Summary:

Strategic planning is a process in which organizations define expectations of the future, identify resources that will be needed to ensure success, and take the necessary steps to achieve expectations. There is a myriad of methods used by organizations to determine their focus, direction and measures of success.

Strategic planning strives to answer the following questions, “Who are we?”; “Where are we going?” ; and “How we will get to where we are going?”  By defining these questions, organizations leverage their focus and their resources, which leads to a greater chance of success in achieving both short and long term goals. However, the best strategic plan will fail if it is not worked into daily operations and measured for results.

Article Quote:

“Strategic thinking and business planning processes should help you create a clear sense of purpose, direction and focus for all stakeholders that is measurable, sustainable, requires involvement and drives the actions of everyone — yes, everyone — in the organization to achieve predetermined results.”

Link: http://ordsunshinepumpers.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/a-conversation-about-the-economy-strategic-planning/

There is a fourth question that needs be addressed when developing a strategic plan; “What kind of environment can we expect to encounter along the way?”

Both the internal and external environment needs to be analyzed with the use of scenario planning, to deal with these environmental factors. For example, is the internal atmosphere – the individuals in the organization – going to be resistant to the plan? Is there new processes being introduced that will cause change resistance or do some members in the organization feel the plan is fundamentally flawed and therefore will be hesitant in helping achieve results?

These questions and others need to be asked in the development process not only to identify possible conflicts, but also to have a plan in place if they are encountered.

Fore more on strategic planning, see http://www.performancesolutionstech.com/category/strategicplanning/

Summary:

Marketing excellence programmes have become commonplace in the pharmaceutical industry. The concept of these programmes suggests that as industries mature and it becomes harder to differentiate technologically, competitive advantage flows from the ability to segment, position and deliver extended value propositions.

Yet, after 12 years of examination, Dr. Brian Smith finds the results of this up-skilling frenzy disappointing. By and large, these firms describe their marketing excellence programmes as costing lots of money and even more time, but delivering little tangible improvement in capabilities or performance. Why this is can be summarized in seven fundamental flaws that are often embedded into the structure of marketing excellence programmes. For a complete explanation of the seven deadly sins of marketing excellence, follow the link below.

Article Quote:

“The recent blooming of a thousand marketing excellence programmes in the pharmaceutical industry has been one of the most noticeable trends in our industry, but it has not been surprising. The same phenomenon has been observed in other sectors, from consumer goods to cars, from IT to financial services, as technical innovation became a more difficult route to differentiation.”

Link: http://pharmexec.findpharma.com/pharmexec/Europe/The-Seven-Deadly-Sins-of-Marketing-Excellence/ArticleStandard/Article/detail/657777?contextCategoryId=48182

The research conducted by Dr. Brian Smith reveals that the reasons for the pharmaceutical industry’s difficulty in extracting value from marketing excellence lie mostly in the industry culture. The culture assumes that a social science-based discipline like marketing can be managed in the same way as we manage natural science disciplines.

For more on strategic planning, see http://www.performancesolutionstech.com/category/strategicplanning/

Summary:

In the arena of Non-Profit Organizations, a strategic marketing plan provides the foundation needed for the organization’s influence on it’s members and potential members. The goal is to have a compelling enough message for your audience to align themselves with and “buy into” with donations or memberships.

The six steps to follow in creating a marketing plan, as highlighted by Marla Cooper from Bloom Consulting, Inc. follows:

1. Form a Marketing Committee

2. Set the Goals of your Committee

3. Do your research

4. Establish your Mission and Vision

5. Develop your strategic marketing plan

6. Execute your strategic marketing plan

Article Quote:

“Why is it that I’m often met with those glazed stares when I’m brought in as a Strategic Marketing Consultant and I ask to see an organization’s “Communications Plan”. This should be as basic to any organization as an Operating Budget and yet it seldom exists as a comprehensive, integrated and well thought out document. Why is this so often neglected by organizations when it is clearly so key to success in today’s competitive and dynamic marketplace? Possibly because there are many misconceptions about what a Strategic Marketing Plan is and what is should do.”

Link: http://www.howsescandy.com/marketing-plan/taking-on-the-“battle”-of-strategic-marketing-6-steps-to-developing-a-strategic-marketing-plan-that-works

Although not necessarily in the right order, the steps and advice given in this article are relevant. Begin by knowing what your mission and vision statements are as these will provide a foundation to work from. Next, conduct market research, set your goals, and develop an action plan to achieve these goals.

Developing a strategic plan asks these questions: “Where do we want to be?”; “How are we going to get there?”; “What kind of environment do we expect to face along the way?”

After these questions are answered and a plan is in place, implementing the plan is the next step. Make sure the goals/initiatives are translatable into daily tasks. As long as they are integrated into daily operations, the plan will be “worked” and results can be measured.

For more on strategic planning, see http://www.performancesolutionstech.com/category/strategicplanning/

Summary:

Succession planning refers to the development of a comprehensive and coordinated plan designed to insure an orderly replacement of key members of an organization when they are lost to the organization for any reason. Succession planning also provides for training and mentoring prior to the change. Management first needs to identify the key employees within the organization and provide a plan for their eventual replacement.

This task should not be delayed until the employee nears retirement because many key people leave the company well before retirement age. There are a number of reasons an employee may leave a company. For instance, they could be lured away by another company, become ill and unable to work, move away, and the list goes on. It is not only wise to perform succession planning, it is an obligation management has to shareholders as well.

Article Quote:

“Many organizations have Succession Insurance policies that are designed to provide the necessary funds for the recruitment and training of new personnel in the event of a sudden loss of a key member of the organization. This is one indication of how serious this issue can be to a large business. It is a part of the risk management element of the overall business financial plan.”

Link: http://strategicplanning.doodig.com/2010/02/17/have-you-considered-succession-planning-2/

History has shown that succession planning is critical to the continued success of the business. Many companies falter and even fail with the loss of key personnel. Businesses have the option of taking out an insurance policy to cover training costs and lost profits directly related to key employee loss. However, this could be avoided with management’s careful consideration and development of a plan.

Succession planning should not be limited to large corporations. It should also be performed in smaller businesses because the smaller the business is, the more important each member is to the business’s success. Succession planning  reduces this risk and is considered as important as any other form of insurance in the overall risk management picture.

For more on strategic planning, see http://www.performancesolutionstech.com/category/strategicplanning/

Summary:

For years Robert Bradford, strategic planning expert, focused on four variables in the Simplified Strategic Planning Process– value, probability, management effort and financial risk when assessing strategic opportunities.  However, recently he decided to include a secondary analysis of opportunities, undertaken when reviewing opportunity screening worksheets.

The purpose of this screen is to enable your team to quickly sort out the opportunities with the greatest strategic potential for your organization. Start by asking the team to rate each opportunity on two dimensions – resource requirements and strategic impact on the organization. This process helps management prioritize initiatives and justify saying “no” to those that impede the strategic progress.

In evaluating initiatives, the no-brainers are those with high impact and low resource requirements.  The tricky discussions – and often the most strategically dangerous issues – occur in the middle level zone – opportunities with moderate impact and/or moderate resource requirements. These opportunities can mire your strategic level resources in initiatives that produce only incremental improvements in your organization’s performance, while more fundamental, truly strategic opportunities are starved for resources because they are “too difficult”.

Article Quote:

“This screening is particularly useful when you are evaluating far more opportunities than your team can realistically handle (in my experience, from three to ten strategic opportunities, depending on the team and its resources). ”

Link: http://www.cssp.com/strategicplanning/blog/?p=557

Evaluating strategic initiatives with this process creates better focus on those initiatives that provide the greatest strategic potential for the organization. The company will be in a better position if it can accomplish a few key initiatives well than to work on several with no real results.

For more on strategic planning, seehttp://www.performancesolutionstech.com/category/strategicplanning/

Summary:

Buying an established and profitable business without a strategic plan and seeing it go south is not bad luck, it’s the result of not being prepared. This is exactly what happened to a gentleman after he bought an established business. Right after the purchase, two key employees left and several long-time customers went elsewhere as their loyalty was to the previous owner, not the new owner. Profits plunged and now the owner is working hard just to keep the doors open.

The new owner never stopped and asked “What would happen to the business if a key employee left  or if long-time customers left for lack of loyalty to new owners?” In fact, he didn’t have any plan and thought he could walk in and everything would run smoothly.

If you want luck, then make it part of your action plan. Commit your goals to writing. Work your action plan, plan your work. Then see all of the luck come your way – or if you want, believe that you have been lucky.

Article Quote:

“Simply speaking, the failure to plan is planned failure. Without an action plan to begin to guide a business or even an individual, the end result is usually walking down the wrong path along with a lot of spraying and praying going on.”

Link: http://strategicplanning.doodig.com/2010/02/15/strategic-planning-tip-bad-luck-is-the-result-of-not-planning/

An old quote states: “Good luck happens when preparedness meets opportunity.” Strategic planning consists of knowing your market, your organizational structure,  purpose and vision, company strengths and weaknesses, and knowing where you want to the company to be in the future. Action is taking that distant future goal, breaking it down into actionable tasks that can be measured, and incorporating those tasks into daily operations.

For more on strategic planning, see http://www.performancesolutionstech.com/category/strategicplanning/

Summary:

Strategy planning is important but needs to be met with action in the real world if the strategy is to move from fantasy to reality. Dealing with reality requires the ability to cope with the facts instead of ignoring them from a twenty-thousand foot point of view. An example of this is what happened inside the Toyota company. Toyota executives had knowledge of fatal crashes involving their automobiles back in 2007, yet customers had to wait until February 2010 for Toyota to finally announced a full recall of over 8.5 million vehicles.

The problems of fatal crashes in other countries were not immediately important to the executives of Toyota. The planning process involved consensus in Japan rather than consensus worldwide. They were busy too looking at the big picture at a distance to see the detail that mattered.

Article Quote:

“Strategy isn’t always wrong. It can be extremely valuable. Planning doesn’t always fail. And it is certainly necessary. Yet overconfidence in the power of strategic planning has led to financial crisis, to botched and illegal wars, to missed opportunities in business, politics, sports, and life.”

Link: http://www.management-issues.com/2010/2/15/opinion/strategy-is-fantasy–action-is-real.asp

Strategic planning can be considered a fantasy because it looks to an unknown future and makes predictions about how it will unfold. Keeping the focus of the strategic plan on the core business values; in Toyota’s case that would be to design and manufacture dependable cars, will keep your company from trying to be everything to everyone.

Toyota became the largest car manufacturer in the world in 2009, in part because they wanted to make cars and trucks for each class of consumer. By changing the focus from dependability to ‘be everything to everyone’, Toyota’s quality controls were compromised.

Faulty parts were installed in their vehicles and when the fatal crashes were brought to Toyota’s attention, nothing was done to correct the problem. Nothing, until a widely publicized crash in California brought the problem right to Toyota’s front steps.

For more on strategic planning, see http://www.performancesolutionstech.com/category/strategicplanning/

Summary:

Developing a strategic plan is often a time consuming and unanticipated chore. Yet, without a strategic plan, businesses have no direction in which to point their company and they are left to react to changes instead of having a plan to manage changes as they occur.

After careful analysis of all trends from industry to economic, the organizational structure and the target market, then the mission statement is constructed. For some who do not have the resources of time, money and energy, the mission statement can simply be how much money do you want in your bank account by December 31 of the planning year?

Article Quote:

“Many business people have really bad attitudes about strategic planning even though they believe that strategy is probably a good thing. This is consistent in that most people do not plan their lives less alone their businesses. Plan is really a hidden dirty 4 letter word.”

Link:http://strategicplanning.doodig.com/2010/02/14/strategic-planning-coaching-tip-plan-is-not-a-dirty-four-letter-word/

While this article does a good job of giving a quick overview of strategic planning, I disagree with the validity of the mission statement above. A mission statement states what the purpose of the organization is while a vision statement outlines what/where the organization ultimately wants to be.

Simply stating how much money you would like to see in your account by a certain date is actually more of a goal than a mission statement. More appropriate would be something like this, “Here at XYZ company, we design, manufacture, and install high quality liturgical furniture for all church denominations that reflects the individuality of the communities in which they serve.”

For more on strategic planning, see http://www.performancesolutionstech.com/category/strategicplanning/

Summary:

What do you do when you think the strategic plan you are asked to follow is flawed? This article addresses this question with the answer that as a good citizen within your company, it is your responsibility to speak up.

However, you should proceed cautiously as negativity is sure to be met with resistance by the executives that spent much time and energy creating the plan.  To begin with, you should diagnose and understand the whole picture by trying to understand what problem executives were trying to solve and the methodology behind it.

Next, contextualize your concerns by asking yourself, “Is it that you would have expected a different direction or do you believe that the analysis, facts, or process that the company used [were] flawed?”

If afterwards  you still feel that the strategy is flawed, quietly and carefully bring it up to your immediate supervisor first. Having data to back up your assumptions and approaching the subject as a concerned employee will go a lot farther with your boss than a hot headed approach.

Article Quote:

“After taking the above steps, if your concerns have been shrugged off or disputed, you may need to choose your battles. “Skepticism is hugely helpful in organizations but bloody-minded obstinacy is not,” Sull says. People have very little respect for someone who ruthlessly fights over imperfections.”

Link: http://blogs.hbr.org/hmu/2010/02/when-you-think-the-strategy-is.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+harvardbusiness/hmu+(Management+Essentials+on+HBR.org)

Doing your homeword and asking honest questions about your true motivation for disagreeing with the strategic plan may be enough to realize that perfection isn’t possible and the plan – while you may not understand the reasoning behind it – may not be as flawed as originally thought.

However, even if you are correct in your opinion, be prepared for resistance by articulating your concerns with a well reasoned argument with correct data to back it up.

For more on strategic planning, see http://www.performancesolutionstech.com/category/strategicplanning/