Developing your people plan – a Systems Thinking approach
‘You (HR) represent the ultimate in the culture of a company that is intellectually honest and treats human beings with respect. Your authenticity is on the line. Don’t let it be tainted.’ – Ram Charan, noted Business Author and Management Consultant: Leadership In The New Era of Economic Uncertainty.
Over the past 10–15 years, the practice of creating a corporate strategic plan for an organisation has become fairly common for most business entities. This was not always the case. For a period of time in the 1980s there was not a lot of support for undertaking a strategic planning project. The discipline had fallen into disrepute because of the many examples of detailed, long-range strategic plans that seldom materialised into anything tangible. They were full of hope and promise but failed to be actualised.
This major breakdown was the result of several common practices that led to a failure rate of almost 75% for major planning initiatives. In many cases, the plan was prepared and written by an external consulting firm that was hired to carry out this assignment for the senior executive team. As a result, the organisation never assumed full ownership. It was always seen as ‘the consultant’s plan’ rather than ‘our plan’. As such, there was never any real strong commitment to put the plan into action.
This brings us to the second major reason for plan failure – the lack of action to implement it. Many of the managers and staff who we have encountered in our consulting practice since 1990 and have expressed deep scepticism about the value of developing a strategic plan of any sort cite the failure to implement as their number one reason. They have seen too many plans developed and placed on the shelf to gather dust, as the organisation returns to the very same practices that they had been employing before the plan was developed. We refer to this as ‘the dreaded SPOTS Syndrome’ – Strategic Plan On Top Shelf. If you are not planning to make any real changes following the development of a strategic plan, then don’t bother developing it. It will be a colossal waste of time, effort and money. And it will only add to the level of scepticism and cynicism within your organisation, as staff mutter: ‘Here we go again; another botched attempt at making some meaningful changes around here. When are they (the executives) ever going to learn?’ The purpose behind developing a plan in the first place is to determine what intentional changes are needed to improve performance, to counteract negative forces at play in your business environment, or to take advantage of a timely business opportunity that will provide added leverage in your marketplace. The plan is in effect a strategic agenda for change. Without change, the value of the plan is zero.
This conversation is focused on the development and utilisation of a strategic plan. What has that got to do with human resource planning? From our experience, we have noticed that those organisations that are most predisposed to undertaking the development of a Strategic Human Resource Plan – or ‘People Plan’ as we call it – are those that have already developed a corporate strategic plan, which they are actively implementing. Inevitably, their corporate strategic plan will have a major strategy devoted to the management and development of their human resources. It’s a natural progression to take this people strategy and extend it to maximise the potential of the organisation’s most critical resource – the talents and abilities of their people. After all, isn’t it your people who do the work of your organisation? Isn’t it your people who generate the products and services that create the revenue you need to stay in business and to prosper? In the library world, isn’t it your people who provide the information support, the technical knowledge and the courteous customer service that enhance the value of your library and make it a viable part of the university or of the community that supports your existence?
In this chapter we want to introduce you to a systems approach to developing a strategic human resource management plan. For simplicity, we’ll refer to this as your People Plan. As you will see, this People Planning Process is built upon the framework of the various concepts of Systems Thinking that were presented in Chapter 5. The major adaptation is that the focus has shifted to the utilisation of your people resource, rather than all of your resources, as it would be in a more holistic corporate strategic plan.
In Chapter 2, we identified six emerging trends affecting human resource management in the future. Four of these six trends are related to major shifts that impact how well prepared organisations are at addressing the changing patterns of work and the changing demographics of the workforce of tomorrow. In an article that appeared in HR Magazine in December 2007, reference was made to the Society for Human Resource Management’s 2005 Future of the U.S. Labor Pool Survey Report. This report:
‘… found that, of the 263 companies surveyed, 45 percent were just becoming aware of the issues posed by the retirement of the baby boomers and 36 percent were only beginning to examine internal policies and management practices to address the coming challenges. Right now, leaders at only a few organizations are fully prepared for these demographic shifts, and only a handful are proactively working toward solutions.’1
We have noted this pattern of failing to acknowledge the seriousness of the impending labour issues on the workforce of tomorrow for more than ten years. It seems to be most prevalent in North American organisations. On a personal note, I saw this in action on a client project in 2001. I was working on a Workforce Planning Project for one of the Government Departments in a Canadian province. As the HR staff representative presented her data analysis of their workforce, the senior manager of the group was shocked to find out that over 50 per cent of the management group would be eligible for retirement within the next five years. The manager’s comment to this revelation was: ‘When did this happen?’ My response was: ‘It’s been happening for the past 15 years, but no one has been monitoring it, so now it comes as a surprise.’
By contrast, one of my business partners, Allan Bandt from Perth, Western Australia, has been devoting the bulk of his consulting practice since 1990 working with firms and public sector organisations in Australia as they develop strategic human resource management plans. They have been far more attentive and far more proactive to these changing workforce trends and pressures than clients we have been working with in North America. As a result, they have been in a much better position to cope with these trends as they have unfolded. In some parts of the world, such as south-east Asia and India where the demographic profiles are quite different and the supply of new people for a growing workforce is not as seriously restricted, the issue of strategic human resource planning is not a major concern – yet. However, in North America and in parts of Europe, senior executives are scrambling to react to the severity of their future workforce situation.
The impact of this lack of attention to HR planning was noted in another item in HR Magazine in its December 2007 issue. Ann Pomeroy, a Senior Writer for the magazine, was reporting on the results of a recent survey of ‘C-suite executives’. C-suite executives include roles such as Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Financial Officer (CFO), and Chief Operating Officer (COO). These could also be referred to as the ‘corporate suite’ executives.
‘Both HR and non-HR C-suite executives say their top human capital challenge for the future is succession planning. But they have scant confidence that their companies are prepared to address this and other major issues.
In a survey conducted by the Hay Group for the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Foundation, 526C-suite executives at companies of all sizes identified the following as their most pressing concerns:
Recruiting and selecting talented employees
Engaging and retaining talented employees
Providing leaders with skills to be successful…’2
These were the top four listed among a group of 13 different challenges noted through the survey. These are the very issues that will make or break organisations as they move forward over the next five to ten years, trying to minimise the negative impacts of the ‘boomers’ retirement bulge’ that is steadily moving through almost every organisation. The need for more organisations to begin to address these issues proactively is very clear. Those who ignore these signals may be placing their organisation in serious jeopardy as the race for talent heats up due to the increasing number of retirees leaving the workforce. Given the critical nature of this form of management leadership, let us examine the process for developing a People Plan.
Creating the People Plan
In Chapter 5, we outlined the simple methodology for developing a plan. This was the A-B-C-D-E Systems Thinking Approach, which was Concept 3 of the four primary concepts of Systems Thinking. This basic model is the foundation for the more detailed approach to Strategic Planning. Our ten-step model to ‘Reinventing Strategic Planning’ follows these same five components and merely expands some of the areas, to provide more depth and detail due to the more complex nature of crafting a corporate strategic plan. Using this same framework, we created a similar ten-step Strategic People Management Process. This model is outlined in Figure 6.1.
As you will note, this People Plan must be directly connected to the organisation’s corporate strategic direction, even if this has not been spelled out yet in detail through the development of a corporate strategic plan.
The same five components of the basic Systems Thinking Planning Process are evident: A – Outcomes, B – Feedback, C – Inputs, D – the Throughput Process and E – Environmental Scanning. Let’s take a quick walk through the ten steps, to see how this process can provide the opportunity for any organisation to develop a comprehensive and strategic approach for addressing the current pressures facing human resource managers and senior executives.
Step 1: Plan-to-Plan
In this step, the senior management team is provided with an educational session or Executive Briefing of how the process works. One major exercise that is conducted in this session is to conduct a short Environmental Scan, to better understand the variables that are impacting your own organisation but are outside of your influence or control. The acronym SKEPTIC (based upon the American spelling) can be used as the frame of reference for conducting a future-focused scan of your external environment. This approach enables you to examine eight different factors:
Kompetition Factors (taking literary licence on the spelling)
Economic Factors plus Ecological/Environment Factors
Political Factors – regarding federal, provincial or state and municipal levels
In this working session, we want to brainstorm ideas about what is happening and likely to happen in the world around us, under each of these factors.
This session is intended to provide the Planning Team with opportunities for ‘educating themselves, customising the process and organising themselves’ before they launch the process. During this session, the senior management team is provided with an opportunity to identify those aspects of the planning process that warrant the most attention and which steps in this process may already be in good shape. From this customisation exercise, the executive team can lay out a tentative plan of action for the amount of time the process will probably take, the size and make-up of the appropriate planning team, and the frequency and duration for each of the planning sessions. From this initial overview session, members of the People Plan Team become familiar with the process, understand the level of commitment required to complete the process successfully, and have a better awareness of the time and cost requirements to complete the assignment.
In some cases, clients find that the process requires more than they had been considering or contemplating. In these instances, it is probably advisable for the organisation to back off for a while, until they are ready to proceed. We have found that whenever this happens, it provides the leaders with more time to seriously consider the consequences of proceeding or of not proceeding. Some end up reconsidering their reluctance to proceed. Others may end up backing off for a year or two. But we have found that many end up re-initiating the process within a few months, as they recognise that delays can only further exacerbate a situation that is already creating major pressures on the organisation.
Over the years, we have found that until the senior leaders are fully committed to proceeding, any efforts to move forward will always end up with disastrous results. To undertake this process requires a serious commitment and this step in the process enables them to talk freely and candidly about their readiness level to proceed, without any further obligations, should they decide to step back for a period of time. Once they are ready to proceed, much of the scepticism that can often sink a project of this nature has evaporated, because they have given it some serious consideration, without any external pressures to proceed. This reinforces the old proverb that ‘When the student is ready, the teacher will appear’. Until this readiness is evident, any effort at sharing information or knowledge is a lost cause.
Step 2: Business Scanning
The purpose of this step is to ensure alignment between the People Plan and the overall Corporate Strategic Plan – if there is one. If not, the need to verify the alignment with where the organisation is heading is still critical. You do not want to develop a nice, neat, tidy People Plan that contradicts or works in opposition to the overall strategic direction.
In this step, you will examine four specific aspects:
1. the corporate direction and its strategies – particularly as it relates to people initiatives;
2. the Core Values of the organisation, if these have been articulated; if not, then it will be necessary to identify the ‘corporate culture’ of the organisation, so that you understand the framework within which the People Plan will be operating;
3. the Stakeholder Expectations; the key stakeholders for any People Plan are the Senior Executives of the organisation, the staff members, the managers of these staff, the union if you operate within a unionized or staff association environment and the clients or customers of the organisation;
4. the Environmental Scan of the issues that are impacting the field of human resource management; these are elements that are outside of your control – but they will have an impact on your organisation. The challenge is to capitalise on those elements that will help you to achieve success, while also minimising the impact of those elements that can knock you off your plan.
Step 3: The People Edge Vision
In this step, you have the opportunity to identify the ‘picture of the future’ that you want to achieve, as it relates to your human resources. You will need to describe what you want your ‘people reputation’ to be over the next three to five years. This is an inspirational statement that describes where the organisation wants to be positioned, in order to maximise your people as one of your most significant competitive advantages.
This component of your People Plan may include a vision statement, a mission statement and a set of core values. These need to be directly focused on the ‘people component’ of your organisation. It is critical to ensure that these statements are fully compatible with your corporate vision, mission and core values. There must be a strong degree of alignment and correlation between these descriptions. If not, then you put staff in the awkward position of having to decide which ‘ideal future state’ to pay attention to and to contribute to – the corporate one or the people one. These should not be mutually exclusive. They should be mutually supportive.
During this step, you will also have the opportunity to clarify the role that your key stakeholders need to play in managing the HR function. This includes the following five groups:
the role of managers/supervisors
the role of union or staff association representatives (if applicable) and
From past experiences on specific client projects, we have always been surprised at the collective power that emerges from this phase of the process. Members of the Planning Team are always surprised at the degree of congruence that becomes readily apparent regarding the roles of these five groups. Each of these groups usually wants the same outcome – but they also understand that they each play a slightly different and complementary role in achieving the outcome.
This step reinforces the essential principle of linking people practices to the strategic direction of the organisation and the people strategy in the Strategic Plan.
Step 4: Key People Success Measures
In Step 3, you laid out the ingredients of your ideal future state from your ‘people perspective’. That is your description of success. Now, in this step, you need to identify the ways that are important for you in measuring success.
There is an old maxim in business that states: ‘What gets measured gets done.’ There is a lot of truth to this in real life. People seem to focus more on goals and targets where their results can be assessed, tabulated or measured. These provide tangible and visible evidence of progress towards one’s desired goals.
In establishing your Key People Success Measures, it is important to try and develop a balanced set of measures. Too often, organisations only want to measure the financial components of success. It is also important to set goals and to measure progress towards things such as:
staff retention levels or employee turnover
length of time and costs to fill vacancies
rates and reasons for employee absenteeism or employee sick-leave
volume of employee complaints or grievances and the types of concerns
length of time required to resolve complaints and grievances
customer satisfaction – the level of managerial satisfaction with the services provided by the HR Staff Team
level of employee learning and the return on the investment in training and development
career development and career progression of staff within the organisation.
This is not intended to be an exhaustive list – it is only a sample of the variety of things that can be measured. The task is to select those that are ‘key’ to achieving your desired vision, mission and values – your key people success measures. Don’t allow yourself to be seduced by measuring the easy things. You need to ensure that these are ‘outcome measures of success’. For example, if part of your vision for the future is to be a ‘learning organisation’, then it is probably quite easy to measure how many people participated in any learning sessions provided over the past year. This is an activity measure only. To be able to measure the outcome of your efforts at being a learning organisation, you would need to assess the level of learning that occurred as a result of people’s participation in your learning activities. This would entail a longitudinal assessment of changes in behaviour or changes in workplace practices that occurred as a result of the learning opportunities that were provided. It may require an assessment by a supervisor or a manager about what changes did or did not occur, in addition to a personal self- assessment. This helps to identify the outcomes that actually occurred.
For each element that you want to measure, you will need to assess your baseline level or your starting point, identify your ideal target or goal and then establish a set of interim measures that can serve as stepping stones towards the attainment of your ultimate goal. Every challenging goal is best met by becoming progressively better at meeting your interim targets. The achievement of each ‘level of improvement’ can then serve as a springboard towards achieving the next level. This also provides many opportunities to celebrate the mini-successes on the way towards achieving the bigger goals, which reinforces and re-energises people to keep working to achieve the ultimate goals.
For groups that have not done much in the area of measuring their progress, you can easily become swept up in the exercise and find yourself with dozens of things to track. Be selective – pick the top five or six elements that are truly key to your success and track these items relentlessly. Fewer measures that are followed vigorously can yield better returns than a large number of measures that solicit mediocre interest and follow-through.
With the right set of measures, you can create your own scoreboard of results. This scoreboard enables all staff, from the front-line to the executive office, to track progress, to recognise which efforts are yielding the results you want, to note when efforts are slipping and you start to go off-course and to take action to get back on track. This information provides feedback to the organisation about the results of your efforts, so it needs to be communicated or fed back to staff on a fairly regular basis.
Step 5: Current State People Assessment
In this step, you need to take stock of what your current resources are, what issues and concerns you are dealing with, and what your assessment is of the skills and competencies of your people. Of special interest in this step is an assessment of the leadership competencies that exist within your workforce and the specific skills and competencies of your human resource management practices. This is your reality check. What is your current state situation and how well positioned are you to move forward towards your ‘ideal future state’?
In the model that we have developed, we place an emphasis on your ability to assess your leadership competencies as well as your human resource competencies, as these are vital aspects of your resource assessment exercise. For many organisations, the depth of the leadership talent pool is a key ingredient to their future corporate success. This has a significant impact on succession planning for any organisation because it enables you to identify those individuals who are ready to assume more responsibility within your organisation as you move forward.
We have developed a set of two models to complete this assessment – one for assessing leadership competencies and one for assessing human resource management competencies. Each of these models was created on the same framework presented in Chapter 5, under Concept 1 of the Systems Thinking Framework – The Levels of Living Systems. In Chapter 7, we will present each of these models in some detail. For now, it is sufficient to note that an honest assessment of your current competency levels in these two areas will be vital as you prepare to identify the core strategies that you will need to initiate and implement to bridge the gap between your current state and your ideal future state.
In addition to these two components of your current situation, you will also need to gather, analyse and interpret other critical sources of data such as:
demographic profile of your current workforce
areas of skills specialisation and skills deficiency
levels of staff morale or staff discontent, which can be reflected in the volume of complaints or grievances that are currently unresolved
length of staff tenure or rates of staff turnover
levels of staff injury or unsafe workplace practices and incidents
calibre of your employee benefits programme
comparison of your salary levels with other industry leaders
financial viability of the organisation and the volume of financial resources that can be accessed to bring about improvements, as needed
quality of your relationships with any unions or staff associations.
This list outlines some of the elements of a thorough current state assessment that is needed before launching into the development of your Core People Strategies. Whenever you conduct this type of assessment, having accurate data rather than mere perceptions is important. However, it doesn’t stop with gathering of the data. You will need to dig into the data to uncover the real messages that lie within. Three key questions to keep in mind as you go through this assessment stage are:
What? – What are the current data?
So What? – So what are the data telling us? What is the underlying ‘information gem’ that we can deduce from a deeper examination of the data?
Now What? – Now that we have a deeper understanding of the data, what are we going to do about it?
Once you have gone through these three stages of data analysis, you will be in a very good position to begin identifying what actions for change are needed to move forward towards the attainment of your ideal future state. Now you are ready to begin formulating strategies and action plans.
As you carry out this phase of the People Planning Process, you will inevitably be required to engage a significant portion of your current workforce, especially your HR staff, to obtain the information needed. There is a very subtle side-benefit to this step. By engaging so many staff, you are already enlisting them in the planning process. This brings them one step closer to contributing to finding sound solutions to some of the issues that have surfaced through this stage. You are continuing to build the critical mass of support that will ultimately be needed to implement your People Plan successfully. Aren’t you the crafty one? Remember … the 75% of plans that fail do so because of an inability by the members of the organisation to implement their plans successfully.
Step 6: Developing People Strategies
This is the step that most people are impatient to get to. This is where we begin to conceptualise specific initiatives that will help to resolve the current people management problems your organisation is facing. As the phrase states: ‘This is where the rubber meets the road’. This is where the action begins. And as most of us are keen problem solvers, we need some solutions – and we need them fast!
Good problem solving is predicated on good strategies. Good strategies are predicated on a sound assessment of the desired future state, the current state situation and the size of the gap between these two scenarios.
Each organisation needs to determine what specific strategies they need to bridge this gap. We characterise this portion of the planning exercise by imaging that you are standing on one side of a river (your ‘current state’) and your desire is to get to the other side (your ‘ideal future state’). Through your current state assessment, you have been identifying the resources that you have to work with, along with the issues and concerns that you are facing. Your task is to take your resources – your people’s skills, tools and building materials – and determine how to build a bridge over the gorge between the two banks of the river. In the event that the gorge is too wide to bridge, you may need to consider an alternative approach – such as building a boat or a raft that can be used to get to the other side. In this metaphor, your Core People Strategies represent the planks of the bridge or the frame of the boat or raft that you are building.
We have found that organisations achieve better implementation results when they discipline themselves to identify a limited number of Core People Strategies, such as four to six as a maximum. In many cases, when groups identify a large number of strategies, many are merely subsets of a larger strategy. For example, identifying a Compensation Strategy, as well as a Recognition Strategy and a Benefits Strategy is a more detailed way of developing a Recognition and Rewards Strategy. By limiting the number of strategies, we don’t want you to overlook anything that is needed. We only want you to continue to maintain a high-level perspective and not become trapped in too much detail prematurely. But don’t worry. We will be getting to the detailed elements of your plan soon.
It is very easy at this point to develop strategies that merely replicate the traditional service functions of any HR Department – Staffing, Classifications, Labour Relations, Compensation and Benefits, and Staff Development and Training. Try not to be seduced by this approach. If you do, you will only reinforce the compartmentalised approach that so many organisations use in delivering sound people management services. Instead, try to identify strategies that clearly address the specific categories of issues and concerns you identified earlier. For example, you may find that you need a set of core strategies, such as:
Attracting and Retaining Great People Strategy
Recognition and Rewards Strategy
Career and Succession Planning Strategy
This is not intended to be a recommended set of strategies. These are provided as illustrative examples only. To achieve true effectiveness, you need to identify your own strategies and put them in your own words. It might be helpful to think about what any employee needs from the organisation, during his or her life cycle with your organisation – from the time they first apply or are recruited, to the time they retire or move on to a new job in another organisation.
There is a specific set of steps to be followed in developing your Core People Strategies, which includes:
1. Identify the categories for your strategies, as in the example provided above.
2. For each specific strategy, you will need to develop a good, short, descriptive title.
3. Then you need a clear, single-sentence description of what this strategy is intended to achieve.
4. Then you will need to complete a FROM ^ TO exercise for each strategy. This is an exercise in which you describe the way things are at present within your organisation (the FROM) as well as the way you want them to be (the TO). We have discovered that when clients complete this exercise with sincerity, they do not have to be inventive and create specific initiatives for each strategy. The initiatives become self-evident when you see the gap between the FROM and TO statements.
5. Following Step 4, you need to identify specific Strategic Action Initiatives that need to be undertaken in order to bring about the scenario as outlined in the TO statements. In some cases, this will mean continuing to do some of the things that you are already doing, and that are effective. Or it could mean undertaking something new, or expanding and extending some things that you have been doing. It can also include some of the things that you need to stop doing, because their impact is no longer valuable or effective. Try to keep the list of Strategic Action Initiatives within each strategy down to a reasonable number, say 8–12. Remember, with a group of five or six strategies that could still give you as many as 40–72 specific initiatives to implement. Unbounded enthusiasm can be a recipe for disaster at this stage. Don’t place an unrealistic strain on your current or planned resources or you will only be disappointed when you find that you were unable to achieve everything you included in your plan.
In the next section, we will outline ways for you to determine which of these action items need to be initiated in Year 1, Year 2 or Year 3 of your Business Plan.
Over the years, we have found that it is helpful to identify each strategy by number in addition to title. Don’t let people believe that Strategy 1 is more important than Strategy 2. Each is equally important, because each forms a portion of the bridge that is needed to close or bridge the gap between today’s scenario and the one that you are striving to create. When you number each strategy, you can also number each Strategic Action Initiative, for example 1.3, 3.5 or 4.2. When the strategic action initiatives are identified in this way, staff can quickly cross-reference any specific work duty or project assignment by referring to the specific action initiative that their efforts are helping to fulfil. This creates a fully integrated set of plans – from your corporate People Plan, to a detailed 3-Year People Business Plan to a set of detailed Employee Work Plans. In this way, any employee can clearly demonstrate how her or his efforts on any specific item in their individual Performance Management Plan are directly related to one of your planned initiatives in the corporate Strategic Plan or the corporate People Plan. If this connection is not clear, then it is appropriate for that individual’s manager or supervisor to question the validity of their contribution to that initiative. If the efforts of staff do not move you towards the achievement of your strategies, then their efforts are inadvertently taking you away from it. That can lead to significant ‘energy leakage’ within your organisation. This is usually unintentional, but it can still create significant problems within your organisation due to an ineffective use of staff time and energy. Alignment and attunement are critical at this stage – the alignment of the efforts of your staff with the corporate plans and the attunement of their hearts and minds with your overall vision, mission and value statements.
With this preparatory work completed, you are now ready to begin laying out your detailed 3-Year Business Plan.
Step 7: People Edge Integration
The integration that we refer to in this step is the integration of the efforts of all those staff who have any involvement or responsibility in the management of your People Resources. In virtually every organisation that we have studied and worked with, that includes every single employee! Of course, some staff members, such as managers and supervisors, as well as staff within the HR Department will have primary responsibilities for working on initiatives within the People Plan. However, senior managers must also be very concerned with the successful implementation of this plan, as the organisation’s future success will be directly linked to your corporate ability to attract and retain the qualified staff needed to achieve your corporate strategic plan. This is particularly true when looking at developing an effective ‘Succession Plan’ that enables the organisation to groom staff to fill vacancies as they occur, or to retain continuity and stability during periods of major workforce changes. At the same time, every employee invariably has a strong, vested interest in his or her own career progression and advancement.
The primary purpose of this step is to determine which initiatives need to be undertaken in each of the three years included within your 3-Year People Business Plan. Once all of the phases outlined in Step 6 have been completed, you need to begin organising your efforts. Begin by identifying all current initiatives that are being worked on and which need to be continued. These will include any continuous ongoing initiatives, such as staffing efforts or contract negotiation activities within a unionised workplace, or initiatives that have already been launched, are not yet completed and need to be continued until they are successfully concluded. In addition, you need to identify any new initiatives that need to be launched within the next year.
You then need to identify which initiatives need to be launched within the second year of your plan. Obviously, some initiatives will need to be carried out every year, such as managing employees’ personnel files and completing the payroll requirements for all staff. You will also find that some of your initiatives may require more than one year to be completed, so they will need to be carried forward into the next. Finally, any initiatives not identified as a Year 1 or a Year 2 initiative are carried forward and included in your Year 3 plan.
A word of caution is required here. No matter how hard you try, you will inevitably find that you put more items into your Year 1 Operational Plan than can be achieved within a 12-month period. It is not uncommon for clients to pack about 18–20 months’ worth of work into the first year of their 3-Year Business Plan. Virtually every one of our clients, when they conduct their Annual People Plan Review and Update (which is Step 10 in this process), acknowledge that their expectations were overly ambitious. This is generally an indication that many organisations find it very difficult to be able to realistically set priorities and muster the necessary resources to carry out their selected priorities. Planning is about making tough choices. Strategic planning is about being able to strategise what can be accomplished with a limited supply of resources. The only time this is not necessary is when an organisation has an unlimited supply of resources – and we have yet to encounter an organisation that meets this criteria. When you have limited resources, you need to be able to limit your choices about what is a true priority, as opposed to a strong desire. Again, because of our innate urge to solve problems, we invariably want to solve all of the problems as soon as possible.
As a rule of thumb, we find that once all of the items that must be carried out annually under a given strategy have been set out, there is probably only room for an additional four or five Strategic Action Initiatives for each strategy. That still gives you an average of about 20 major undertakings in any given year, in addition to your regular ongoing work.
After laying out the specific initiatives for Year 1, Year 2 and Year 3 and beyond, you will need to identify all of the resources needed to carry out your plan for the first year. This is where your annual budget is created. In this approach, the plan drives your budget, not the other way around, which occurs far too often in organisations. After identifying the necessary resources, if there is a short-fall, you will need to pare back your expectations so that they are in line with the available resources – or identify ways in which you can secure additional resources, trim some initiatives to spread the resources around more equitably, or look for ways to collaborate or partner with others to achieve what is needed.
From a timing point of view, in order to have the plan drive the budget, you will need to initiate your planning process far enough in advance of your annual budgeting process, so that you have your 3-Year Business Plan completed before the budgeting process begins.
At this point in the planning sequence, the plan development comes to an end. Now we need to shift our attention to the plan implementation process. But, there is a very critical step that needs to be completed before implementation begins.
Step 8: Plan-to-Implement
As we have noted earlier, a very large number of major planning projects fail to achieve successful implementation – about three in four. That is a staggering statistic! What causes so many organisations to drop the ball after spending so much time, money and effort on developing the plan that they believe will help them to be successful in the years ahead?
In our research, after examining 14 different popular methods for developing a major corporate plan, we found that none of the approaches we studied had included what we consider to be a key step in successful implementation – a plan to implement! It may seem redundant to say you need to plan the implementation of your plan. Why not just do it?
Any major plan will have a variety of change initiatives included within it. That’s why you develop a plan in the first place – to make the right changes that will enable you to achieve your ideal future state. You don’t develop a plan to maintain the status quo. If that’s all you wanted to do, then just keep doing what you have been doing. The fact that you have intentionally included some changes within your plan means that your people need to be prepared to cope with and to successfully implement the changes. That’s where the standard breakdowns occur.
We have found that when you consciously concentrate on helping staff to understand that their typical responses to change are normal, natural and predictable, you eliminate much of the mystique of managing the change process. If staff do not develop some common attitudes and some common competencies about change management, then your efforts to successfully implement the changes embedded within your plan are probably going to fail.
That’s why the Plan-to-Implement phase of this strategic HR planning process is so important. In this session, we set the detailed plan aside and concentrate on what can be expected from staff as the plan is introduced for implementation. This is the time to explore the natural human dynamics of change. This is the time to look at the reasons why people resist change. This is the time to identify the best practices for engaging people so that they see the opportunities within the changes being introduced, not just the threats within the changes.
In Chapter 5 we presented the four primary concepts of Systems Thinking. During the Plan-to-Implement phase, we always go back and revisit three of these four concepts:
the Seven Levels of Living Systems and the Six Rings of Readiness,
the A-B-C-D-E Systems Thinking Approach to planning changes, and
Even though people may be familiar with these concepts, it’s not until you are ‘really in the midst of the change’ that you fully appreciate many of the finer points of these three models.
This point was made very clear recently. As I was writing this section of the book, one of my clients, who heads an academic library, commented that she was coming face to face with a lot of resistance to the changes she was trying to implement, in the first full year of their new strategic plan for the library. Even though staff had been actively engaged and involved in the development of the plan, once they recognised that some of the changes would have an impact on their own jobs and how they were expected to perform their duties, the normal, natural and predictable resistance responses began to surface. On this particular project, once the strategic plan had been completed, as part of the Plan-to-Implement we had conducted a set of sessions on ‘Implementing Our Plan’ and ‘Change Management’ for all staff members of the library. However, during the workshop sessions, the messages were only theoretical and we saw many of the staff members eagerly nodding their heads in agreement, as we discussed what usually happens during a major change. But then, as the changes began to take place, the theory had changed to hard reality – and people were feeling uncomfortable as they tried to cope with the changes and the natural reactions of members of the various staff teams. It seems that in most organisations, it’s easier to talk about change than it is to embrace change. To offset this, we always include some ‘refresher pieces’ about implementing change, when we work with clients as they update their plans each year. This helps staff become more knowledgeable and more skilled in the competencies of change management.
For any major plan to be successfully implemented, you need to ensure that the plan is not placed on the top shelf after it has been finalised. You need to keep it front and centre as the first year unfolds. In this Plan-to- Implement session, there are several techniques that groups can adopt to ensure that the plan stays relevant and current. These include:
scheduling a set of dates for you to conduct quarterly reviews of your progress on the plan,
scheduling a date for the Annual Plan Review and Update (this is Step 10), and
holding managers accountable for implementing the initiatives included within Year 1 of the Plan by including these items on the agenda of your regular Management Team Meetings, to ensure that updates are provided regularly.
We always ask clients to commit to these three things as a minimum, to help the plan to be successfully implemented within the first year. To achieve the proper accountability attitude from managers, you can assign different members of your Management Team to accept the responsibility of being ‘strategy sponsors’ for each of your Core People Strategies. Each People Strategy Sponsor is expected to provide periodic update reports on the progress of the various Strategic Action Initiatives within their specific Core People Strategy. By paying attention to each of the strategies and each of the initiatives within each strategy, on an ongoing and continuous basis throughout the first year of your plan implementation, you begin to embed the very skills that are needed to move from ‘strategic HR planning’ to ‘strategic HR management’. In the latter case, you are using the plan to manage the organisation from a strategic perspective, month to month.
Whenever a new plan is developed, most clients have an innate tendency to over-extend themselves in Year 1. I always remind my clients of this as they are putting the finishing touches to their 3-Year Business Plan. Despite this warning, as mentioned earlier, the vast majority of my clients inevitably end up with about 18–20 months’ worth of initiatives included in the first year of their plan. Then as they conduct their first annual review, they recognise that they have succumbed to the very trap that they were warned about a year earlier. This common tendency is a result of treating everything as a priority and not being able to accept that some items may not be achievable as quickly as desired, often because of resource limitations, such as time and people. When it’s a financial resource limitation, it seems to be more acceptable. But everyone assumes that ‘we can always do a bit more, if we just work and try a little harder’.
In discussing this matter, I am reminded of the sage advice of a seasoned traveller who once told me: ‘When you are packing for a long trip, lay everything that you plan to take with you out on the bed. Then take half of the clothes away and double the amount of money you are planning to take. That will be just right!’ It seems the same applies to the journey of implementing your plan – cut back on your original set of initiatives and double your planned resources to pull them off.
In order to engage staff in the successful implementation of your plan, it is important to keep them informed of the progress that is being made. Early wins are very important. In every plan, there are some fairly easy ‘quick wins’ that you need to take advantage of. These are often referred to as ‘the low hanging fruit’. Fruit pickers know that you can get a good jump-start by filling up the first few baskets with low hanging fruit. They are easier to reach and by getting them out of the way, you don’t damage them when trying to get to the fruit that is higher up. This principle is applicable to the implementation of your plan, too. Once you have a few early items successfully completed, send out a communiqué to staff to report on your progress. Success breeds success. Get some early wins and use that enthusiasm to carry you forward into the more difficult and more time-consuming initiatives.
The Plan-to-Implement session is designed to provide you with the opportunity to discuss these various ways that you can get off to a good start. By consciously figuring out how to get the implementation process rolling, you significantly increase your odds of achieving successful implementation.
Step 9: Strategy Implementation and Change
This step doesn’t need much explanation. It’s just a matter of getting started on the plan implementation. However, it does require a lot of skill, especially from managers and leaders.
This is the stage where the ‘real work’ of the plan unfolds. This is the ‘do it’ stage. I often refer to the process of building a new home, or of undertaking some major renovations and structural changes to your current home. We tend to spend a significant amount of time, effort and money getting the plans together – first the conceptual plans, then the detailed drawings and finally the blueprints that the builders will need to actually make the changes that are included within the plan. If, once the detailed plans are completed, we fail to hire the appropriate contractors and construction staff to initiate the work, the plan remains just that – a plan. And nothing new happens. You can’t really ‘live in the blueprints’, can you? If you indeed want to realise your dream of the new home or the newly renovated home, you must actually begin the implementation process by bringing people in to do the work. This must be done in a coordinated way to ensure that each phase of the project unfolds in the proper way at the proper time. You turn the plan into reality through action.
The same principles apply to your new People Plan. This is where the real skill of change management comes into play. Managers and leaders must be very clear that the changes embedded within the plan will unfold, as planned. These are not ‘optional suggestions’. These are ‘strategic change initiatives’ that will contribute to building the desired workplace culture that was described so eloquently in your People Vision, Mission and Core Values. So, it is vital that these initiatives are built into the work plans of various staff teams, special project teams and key staff members. These initiatives need to be incorporated into the regular flow of work, so that due attention and the appropriate resources of time, energy and money are dedicated to achieving them.
Too often, staff members tend to look at the Strategic People Plan as an add-on to the regular work of the organisation. They will say: ‘You mean you want me to do my regular job and carry out the People Plan too?’ With this attitude, the plan will always be perceived as an extra burden to people who may already see themselves as being overworked. It is important that people understand that ‘the plan’ is ‘the work’ of the organisation. It is through the initiatives included in the plan that you will build the type of organisation that everyone really wants to be a part of. Being an ‘employer of choice’ does not come about because people hope it will happen. Hope is not a strategy! You need to implement the changes consciously to achieve your desired outcomes.
The purpose of the series of Quarterly Review Sessions that were scheduled in Step 8 during the Plan-to-Implement session is to keep everyone focused on what they committed to do during the first year of the plan. When it comes to tracking progress on your annual budget, quarterly financial reports are designed to let you know if you have been generating the revenue needed and expending your financial resources in a controlled fashion, so that you don’t end up in a financial crisis part way through the year. The same principle applies to your quarterly reports on the progress of your plan. You don’t want to discover in the tenth month of the year that you still have eight months’ worth of activities that need to be implemented. The quarterly reporting cycle enables you to re- energise your people, or commit new resources if needed to ensure that the plan continues to unfold, in an orderly and progressive fashion. This also provides you with the opportunity to reconsider some of the initiatives, if it becomes abundantly clear that you did in fact over-commit during the plan development phase. It’s your plan. You can amend it as necessary, when it’s clear that some initiatives need to be re-scheduled, or dropped altogether, or if some new, unanticipated initiatives surface and need to be inserted into your existing plan.
We believe that the key to successful strategic management of any corporate plan is to operate from a position of ‘strategic consistency, with operational flexibility’. What does this mean? Quite simply, you need to maintain your focus on your long-term strategic outcomes, yet be ready to make adjustments in order to deal with emerging operational realities that may not have been contemplated. This is similar to a situation you may encounter while driving. Let’s say that you are driving from Vancouver, on the west coast of Canada, to Toronto, in the central part of Canada. You have your route mapped out – and then you come across a detour, due to the fact that there was a major flood and a key bridge has been severely damaged. So, everyone is now being re-routed south, to get around the problem. Reaching Toronto is your ‘strategic consistency’. That part of the plan hasn’t changed. However, if as you are heading south on the detour you decide to keep going and you head towards New Orleans instead of Toronto, you end up losing your strategic consistency. The operational shift created a strategic shift. What you need to do instead is continue to keep your eye on your ultimate destination, and do whatever it takes to work around the obstacle or impediment, so that you can get back on track again, as planned. This is operational flexibility, to deal with the unexpected detour, while maintaining strategic consistency. With this approach, you will still make it to Toronto, although your arrival time may be a bit later than planned, or you may end up spending more resources than you had planned for things such extra petrol or hotel rooms, depending on how long it takes to work around the detour.
To be able to achieve this approach during the first year of your plan implementation, you need to keep reminding people about the overall outcomes of your plan, reporting on progress to date and continually reinforcing people’s efforts to achieve the many small tasks that lead to the achievement of a major initiative. This is classical coaching, at its best. The best leaders and managers embody many of the same characteristics that are demonstrated by good coaches.
As this initial year unfolds, you will need to be prepared to conduct the last step in this process – the Annual People Plan Review and Update. Let us explore its specific requirements.
Step 10: Annual People Plan Review and Update
In this step, coordinating your Plan Update with your normal Budget Preparation Cycle is critical. In Step 7, we noted that in good planning, ‘the plan drives the budget’. In too many organisations, the reverse is the norm – the budget drives the plan. While working with a large government department many years ago, I had the following discussion with a senior manager:
| Manager | ‘We can’t undertake this type of strategic planning initiative until we know what our budget is for the coming year.’ |
| Consultant | ‘That sounds like you believe that your strategic plan is to figure out how to spend your budget.’ |
| Manager | ‘Oh, don’t be so crass.’ |
| Consultant | ‘Well, you tell me, why do you take the approach that your budget must precede or drive your planning?’ |
This manager was not able to provide an answer to the question – but it did make him stop and think about it for quite a while.
We have far too many managers who have been trained to believe that the budget is the be-all and end-all of good management. Your budget is only one of the resources that you have to work with to fulfil the organisation’s annual plan successfully. Granted, it is a very important resource – but it is still just a means to the end, not the end in itself. That is why so many public sector managers seem obsessed with ‘spending their budget’ before the fiscal year end arrives. They have an ingrained fear that if it’s not all spent, they will be penalised in the following year, because they obviously received more than they needed in the previous year. Having spent close to 20 years working in the public sector, as a manager and a senior executive, I experienced this type of short-term thinking far too often. In fact, it was this type of ‘groupthink’ that was one of the driving forces behind my efforts many years ago to develop an effective method for strategic planning within a public sector environment. Needless to say, these efforts were met with some strong resistance. But, as it turns out, many of my current clients for strategic planning and strategic human resource planning projects are public sector organisations who are working hard to replace this old way of thinking with a new one and are learning to operate from a strategic management perspective. So, it does work after all.
But I digress. Let’s get back to the main point of this step in the People Planning Process.
The coordination between your Annual Plan Review and Update and your Annual Budget Process is very important. In order for you to ensure that your plan drives your budget, you must complete your plan update exercise before you begin your budget exercise. This seems obvious. However, it is a bit more difficult to put into practice than it might seem.
This is in part due to the lengthy process that many organisations have established for preparing and receiving approval for their annual budget. In a typical organisation, you may be required to begin the budget exercise for your next fiscal year while you are still in only the fourth or fifth month of the current fiscal year. This becomes particularly awkward to deal with during the initial year of your Strategic People Plan Implementation. You have just spent a significant amount of time preparing your plan. Now you have really just begun to implement it and it’s already time to begin reviewing it and updating it. But, you don’t seem to have much to show yet for your first year’s initiatives.
Good strategic planning and good strategic budgeting require that you maintain a focus on the future. As a senior leader, you need to be working constantly from the perspective of what is needed over the next 12–18 months. That means that you must be able to share this perspective with your staff, so that they can provide the type of input that is needed for you to complete the annual plan review and update, even while the current year is still in the early stages of implementation.
Let’s use a practical example to illustrate the importance of this coordination. Let’s take a hypothetical organisation that has a fiscal year that is the same as the calendar year. You started the implementation of the first year of your plan in January, with lots of excitement and enthusiasm. You know that the CFO or the Director of Finance is going to start asking you to begin your deliberations for the upcoming budget by late July, so that the final budget can be prepared and ready for submission to the Senior Executive Team by late October. In that way the budget can be approved and authorised by late November, so that everything is ready to go for the start of the new fiscal year, come January 1st.
In order to coordinate your planning cycle with the budget cycle, you will need to complete your Annual Plan Review and Update by the end of June at the latest. Therefore, you may need to hold your update sessions in late May or early June, which seems odd, as you only have about one-third of the current year completed. But, that is what is needed if you want to maintain the perspective that your plan drives your budget. Once your managers and your staff see that this is the ‘new annual planning and budgeting cycle’, you will reinforce the importance of planning ahead. This will also reinforce the value of having current updates of what has been occurring. Your quarterly reviews help to provide this update. Your regular reports on your plan’s progress, through the Strategy Sponsors at your regular Management Meetings, will also help to provide the update you need.
So, in a typical calendar year cycle you will:
conduct a quarterly review in late March
replace your second quarterly review in June with your Annual Plan Review and Update Session,
complete the budget preparations to support your new updated plan between July and September,
conduct your third quarterly review in late September and
conduct your final quarterly review, which becomes your year-end review in late December, which becomes your launch for the second year of your planning cycle, in January once again.
For this Annual Review and Update Session, you will review the contents of your plan and provide current updates where appropriate, such as:
Environmental Scanning (Step 1)
Update on any recent changes in the Corporate Strategic Direction (Step 2)
Year 1 progress on your Key People Success Measure activities (Step 4)
You will then focus on the specific Strategic Action Initiatives that were scheduled for Year 1 and provide an update on the progress achieved, which items are still in progress, what remains to be initiated and any items that may have lost their relevance and need to be dropped, if appropriate. Then you will look at all of the Strategic Action Initiatives for each Core People Strategy and re-craft your new 3-Year Business Plan.
Through this process you produce a continuous, rolling 3-Year Business Plan. This means that your attention is now concentrated on the upcoming year, plus the next two years. This provides a more long-term strategic look at the future, which becomes the new norm for how you plan, how you think and how you act. This represents a fairly critical shift in focus for most organisations, we have discovered. They traditionally become fixed on the upcoming year and end up playing the game of leaping from one year to the next without any longer term perspective in front of them. One metaphor that we use in speaking to clients about this shift is to think about driving your car in heavy traffic. If you only drive by monitoring the rear lights of the vehicle directly in front of you, you may find that you have to brake hard to avoid a collision, if the traffic ahead slows down. On the other hand, if you are scanning the traffic two or three cars ahead of you, you have more advance warning and can drive much more effectively, with a greater sense of control over what is unfolding ahead of you. This is the same pattern that unfolds in the 3-Year Business Planning Cycle. By raising your line of sight, you are better able to see the current year, plus the next two years. That provides you with a better response period as the outside environment begins to shift, forcing you to make adjustments. For many of our clients, this feature alone has been one of the most valuable aspects of the planning cycle, because it lowers the tension and anxiety for senior managers, who become much more adept at anticipating pending shifts and the corresponding changes that are needed to keep their own plan on course.
In developing your initial People Plan, you will require a series of planning sessions over several months to complete Steps 1–8. However, for the Annual Plan Review and Update, you will probably need only one session of about two days, as you are simply reviewing many components of the plan and then refreshing the 3-Year Business Plan to make it current again.
The parallel process – with key stakeholders
If you look at the model of the Strategic People Edge Management process (Figure 6.1), as outlined at the beginning of this chapter, you will see an inner loop that is called the Parallel Process. In our earlier research of other planning models, of the 14 examined, none had this component within their process. Most planning processes are conducted by a small group of senior managers, or the staff of a dedicated Planning Office completes them. Then, once the plan is completed it is dropped on the organisation, often creating a lot of consternation, surprise and unrest, as people begin to wonder what has been happening and why is there such a need for the types of changes incorporated in the new plan.
Too often we have seen senior executives try to use the ‘DAD’ approach when it comes to consultation with key stakeholders – Decide, Announce and Defend. This is most evident in organisations that have a strong bureaucratic culture. Although this may seem to be an efficient way of building plans for change, it generally backfires because of the amount of time spent trying to convince people to go along with the plan that has been finalised.
We have found that when people are kept in the dark, their willingness to wholeheartedly embrace a new plan is somewhat limited. In fact, one of our key operating principles in this type of work is:
This seems like such a simple idea, but it is one that is too often ignored by senior managers as they develop new corporate plans. In our approach, we advise the Planning Team to stop at several key points in the 10-step Planning Process and share what has been developed with your key stakeholders. The groups that are most interested in having this opportunity to get a preview of what is unfolding through the planning process are your staff, your governance body if you have one (an elected Board of Directors, a Minister or Secretary who is the elected member of the government responsible for your portfolio) and any labour or union groups that represent the interests of your employees.
In the People Planning Process, we help our clients to conduct Parallel Process Meetings with Key Stakeholders after Steps 3, 4 and 6 have been completed. During these sessions, the overall Planning Process is presented as part of an educational process to ensure that people are aware of the methodology being used, and the details of the Plan as it has been drafted thus far are shared. Stakeholders are invited to provide feedback on what has been developed and also to offer suggestions for improving the plan. It is important to make it clear that all of the feedback received will be seriously reviewed and considered by the Planning Team. However, it is equally important to be very clear that not all recommendations for change will be able to be accommodated, as one person’s comments may well contradict the comment made by another – whereas one person loves what has been developed, someone else may think that it has little value. Obviously, both of these extremes cannot be included in any revisions to the plan. After reviewing the feedback comments in the follow-up session, the Planning Team will make the decisions as to what changes are warranted and help to make the plan stronger and more realistic. Then, when you go out for the next round of the Parallel Process, stakeholders will see what modifications were made and which ones were not accepted. Once you provide the rationale behind your decision-making process for the amendments, most people will accept them, because you were transparent and willing to consider their input, even if a suggestion was not accepted. This process indicates quite clearly that you do care about what your stakeholders think. That goes a long way towards engaging them, once it is time to implement the plan and all of the inherent changes included within the plan. If people do indeed support what they help to create, then this process provides the opportunity for them to help in the creative process.
The power of this relatively simple element has been demonstrated over and over again over the past 15 years. Here are two brief examples of what we have encountered.
In one large government department, when the senior executive team announced their intentions to undertake this type of planning process, the union which represented the majority of the department’s staff were concerned and suggested that this approach was merely an attempt by management to co-opt staff. As a result, they advised all union members to boycott the Parallel Process Meetings and refuse to become involved. In this department, union grievances were common and the union/management relationship was characterised as ‘cautious and cool’ at best. Some would say that it was ‘adversarial and frigid’.
When the head of the department contacted me to inform me of the union’s stance, he made it quite clear that he felt that he could not proceed under this cloud of mistrust. I agreed wholeheartedly. Then I asked him: ‘If you don’t believe you can proceed without the union’s openness to be engaged and they have made it clear that they are not prepared to do so, what do you want to do?’ He didn’t have an answer. So, I asked him: ‘If you really want them and need them, have you ever thought about including the union on your Planning Team?’ If it is possible to hear the blood drain from someone’s face over the telephone, I believe that is what I heard! He paused, said he would have to think about that and hung up. He called back two days later and said that he now understood the importance of having the union involved in the process from the outset, as an ally rather than perpetuating the more commonplace adversarial stance that had become the norm for his department. His next step was to invite two members of the union’s executive committee who were staff members within his department to sit on the Planning Team. After some consideration, the union agreed to this request.
Through the planning process, these two planning team members were very vocal and contributed some very good ideas to the plan that was being developed. Thankfully, they were able to step outside of their role as staff members of the department and fulfil their roles as senior executives of the union, which put them on a ‘peer relationship level’ with the other members of the Senior Management Team who served on the Planning Team. As a result of this about-face, the union then advised its members to become engaged in the process and to offer their candid views about the plan and its contents. By the end of the process, 81% of the staff within the department – union as well as exempt staff – participated in one or more of the Parallel Process Meetings. The plan that was produced received a good level of acceptance by the staff and as a result the department was able to implement the plan with a high level of success. In addition, a very constructive shift occurred in the level of union/management relationship within the department.
The second example comes from an academic library client. In this case, we included the parallel process from the outset of the planning project. The plan was completed and following a series of implementation orientation sessions that were made available to all staff, the plan was initiated. Within a few months of the initial implementation of the plan, the union that represented a large number of the staff on campus was unable to come to terms over contract negotiations with the University and a strike was called. The strike lasted for about six weeks and the Library Management Team was able to provide a limited level of service to the students of the university throughout the duration of the strike. On the first day following the end of the strike, the head of the library was on hand at 6:30 in the morning to personally greet all of the staff as they returned to work. As a result of the culture of openness and trust that had been built up during the planning process and through the Parallel Process, the relationships between staff following the strike were very positive, which enabled the library staff to refocus on their plan quickly. This mood was not evident in other parts of the university.
These two examples are representative of the shift in working relationships that we have seen many times as a result of the active inclusion of all staff members, as the plan is being developed. As successful implementation of the plan depends on staff support, their input from the outset becomes a critical variable in making the plan live. It does take extra time to conduct the Parallel Process. However, the time is well spent, because it reduces the need to ‘sell the plan’ to staff once it is completed. By engaging them from the outset, staff members quickly see that they have helped in the co-creation of the plan. As a result, they are already on board when you are ready to launch the implementation.
Summary
We presented a 10-Step Strategic People Management Model, which is built upon the basic framework of the simple A-B-C-D-E Systems Planning Model.
We provided an approach that enables organisation leaders to ‘test drive’ the People Plan Process through the Plan-to-Plan session before making a full commitment to undertake the process.
We highlighted the importance of ensuring that the People Plan fully supports the overall corporate strategic direction of the organisation – so that one reinforces and aids the other.
We took a quick look at each of the ten steps of the Strategic People Management Model, providing insights about what is covered at each one.
We presented the Parallel Process concept as a very effective way of connecting with your key stakeholders – as the Plan is being developed. This sets the stage for their active support, once the plan implementation begins.
The ART of People Management
If you operate within a unionised work environment it is critical that you include senior executive representatives of any union or association that serves as the bargaining agent for your staff. Soliciting their active participation from the outset eliminates the need for them to adopt an aggressive position later when you try to introduce the changes incorporated within your plan. Be proactive.
It is important to pay attention to the hopes, needs and aspirations of your Key Stakeholders as you are building your People Plan. By using the Parallel Process at several key points during the planning cycle, you can use their feedback to shape and adapt the plan so that their support is strengthened as you initiate implementation.
For best results, ensure that the membership of your People Plan Team includes representatives from all levels of your organisation – from Senior Management through to front-line staff – and that all major departments or business units are also represented. As noted above, don’t overlook including union representatives, if applicable.
By using the services of an external consultant to facilitate the work of the People Plan Team you can ensure that all key internal staff can focus on the details of the content of what needs to be included within the Plan. The facilitator’s role is to manage the process and the progress of the People Plan Team and add technical, educational input as required. This approach ensures you maximise your capacity to use the talents of both internal and external experts to achieve best results.
The SKEPTIC Technique is a highly effective method to use when conducting a future-focused external scanning exercise that actively engages the members of the planning team and enables them to share their own insights and observations.
The use of the Plan-to-Implement session with its focus on how to deal with significant changes supports your efforts for successful implementation.
Quarterly Review Sessions and monthly update reports on specific portions of the People Plan by the Management Team help you to maintain focus on successful plan implementation.