challenge here is credibly understanding the risk/ reward of the strategic options and objectively discerning those with a low chance of success, regardless of emotional response.
  • What is our comfort level with the Strategy? If we are too comfortable with it, are we on target? A strategy in unpredictable times will likely cause a fair amount of dis-ease. The consequences of not projecting forward enough could be disastrous in the long term.
  • What are the potential single points of failure embedded in our Strategy? Is there a reasoned response to them?
  • Do we have a credible Strategic Plan? Is it simple, straightforward, and understood by the leadership team? If not, it might need additional attention.

As a business critically examines these characteristics of its Strategy, openly recognizing the limitations of available information and bringing in partners with a different lens might also clarify the strategic path.

Strategist or Process Manager?

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From my associate Grant Tate.

There are two kinds of people working in strategic planning:

  • Those who look at a picture in a newspaper and see nothing but a collection of dots. Those are the business analysts.
  • Then there are those who look at a pile of dots and see pictures. Call them strategists.

We used this guideline to select people for our strategic planning department. We needed both. We needed strategists who could see a complex international economic, social, and technological environment, identify opportunities, and set directions.

We also needed analysts to help us gather, parse, organize, and make sense out of mountains of information.

In addition to those specialists, we also had some talented people who could go both ways—they could process the data but also had rare insight and talent to make sense of it and imagine creative ways for our organization to be successful.

After becoming a consultant, I noticed two types of people helping organizations with setting directions.

One type, the strategist, focuses on strategy development—helping an organization understand its situation, dream about the future, and select a path to success. The strategist may employ a proven process, but the process is more like an innovation process than a predetermined standard “let’s make a plan” approach.

The second consultant uses a predesigned and sometimes standard step-by-step process, resulting in a standard strategic plan format. (Search the internet if you want some examples. They’re all over.) Some of these approaches result in a long list of action steps with a low probability of being implemented. It’s almost as if the process strategic planner is saying, “If we keep on following this process, we will find the answers we need. Sorry folks, you won’t find it.

As you can guess by now, I’m a strong believer in the first type, the strategist. Organizations need good strategies, not a book written at the end of a process.

But any strategic approach should start with answering some important questions.

  • What is our dream for this organization? What do we really want?
  • Are we aiming high enough? What would it mean if we shot for the moon?
  • Do we have the right leadership to realize our dream?
  • What is limiting our ability to realize it?
  • Are we willing to do what it takes to realize our dream?
  • What are our guidelines for how we treat each other? What are our guidelines for how we treat the customers?

These may not be the right questions for you or your organization, but you get the idea. Start with the strategic questions you need to answer before ever kicking off a strategic planning approach. Work with your team to develop the right questions and answer them together. Then, you can design an approach to help you answer the questions.

If you need a consultant to help you formulate or facilitate your strategic thinking or your process to answer them, find out what approach that consultant will use with your team. It starts with the questions. So, get with it!

Transitioning From An Entrepreneurship to a Professionally Managed Firm – Part II

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Editor’s Note: This is the second installment of an ongoing series surrounding what it takes to move from a relatively small, micro-business to a more robust, larger organization. Each article explores a different aspect of that journey.

In the 1st installment, I discussed the initial phases of making the transition from a business in its infancy to becoming a sustainable business. We discussed the challenges faced and the growing pains experienced by many businesses in that part of the growth curve.

We will identify and help you better understand the six critical organizational development tasks in this issue. These items are essential when the organization is experiencing fast growth and doesn’t have the luxury of a well-seasoned management team.

A strategic view of the situation must begin to shape and harness the resources that can take the business through future phases. This process will involve:

  1. Identifying a market niche
  2. Appropriately expanding the product and service mix
  3. Acquiring or building additional resources
  4. Developing and implementing a system of back-office functions that support production
  5. Developing and supporting the proper management systems
  6. Creating and maintaining a corporate culture that supports the current initiatives and future growth

 

Task One: One of the subjects we have covered in articles and sessions is the need to become a well-known fixture within a market niche. Identifying and defining what that market niche or market segmentation strategy will be going forward is critical.

The firm must look to stake out or capture a sustainable competitive advantage that will grow over time. If a firm is fortunate, it selects an opportunity in an area with little or no current competition.

It is a tremendous advantage to be the “first kid on the block” to do something in some instances. Not only can you potentially fly below the competition’s radar for a while, but you can also develop momentum from the public.

Suppose the “cost of entry” for competitors is high enough. In that case, you can discourage competition from coming onto the scene until your firm starts to hit a capacity “pinch point.” An old expression from the oil and gas industry says, “Until the first pipeline is full, someone can’t justify the high cost of building a second line that will also be running at less than capacity.” There is a cautionary tale to be noted. Changing market focus without adequate support from the customer base can be a costly mistake. Think of the number of firms that have over-expanded their product or service lines. They are seen as abandoning their sweet spot in the market. They have lost focus by trying to become everything to everyone.

Task Two: The second area is appropriately expanding the product and service mix to meet that market niche. This challenge includes the design of a product and the service delivery aspect.

To be successful in this realm is dependent on effective strategic market planning. Understand your desired potential customers and prospects. Learn what want(s) and need(s) exist, how they like to buy or purchase the product or service under consideration and what can tap into perceived value.

Task Three: The third element involves acquiring or building the additional internal and external resources that adequately meet the expectations of that market niche.

It is possible that a firm has identified the right market opportunities and built or packaged the right product for that line of business and yet not be able to compete in it effectively. This shortfall may be caused by inadequate financial resources, either from a cash flow or capital point of view, or insufficient production and support. This shortfall can be in physical space and equipment or people, whether staff or management positions.

Carefully balance the need to manage and invest in new people and equipment to support the current demand levels with the projected growth needs. For example, poor investment decisions in infrastructure will cause the firm to have to go into the market for additional physical space or equipment prematurely when this doesn’t happen well.

Since this change usually negatively impacts the flow of the operation, this can be the equivalent of “buying something twice instead of buying it right the first time.” This situation gets tricky because the firm must have the financial strength and cash flow resources to avoid becoming overextended during this period of underestimated rapid expansion.

Task Four: Author Eric Flamholtz, Ph.D., described these operating systems as “organizational plumbing.” While it certainly isn’t a sexy area to talk about, inadequate “plumbing” can be a tremendous frustration for internal staff and customers alike when trying to get answers quickly. The fourth area of concern is developing and implementing a system of back-office functions and systems to support day-to-day production. This area covers the aspects of accounting and payroll, advertising and marketing support, customer service, sales production and human resources management (that would show up as recruiting and training) to execute the strategy adequately.

Author Eric Flamholtz, Ph.D., described these operating systems as “organizational plumbing.” While it certainly isn’t a sexy area to talk about, inadequate “plumbing” can be a tremendous frustration for internal staff and customers alike when trying to get answers quickly.

Task Five: The fifth area that must be touched on, especially in larger firms, is developing and supporting the proper management systems. These are the pillars that will need to support the business long-term. These traditional areas of planning, organizing, scheduling, budgeting, contingency planning, etc. provide management oversight and control. Developing a planning system and a management-development system would typically fall into this area.

This area includes things like who reports to whom (organizational structure and chain of command) and how the workflow is organized. Preparing the next generation of leaders and managers to run the business is planned. Control aspects get addressed within this item. Processes that define items such as budget, goals, reward systems, and performance appraisal need to be agreed upon and implemented.

Task Six: The sixth area is creating and maintaining an agreed-upon corporate culture that supports the current initiatives and future growth. As we have discussed in other articles, establishing corporate values that are well-publicized and shared guides people’s behavior.

Values can speak to how the organization wants to operate even “when no one is looking.” Well-constructed values typically define expectations and relationships between and among employees, customers, suppliers, stakeholders, partners, the community, and any regulators as appropriate.

The culture also speaks to all the unwritten rules, norms and expectations that play out as “that’s just the way we do things around here.” When carefully crafted and managed, it can profoundly impact both the people inside and outside the firm or organization. It can communicate, “This is what we stand for, and this is what we won’t fall for.”

Studies have shown that whenever most people in an organization believe their top leaders are honest and adhere to very high ethical standards, they too will behave that way at work. When they believe that top managers say one thing but do another in terms of ethics and honesty, they will slip and behave in a consistent way with what they perceive. It is almost like them saying to themselves, “If top management is going to get theirs, I may as well take mine.”

These six areas are critical to the development of a firm as it progresses along the growth curve and must become intentionally integrated or symbiotic. They must build on each other. Similar to Situational Leadership, where the leaders’ style must flex to meet reality, these areas will need attention based on the organization’s challenges at any given time.

In future installments, we will further explore the predictable stages of organizational growth, discuss developmental items and tactics, explain and assess growing pains and plan the organizational transitions. Watch for the next installment.

Sustainable Capitalism: A Necessity – The Alternative is Self-Destruction

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From my associate Janice Giannini.

Sustainable CapitalismWhen we talk about sustainable capitalism today, the conversations frequently focus on the physical environment. While that is a critical element of sustainability, it is not the total picture. Sustainability needs to integrate the four legs of the stool: human, social, ecologic, and economic environments. They all go hand in hand to create the desired result long term.

The current business environment addresses this topic by focusing on ESG and DE&I. The challenge for all companies and individuals is recognizing the difference between initiatives and making real progress. The adage in the business world is that you get what you measure.

In Sustainable Capitalism, do we understand what we want and need and how to measure it effectively? The critical question is: do the metrics correlate with real progress?

Capitalism is a fantastic economic framework. It has created incredible prosperity across all aspects of our society, unleashing innovation at an unprecedented rate. That is its appeal and opportunity to just about anyone. But, in addition to its upsides and assets, it also has its downside and potential liabilities.

There are many challenges that capitalists face; among them being:

  • Danger to focus only on the economic leg driven by short-term only thinking
  • Potential to create monopolies
  • Possibility to cause environmental issues either at home or abroad
  • Likely to increase the wealth gap, thereby creating social tension and exploitation and leaving a significant percentage of the population behind economically, socially, and culturally

 

Creating a sustainably capitalistic society requires both individuals and companies to understand and implement practices that may negatively impact the short term. Unfortunately, the short-term impact may be the single most uncomfortable reality. However, other sustainability practices may enhance short-term results. As a result, there is a balance that needs consideration.

A few questions to consider:

  • Are the four legs of the stool understood as they apply in your company?
  • Are the boundaries around the sustainability of all four legs understood?
  • How do you determine the effective balance across short/mid/long-term returns and economics? How do you address that publicly and politically?
  • Are decisions made with intentionality? What are the consequences of these decisions?
  • Can you live with the consequences of those decisions? Short/Mid/Long term?
  • Are there metrics to indicate crossing the line that will disadvantage sustainability?

 

I offer that sustainability is simply a high-stakes risk assessment and management of the business. Both short-term only and long-term only thinking have a high probability of being unsustainable.

As neither extreme works well, sustainability requires a balance among Short/Mid/Long term practices and across many risk categories: financial, reputation, technical, strategic, social, supply chain, political, and perception.

If any of these is disproportionately driving the outcome, is that where you need to be?

How Do You Know If You Are On The Right Track Strategically?

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Right path strategicallyFrom my associate Janice Giannini.

When technology and societal priorities are rapidly changing, the conversation frequently arises “is our strategy relevant and successful?”

There isn’t a standard quiz that can give you a grade of A, B, C, or F to answer that question. Instead, there are several lenses to view the effectiveness and relevance of your strategy and execution.

Conversational lenses to consider:

  • Are your goals clear? Do you have a strategy? Do most voices understand it well enough to speak it and fully support it?
  • How well do you understand the risks of the changing conditions in the marketplace that influence a strategy and can pivot as necessary? What are the conditions under which you redirect? When do you wait it out?
  • Are your values clear, and fully represented in your strategy, and is your leadership style consistent and supportive of those values and plans? If ethics and game-plan don’t align, it can create chaos in an organization.
  • Under what conditions do you exhibit conflicting priorities and expect others to deal with them?
  • Is the senior leadership team as effective as it needs to be? Or are they good in their sphere, but lacking the insight and ability to cooperate fully in the company’s best interest? Are they rewarded for that cooperation?
  • How effective is coordination across the company/organization? Do people fully understand the current state and desired state? If you assume an individual makes ten decisions a day, if they don’t understand the strategic goals and plan, there is a significant probability they will make the wrong choice half the time. Is that ok?
  • Are you investing enough in leadership development? It has been argued for decades whether leadership is innate or developable. Some are innate. Many are teachable. Is this a fluff expense, or do you consider it an investment in your future? Can you achieve your stretch goals if the leadership team isn’t growing faster than your goals?
  • Is there enough vertical communication? If the leaders of an organization are not effectively communicating across and down the entire team, you are asking people to “defend something with one hand tied behind their back.” Why? That is hard to do! They will be hugely more effective if they have two hands!

 

I hear from some leaders that this all sounds great, but we are so busy, that we don’t have the time.

If you observe successful athletes, they set themselves up for success before even walking onto the field/stage. But, unfortunately, we don’t see that part.

I want to share a straightforward example. I take voice lessons. I sang whatever the coach instructed me to sing when I first started. He coached, and we stopped and started as necessary. In my mind, I was maximizing the amount of instruction and insight I was gaining in each lesson because I was singing most of the time. As I matured, I understood that my singing was so much better if I took the time to align my vocal instrument and my breathing. Am I singing a little less in each session? Yes, I am. But the quality of the result and my return on investment of my time is enormous.

Is your strategic instrument aligned? If it would be aligned, might your ROI be significantly higher? For example, consider that a slightly less robust, well-executed strategy may net higher results and ROI than a more aggressive plan not effectively implemented.

Early Warning Signs

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Peering forward into 2022. It may be the most challenging role for all organizational leaders.

Over the years, I’ve written many articles about the benefits of strategic thinking. I discussed that change in the business environment is inevitable. You will probably agree with this sentiment. Progress results in more change, usually leading to further progress.

I don’t often write about awareness and recognition of early warning signs.

Since this is winter in the northeastern US, temperature fluctuations around the freezing mark are common. Any standing water goes through its natural freezing and thawing cycle.

There is a phenomenon called black ice (or sometimes clear ice)—the thin coating of glazed ice on a road surface or sidewalk. The ice is not black but visually transparent, allowing the asphalt road below to appear. Often, it is almost but not totally invisible. It can be treacherous to drive or walk on – especially if you are surprised.

One key to handling this condition is consciously increasing our awareness and paying more attention to detail. Black ice usually gives us clues and indications that it is present. At night, for example, our headlights shine differently, and the bumpers of cars ahead of us seem to reflect on the road surface. As soon as we spot the signs, we can immediately execute a safer driving style.

Where are the examples of early warning signs or precursory symptoms in your industry?

We don’t have to predict the future-just better prepare to look for it.