Category: Business Planning

The table below summarizes the definition of each component of the Drivers Model.

Vision	A picture of the “preferred future”; a statement that describes how the future will look if the organization fulfills its mission. To be the place where meeting planners meet
Mission	A statement of the overall purpose of an organization which describes what you do, for whom you do it and the benefit. To provide a forum for furthering the growth and professionalism of the meetings industry
Guiding Principles	General guidelines which set the foundation for how an organization will operate. We believe we must remain a comfortable forum for meeting planners. Therefore we will implement policies to ensure a suitable membership balance between planners and suppliers
Goals	Broad, long-term aims that define fulfillment of the mission. Maximize membership growth, retention and involvement
Objectives	Specific, quantifiable, realistic targets that measure the accomplishment of a goal over a specified period of time. Increase average attendance from 125 to 250 per meeting
Positioning Statements	Positioning statements are broad determinations about the direction and focus of the organization. We believe increases in the quality of manufacturing in third-world countries will result in an acceleration in the downward pressure on retail prices for lighting products. Therefore we must seek off-shore opportunities for sourcing products and, in the longer term, establish our own international manufacturing capability.
Critical Success Factors	Key conditions that must be created to achieve one or more objectives. High awareness by meeting planners of the association and its benefits to attract members
Barriers	Existing or potential challenges that hinder the achievement of one or more objectives. Inadequate process for getting new members involved results in burn-out of a few and low retention
Strategies	Broad activities required to achieve an objective, create a critical condition, or overcome a barrier. Utilize assessment survey and industry referrals to select quality speakers and topics
Action Plans	Specific steps to be taken, by whom and by when, to implement a strategy. Assemble new PR committee (Exec, Feb 1) Develop PR objectives (PR, Mar 1) Develop promotion (PR, Mar 15)

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Michael Wilkinson is the CEO and Managing Director of Leadership Strategies, Inc., “The Facilitation Company” and author of Amazon best-seller “The Secrets of Facilitation”, “The Secrets to Masterful Meetings”, and the brand new “The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy.” Leadership Strategies is a global leader in facilitation services, providing companies with dynamic professional facilitators who lead executive teams and task forces in areas like strategic planning, issue resolution, process improvement and others. They are also a leading provider of facilitation training in the United States.

As the strategy leader, you have seven activities to which I recommend you pay close attention to build a strong strategy that has full buy-in and commitment.

Gain your team’s commitment and buy-in to the process

If your leadership team members are like most with whom I have worked, they are stretched for resources and have more on their plate than they can likely accomplish with the time they have. Therefore, for many of them, the prospects of taking valuable time and resources to develop a plan that will come up with more to add to their already over-loaded plates is NOT a welcomed idea.

So how do you gain their commitment to planning and their buy-in to a planning process such as The Drivers Model? With a management briefing, you will have your team identify the most critical issues facing the organization; then they will make adjustments to the planning process as needed to ensure that the process addresses those issues. The management briefing increases commitment to planning by providing your team with a road map that shows how what is important to them will be covered during the strategic planning sessions.

Ensure All Voices Are Heard

The fundamental secret of facilitation indicates that you can increase buy-in and commitment by having those impacted by the plan involved in the creation of it. However, everyone in your organization will be impacted by the strategic plan. Does that mean everyone should be at the table creating the plan?

No, of course not. Nor is it necessary. Involvement does not necessitate being at the table. There are several ways to provide people the opportunity for involvement in the plan as described in the table that follows.

• For some, just giving them a chance for input through a survey or a suggestion box will be adequate.
• For others, focus groups, one-on-one interviews or other methods for gaining in-depth input may be more appropriate.
• And for others, their responsibilities, influence, expertise, or perspectives are so important that it will make sense to have them seated around the table.

One of your important roles is to determine who should be at the table and to put in place other avenues to ensure all voices are given the opportunity to be heard. Providing the opportunity for input is essential to a facilitative approach and to gaining the level of buy-in needed for successful implementation across the organization.

Ensure key information is brought into the room

You may have been in the room when a team has made a decision based on the best information available, only to discover that if they had been aware of other information that had not been brought into the room, they would have likely have made a different decision. Sound familiar? Well, part of your role is to ensure that this doesn’t happen with your planning activity.

My company’s work in the area of consensus building has shown that one of the primary reasons people disagree is due to a lack of shared information. Many disagreements can be resolved, and even prevented, by making sure all parties have the same information.

With the Drivers Model, the briefing book serves the purpose of ensuring all your team members start with a common set of information

Get your ideas on the table without overpowering the group

As indicated earlier, it is important that all voices be heard, and that includes yours. Unfortunately, if you are like most leaders, your voice comes with considerable baggage. When the boss speaks, people listen. And they listen differently from when other people speak.

Sure, there will likely be some people in the room who treat your voice like every other voice in the room. Whether the idea comes from you or a first-year manager, these people will state their agreement or disagreement with the idea in the exact same way, regardless of the source. Unfortunately, this probably isn’t the case for most of the people at the table. When you speak, most may be quick to respond when they agree, and very, very slow to respond when they disagree – so slow, in fact, that sometimes they may never get around to it!

As a result of the lack of challenge many leaders experience within their own walls, the views of the leader can easily overpower the group. And even when someone dares to challenge with a question, some leaders, often without knowing it, respond with statements that belittle the questioner or not-so-subtly communicate that challenging the boss is not welcome.

Ensure that the plan components meet the quality checks

With the Drivers Model each component is dependent upon the components that came before it. So, for example, if you do a poor job of defining your mission and vision, your goals and objectives will reflect this. Likewise, if your goals and objectives are misaligned, your critical success factors and barriers will also be off. And if your critical success factors and barriers are inadequate, your strategies and action plans will be inadequate as well. Therefore it is essential that you do a quality job every step of the way through the planning process.

The Drivers Model is designed to help you do this. From vision and mission through to strategies and action plans, the Drivers Model provides a specific quality check for each component of the strategic plan. These quality checks help ensure that your plan is comprehensive, robust, inspiring, and implementable. As the leader, it is your role to ensure that each component of the plan passes its quality check. Below I have summarized one or two key elements from the quality check list for each of the components of the plan.

Management Briefing	Have the critical issues that the plan should address been identified? Has a planning process for addressing the issue been accepted?
Briefing Book Review and SWOT	Has the planning team reviewed the briefing book to identify key observations and potential strategies? Does each strength, weakness, opportunity and threat identify both the attribute and the impact?
Positioning Statements	Have positioning statements been created for the key external trends impacting future success? Have each of the positioning statements been formatted to identify both the belief and the action taken by the belief, such as “we believe…therefore we must…”?
Mission	Does the mission statement broadly describe what you do, for whom you do it, and the benefit? Does the mission statement indicate the industry or market that the organization serves?
Vision	Does the vision represent the preferred future of the organization? Does the vision simply represent a logical extension of today or are out-of-the-box results represented?
Goals	As a group, do the goals represent all of the key areas of strategic focus for the organization? If the organization achieves these goals, and only these goals, will the organization most likely have fulfilled its mission?
Objectives	Are the objectives SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound? If all of the objectives are achieved, and only these objectives, will the goal be accomplished for the time period?
Guiding Principles	Do the guiding principles identify all the key values for the organization? Are the principles worded in such a way as to indicate both the value and the expected behaviors (e.g., “We believe … Therefore we will …”)?
Critical Success Factors	Have the most critical conditions that must be created and the major barriers impacting success been identified? Are the CSFs stated as nouns with conditions (e.g., “effective dealer network”) and not as verbs (e.g., “develop”)?
Barriers	Are the barriers phrased in such a way as to encourage strategies for overcoming them? Do you have at least two and no more than seven barriers per goal?
Strategies	Are the strategies phrased as activities to be accomplished and NOT results to be achieved? If the strategies are implemented is it highly likely that the objectives will be achieved?
Action Plans	Have all the key deliverables been identified? If the deliverables are done, will the strategy be completed? Have all the important actions been identified? Is each action worded so that it is clear what needs to be accomplished? If all the actions are completed, will all the deliverables be created?

Follow through and hold people accountable

If you have been involved in strategic planning processes, you know that far too often it is a game in which considerable energy is placed in developing a plan that is then put on the executive’s shelf, only to be looked at when it is time to do strategic planning once again.

The Drivers Model strives to end this game. Assemble a detailed process for aligning the organization and ensuring monthly check-ins, quarterly reviews and an annual update to the strategic plan. This structured monitoring process is intended to help ensure that the plan moves from paper to implementation.

Decide if an outside facilitator would be helpful

With an activity as critical as strategic planning, it is essential that the effort be facilitated by someone who is skilled in facilitation but also has considerable experience guiding a team through strategy. Some organizations have internal resources with both the facilitation and the strategy expertise. But others choose to bring in outside professional facilitators with years of training, experience and proven results.

When should you bring in an outside facilitator? It is your role as the leader to make this call.

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Michael Wilkinson is the CEO and Managing Director of Leadership Strategies, Inc., “The Facilitation Company” and author of Amazon best-seller “The Secrets of Facilitation”, “The Secrets to Masterful Meetings”, and the brand new “The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy.” Leadership Strategies is a global leader in facilitation services, providing companies with dynamic professional facilitators who lead executive teams and task forces in areas like strategic planning, issue resolution, process improvement and others. They are also a leading provider of facilitation training in the United States.

US Bureau of Labor Statistics research indicates that almost 60% of businesses shut down within the first four years of operation. Why? Most fail for one of these reasons.

Continue reading “Why So Many Startups Fail”

THE BRAIN is wider than the sky,
For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include
With ease, and you beside.

Emily Dickinson’s greatest accomplishment, I think, is that she taught us to wonder. In Part One of her series called Life, the poet has us thinking about the vastness of our collective brain. As of late, the scientists and mathematicians have caught up with this sage poet.

Scientists have estimated the number of unique and disparate “thoughts” that a person can conjure. By estimating the number of possible neural networks, known as Hebbian webs these deep thinkers have estimated that you and I are capable of thoughts numbering ten to the millionth power! Contrast this number, by the way, to the number of atoms in the known universe, estimated at a mere ten to the 87th power… Yes, in a way of thinking, our brains are larger than the known universe. As Dr. Seuss said… “Oh the thinks you can think!” An even better poet, Dickinson, continues in her poem called Life:

The brain is deeper than the sea,
For, hold them, blue to blue,
The one the other will absorb,
As sponges, buckets do.

And who out there thinks the biggest and grandest thoughts? Why, I’d have to say it is the readership of this column! Strategists, strategic planners, strategic decision-makers and the like…

Remember that strategy is about the big picture. Strategic thought is consideration of the long term future and the vast competitive environment around each person, company or organization.

C.K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel have suggested that strategic thinkers do three things:

1. They think about the large-scale competitive environment around them.
2. They think about the future.
3. They engage others in doing the same, resulting in a “deeply shared, well-tested view of the long-term future.

To continue your train of strategic thought, do this:

• Engage those around you in conversations about the future. What will happen next in your industry or competitive space?
• Talk to technologists and futurists about the ways changing technology will affect your industry.
• Study enterprises outside of your immediate industry. Look at how competitive advantages wax and wane. Consider ways that your own advantages could erode or disappear.
• Talk about strategy and how even the most well-considered plans may change as circumstances and competitive dynamics change.

The brain is just the weight of God,
For, lift them, pound for pound,
And they will differ, if they do,
As syllable from sound.

You might find this surprising, but last week a bi-partisan US House passed a bill that actually had some substance to it. One that could actually help entrepreneurs and small business owners. Continue reading “Congress Gets Crowdfunding (finally)”

Leadership Strategies has developed the Drivers Model, a method for taking a strategic approach to addressing a business situation. The model provides a simple communication tool for helping organizations construct a strategic plan. The model is fully scalable and applies to Fortune 500 companies, non-profit organizations, a field office, an individual department, a work team, etc.

There are four major steps in our standard Drivers Model. What follows is a brief overview of the four steps.

Step 1: Where are we now? (Situation Assessment)

Understanding the current situation is vital to identifying the approaches needed to drive success. A full understanding of the current situation includes an analysis of several areas. The list below shows a sample list of assessment areas and one or two of the key questions to be answered for each.

Step 2. Where do we want to be? (Strategic Direction)

The heart of strategic direction setting is this second step. In our Drivers Model, the information from the situation assessment is combined with the understanding of future trends to develop the vision statement and the mission statement.

Step 3 – How do we plan to get there? (Implementation Planning)

Once the objectives are established, the next step is to develop the road map for achieving the direction. For the road map to be viable, however, it must focus on three areas in particular.

Step 4 – How will we monitor progress? (Monitoring)

Many organizations benefit simply from going through the process of creating a strategy. At this point, everyone is clear on where we are going and how we plan to get there. However, the key value to strategy development comes in the implementation of the plan. Unfortunately, all too often, strategic plans become space fillers on an executive’s bookshelf. To prevent this occurrence, we recommend a structured monitoring process every three-to-six months.

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Michael Wilkinson is the CEO and Managing Director of Leadership Strategies, Inc., “The Facilitation Company” and author of Amazon best-seller “The Secrets of Facilitation”, “The Secrets to Masterful Meetings”, and the brand new “The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy.” Leadership Strategies is a global leader in facilitation services, providing companies with dynamic professional facilitators who lead executive teams and task forces in areas like strategic planning, issue resolution, process improvement and others. They are also a leading provider of facilitation training in the United States.

Good Strategy Bad Strategy

This fresh approach to strategic thinking begins with tales of battles at sea in the days of Napoleon and continues to explain what kinds of strategies have made the difference for modern companies like Apple, Wal-Mart, Cisco, Starbucks and Wells Fargo.

Author Richard Rumelt shows that many recent high profile failures such as those of Lehman Brothers and Enron resulted not just from a poor strategy or a poorly defined strategy, but from a misunderstanding of what strategy is in the first place!

One acquaintance showed incredible ignorance by saying to Rumelt ““Strategy is never quitting until you win.” Attitudes like that, of course, can only lead to wasted resources and eventual failure.

As Rumelt says, “The core of strategy work is always the same: discovering the critical factors in a situation and designing a way of coordinating and focusing actions to deal with those factors.”

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Strategic Thinking: A Comprehensive Guide

Very useful book for strategists. Truly comprehensive because of the multiple of perspectives covered.

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Learning to Think Strategically, by Julia Sloan of Columbia University.

This is my favorite kind of book… the kind that has lots of my under-linings and margin notes left over from previous readings! That means I intend to come back to the book now and again for wisdom and guidance about my topics of interest… Strategy and Strategic Thinking.

Professor Sloan’s book traces the history of strategy, differentiates strategic thinking from strategic planning, describes the influence of culture, and introduces five key attributes for learning to thinking strategically. Learning to Think Strategically asserts that learning is the critical link to transforming strategic thinking into a sustainable competitive advantage.

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Read Ann Herrmann’s Whole Brain Business Book to learn an approach to business effectiveness drawing on understanding of the ways we differ from each other. Learn about Whole Brain methodology and the required brain dominance for strategic thinking.

I understand the context around me in a different way than you do. Some of us are most moved by thoughts of the big picture. Others look first at the details. For some of us, the we make decisions with our emotions out front. Others are focused on the facts. The “whole brain” approach shows us how to make change happen by leveraging individual differences.

Visit HerrmannSolutions.com and respond to the instrument to see
your preferred style of thinking.

Learn More about the Whole Brain Business Book. here.

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Creative Strategy: A Guide for Innovation.

Duggan explains the critical steps to innovate in business and any other field as an individual, a team, or a whole company. The critical step — the search for past examples — takes readers beyond their own brain to a “what-works scan” of what others have done within and outside of the company, industry, and country. It is a global search for good ideas to combine as a new innovation. Duggan illustrates creative strategy through real-world cases of innovation that use the same method… from Netflix to Edison, from Google to Henry Ford.

I also learned a great deal from Duggan’s previous book, Napoleon’s Glance: The Secret of Strategy.

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Team of Rivals Doris Kearns Goodwin’s excellent book Team of Rivals explains how instead of bringing in a cadre of leaders whose thinking closely matched his own, Abraham Lincoln made a point of surrounding himself with his political rivals, naming William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edwin M. Stanton, and Edward Bates – all of whom had opposed Lincoln in a bitterly fought presidential race – as members of his cabinet.

Despite initial misgivings, this unlikely team learned that Lincoln valued their opinions, would consider and reflect on their disagreements and challenges, and would not stick unnecessarily to preconceived notions.

Though the mix of personalities and opinions inevitably led to debate and verbal conflict, Lincoln was able to facilitate and mediate, tapping into a rich variety of ideas in order to find the optimal solution to political and military issues.

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Strategy Safari

I have often been asked what book I would suggest to someone wanting an introduction to the world of strategy. This is always the book I suggest, the eminent strategist Henry Mintzberg and his associates Ahlstrand and Lampel do a masterful job of explaining, in plain language, the various approaches to strategy. My favorite section is the authors’ treatment of Michael Porter’s “Positioning School” of strategic thought. While staying “fair and balanced” in explaining Porter’s methodology, you can almost taste Mintzberg’s poor regard for such a deliberate and plodding approach, which stands antithetical to Mintzberg’s own bent to strategy: the Emergent Approach.

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Strategy, by B.H. Liddell Hart

The book now called, simply, Strategy, is essential reading for any student of the art and science of strategy-making. Author B.H. Liddell Hart is the best example I know of who not only chronicled history, but shaped it. In 1929, he published The Decisive Wars of History.

Although Hart was a Briton, it is known that his work had greater impact on the pre-WWII military thinking among the German military than on his own countrymen. Among others, the German general Hans Guderian read and digested Hart’s work, which influenced his designs for employing tank (panzer) warfare in execution of the “blitzkrieg” strikes that quickly took the European lowland countries and France.

Erwin Rommel, the “Desert Fox” is known to have read and savored Hart’s books. Rommel’s tank battles with the Allies in northern Africa are often seen as the prototypical Hartian strategic confrontation. Applications of Hart’s insights for modern business are quite evident upon reading Hart’s historical accounts and analyses. For example, to truly understand the art of strategic thinking, it is essential to consider Hart’s notion of the indirect approach.

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The Lords of Strategy

Until the 1960s, there were few books or business courses available that focused on the notion of business strategy. Gradually, as the importance of the topic dawned on MBA providers and the business public alike, Strategy evolved as an important discipline of thought for leaders of corporate, organizational and government leaders.

As the field evolved, not surprisingly, so did the cadre of people seeking to make their living teaching and consulting with others in need of better approaches and strategies. With time, the modern consulting inustry was born.

The Lords of Strategy is the story of the four men who invented corporate strategy as we know it and set in motion the modern, multibillion-dollar consulting industry: Bruce Henderson, founder of Boston Consulting Group Bill Bain, creator of Bain & Company Fred Gluck, longtime Managing Director of McKinsey & Company, and Michael Porter, Harvard Business School professor.

The publisher explains that “this book is a revealing account of how these iconoclasts and the organizations they led revolutionized the way we think about business, changed the very soul of the corporation, and transformed the way we work.”

Well, it’s a little more sickening and depressing than that, if you ask me. I have personally seen, for example, PPT slides that an eminent strategy consulting firm used to goad Enron into “out-of-the box” and “break-through thinking.” We all learned, of course, that simply thinking out-of-the-box can lead people into “breaking through” ethics and morals.

Enron paid for this “anything goes” approach with its very existence. The consulting company that egged them on, though, is not only still at it, but is doing quite well for themselves.

Nonetheless, if you’d like to learn how today’s consulting industry came to be the way it is, then I am sure you will find The Lords of Strategy to be compelling, if disturbing, reading.

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Wired for Thought

If you are interested in the notion of strategic thinking, then you are certainly interested in the brain, the organ that allows you to think about things, strategic or otherwise.

Author Jeffrey Stibel applied his life-long fascination with neurology and brain science in order to found a series of highly successful businesses. In each case, he applied knowledge about how the brain works to thinking about how the internet should work, since, as he writes “the internet is a brain.”

Stibel explains his fascination with the brain and neurology as a metaphor for thinking about the future of the internet: “When I began to study the emergent internet as a whole, I had trouble finding areas where there were not analogies to the brain. It finally dawned on me that if I wanted to build internet companies, I needed to know everything I could about the brain.”

Developing strategy takes time and resources. It requires the time and commitment of some of the most highly paid and highly experienced people in your organization. So, if your team isn’t willing to invest what is needed, I recommend that you don’t do it. Poor planning is often worse than no planning at all.

So, why do you need a strategy? Why take time for planning? There are many reasons. But the Drivers Model focuses on five in particular.

1) To set direction and priorities:

First and foremost, you need a strategy because it sets the direction and establishes priorities for your organization. It defines your organization’s view of success and prioritizes the activities that will make this view your reality. The strategy will help your people know what they should be working on, and what they should be working on first.

Without a clearly defined and articulated strategy, you may very well find that your priority initiatives—the ones that will drive the highest successare being given secondary treatment.

2) To get everyone on the same page:

If you find that you have departments working to achieve different aims, or going in different directions, you need a strategy.

Once you define your strategic direction, you can get operations, sales, marketing, administration, manufacturing, and all other departments moving together to achieve the organization’s goals.

3) To simplify decision-making:

If your leadership team has trouble saying no to new ideas or potential initiatives, you need a strategy. Why? Your strategy will have already prioritized the activities necessary for success. Priorities make it easier to say no to distracting initiatives.

4) To drive alignment:

Many organizations have hard-working people putting their best efforts into areas that have little to no effect on strategic success. They’re essentially majoring in the minors—because their activities aren’t aligned with the priorities. Your strategy serves as the vehicle for answering the question, “How can we better align all our resources to maximize our strategic success?”

5) To communicate the message:

Many leaders walk around with a virtual strategy locked in their heads—they know where their organization needs to be and the key activities that will get it there. Unfortunately, the strategy isn’t down on paper and hasn’t been communicated thoroughly. As a result, few people are acting on it.

When your staff, suppliers, and even customers know where you’re going, you allow even greater opportunities for people to help you maximize your success in getting there.

Once you recognize the need to plan, you now have the role of becoming the catalyst: for facilitating the buy-in and commitment of your leadership team and the rest of your organization.

I’ve found that very few executives truly understand how to maximize their role in facilitating strategy. This chapter is focused on you, the leader of the organization, and on the vital role you play in facilitating strategy throughout your organization. Let’s get started.

__________________________

Michael Wilkinson is the CEO and Managing Director of Leadership Strategies, Inc., “The Facilitation Company” and author of Amazon best-seller “The Secrets of Facilitation”, “The Secrets to Masterful Meetings”, and the brand new “The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy.” Leadership Strategies is a global leader in facilitation services, providing companies with dynamic professional facilitators who lead executive teams and task forces in areas like strategic planning, issue resolution, process improvement and others. They are also a leading provider of facilitation training in the United States.

There are now many choices in legal structure for a new business. That’s both a good thing and bad thing. It’s great to have options, but sometimes the details can become overwhelming. For a business with a social as well as financial purpose, there are different ways to set things up, depending on your motivations, your target market, your access to capital, and how much control you need.

Some of the alternatives include for-profit, for-profit with a social overlay, hybrid, nonprofit with a mission-related enterprise, or nonprofit.

A very thorough article on just this topic can be found in the Spring 2011 edition of the Stanford Social Innovation Review. SSIR is a publication well worth a subscription, but in this case, the article is available for free. It’s call “For Love or Lucre,” and was written by Jim Fruchterman. Here’s the URL:

http://bit.ly/oTcnxo

This is a good thing to get ironed out early in your business planning process.

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For more resources, see our Library topic Business Planning.

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