Six Critical Success Factors
for Successful Mega
Thinking and Planning
As you use Mega Thinking and Planning, there are some guide-lines—critical success factors—that will help keep you on track and keep things under control.
Guide 3. Six Critical Success Factors that Apply to All Successful Organizations
The six critical success factors in Table 4.1 are basic guides (not tools) to help you ensure that what you use, do, and produce will add measurable value. Use these as you plan to make sure that everything you use, do, produce, and deliver will add measurable value.
To guide you as you create success, use the six factors for “reality checking.”
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CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTOR 1: Don’t assume that what worked in the past will work now or in the future. Get out of your comfort zone and be open to change (see Chapter 1). |
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CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTOR 2: Differentiate between ends (what) and means (how) (see Chapter 5). |
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CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTOR 3: Prepare all objectives— including the Ideal Vision and mission—to include measurable statements of both where you are headed as well as the criteria for measuring when you have arrived (see Chapters 5 and 6). |
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CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTOR 4: Define “need” as a gap in results (not as insufficient levels of resources, means, or methods) (see Chapter 7). |
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CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTOR 5: Use and align all three levels of planning and results: Mega/Outcomes, Macro/Outputs, Micro/Products (see Chapter 6). |
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CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTOR 6: Use an Ideal Vision (Mega: what kind of world, in measurable performance terms, we want for tomorrow’s child) as the underlying basis for planning and continual improvement (see Chapter 3). |
Table 4.1. Six critical success factors for Mega thinking and planning.
We have provided the basic rationale for Mega Thinking and Planning—what it is and how it can be central to your success as a manager. There are three basic considerations for defining and delivering success:
• A societal value-added “frame of mind” or paradigm: Your perspective about your organization, your people, and our world focuses on an agreed-upon approach to adding value to all stakeholders.
• A shared determination and agreement on where to head and why: All people who can and might be impacted by the shared objectives must agree on purposes and results criteria using a framework for what every organization uses, does, produces, and delivers to achieve societal value.
• Basic factors will assure you that you focus on what is important and make certain everything is on target.
These, having supplied the conceptual framework, set the stage for what is next:
Pragmatic and basic tools for planning, design, development, implementation, and continual improvement: defining and determining the “hows” of achieving performance that is required for success
To assist you, we provided the basic concepts for Mega Thinking and Planning in order to define and deliver value—measurable value—to internal and external partners. Choices should be based on rational data in order to deliver useful results. To review, the three guides to assist you in defining and delivering personal and organizational success:
Guide 1. The Organizational Elements Model (OEM) that identifies those questions that every organization must ask and answer (Figure 2.1)
Guide 2. The Ideal Vision: Agreeing on where to head and why you want to get there (Figure 3.1)
Guide 3. Six Critical Success Factors that apply to all successful organizations (Table 4.1)
It is important that you realize that as a manager and a leader, this approach is unique, practical, and proven.1
Table 4.2 shows a comparison of conventional “strategic” planning and the Mega Thinking and Planning approach.2
| Traditional “Strategic” Planning | Mega Thinking and Planning Paradigm |
| Improve the present situation. Incremental changes to the present way of doing things. | Mega Thinking and Planning involves the design and creation of a new paradigm. It involves new concepts, realistic new rules, new techniques, and new skills to be successful. It often requires leaving the comfortable behind. |
| Short-term profit or funding. Objectives target only next quarter, or only a very few years in the future. | Long-term objectives that will design a better world for both today’s and tomorrow’s children and citizens and will make our world measurably better. Includes continual improvement. Objectives target 5 to 1003 years plus. |
| A focus on tactics and activities not clearly connected to measurable organizational and external clients’ results. Wants are often confused with needs. | Focuses on designing future results in measurable terms before selecting relevant tactics. Results are long-term and link all three levels: Mega, Macro, and Micro. |
| Objectives define financial results only. Internal clients and future citizens are largely ignored. Positive societal impact is left to chance. |
Objectives are designed for a functional range of stakeholders: • 4.1 Future citizens • 4.2 Today’s clients • 4.3 Internal clients • Performance indicators are chosen to evaluate success and determine revisions and changes |
| Social quality is not a formal or measurable issue in planning. | Societal value-added, now and in the future, are the priority issues for planning. |
| “Needs” are defined as gaps in resources, methods, and means (e.g., we “need” more equipment; we “need” more computers). | “Needs” are defined as gaps between current and desired results. Requirement for more resources are quasi-needs and are only selected on the basis of the best ways and means for meeting the needs. |
| Level of planning focuses on immediate clients and major shareholders. Society and internal clients are not formally or rigorously considered. |
Planning includes the integration and linking of three groups of clients: • 7.1 Society now and in the future • 7.2 Immediate external clients • 7.3 Internal clients |
| Goals are more often general, vague, and exclude measurable criteria. | Objectives are written for results at three levels, and always include measurable criteria. |
Table 4.2. Comparison of conventional strategic planning and the Mega Thinking and Planning program.
This approach has a number of advantages.
1. It is holistic and doesn’t artificially reduce everything down to only a part of any organization or to just a quarterly profit and loss sheet (which is, of course, an essential element but not the sole element).
2. It provides a common “North Star” for all inside and external to the organization to share and then uniquely and together contribute. This cuts down on confusion, un-required internal competition, and delivers a unique approach and results not provided by other approaches.
3. It is results focused and builds on performance data and not on biases, stereotypes, and conventional wisdom.
4. It provides a template that identifies everything an organization uses, does, produces, and delivers, and the external value added. This can be used for considering new initiatives as well as making sure that all efforts and results are aligned and integrated toward a common and shared destination.
5. It is guided by six “rules of the road” that ensure that everything is managed to deliver useful and timely results.
Action Steps
1. Use the Six Critical Success Factors for Mega Thinking and Planning. They will guide you through decisions, commitments, and actions to define and deliver success.
2. Always think and act Mega. It will be more successful than conventional approaches.
Let’s now turn to the specific tools for Mega Thinking and Planning.
Endnotes
1. Two issues of Performance Improvement Quarterly provide operational examples of how Mega planning works, and works well.
Kaufman, R., & Bernardez, M. (2005). (Eds.) Performance Improvement Quarterly (special invited issue on Mega Planning), 18(3), pp. 3–5.
Kaufman, R., Bernardez, M., & Guerra-Lopez, I. (2009). (Eds.) Performance Improvement Quarterly (special invited issue on Mega Planning), 22(2), pp. 17–22.
2. Based on Kaufman, R., Oakley-Browne, H., Watkins, R., & Leigh, D. (2003). Practical strategic planning: Aligning people, performance, and payoffs. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer.
3. Several years ago on an Australian Public Radio broadcast, I was derided by one participant for setting a time frame of 5 to 25 years. However, in support, an Australian professor noted that Fuji had a 100-year planning horizon because “they intend to be in business 100 years in the future!” How long does your organization want to be in business?