 |
“What we think or what we know or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only thing that matters is what we do.” |
This step is the bridge between Strategic Planning and strategic change—bridging from Goal #1 (Planning) to Goal #2 (Implementation).
This Plan-to-Implement step is generally done at a one-day off-site event, similar to the Plan-to-Plan step process. The morning is scheduled as an “Educational Briefing” about Strategic Change. It is organized around the Iceberg Theory of Change (see figure on page 95). First, we cover why change efforts fail (see following pages). It might be useful to see where your strengths and weaknesses are in managing change. Note the items that apply to your organization.
A MENU OF CHANGE STRUCTURES NEEDED
First we cover the deepest part of the iceberg, way below the surface of the water—the structures needed to manage change effectively. Usually structures are ignored and not set in place, thus causing change efforts to fail before they ever get started.
However, the Primary Change Management Structures are key to beginning change with a high potential of success.
WHY CHANGE EFFORTS USUALLY FAIL
Most companies don’t fail for lack of talent or strategic vision. They fail for lack of execution—the routine “blocking and tackling” that great companies consistently do well and always strive to do better.
—T.J. Rodgers, No-Excuses Management
1. Underestimate Systems Complexity. Top-level executives tend to underestimate what it will take. They have unrealistic expectations and fail to understand that the organization is a system of interdependent parts and different levels (individual, team, organization). This results in knee-jerk simple and direct cause-and-effect solutions dealing with symptoms only. Simple solutions for the complexities of interdependent organizations as systems don’t work.
2. Details Lacking. The failure to specify in sufficient detail the actual work required to implement the change; especially in larger organizations (content/process/structure).
3. Change Knowledge Missing. The failure to know, follow, and use what we know about how people deal with change psychologically (the “Rollercoaster of Change.” That change has three dimensions—cultural, political, and rational). Discounting the cost of the psychological effects of change or investing in human assets.
4. Reinforcers Lacking. The lack of realignment of the business control systems such as performance measures, budgets, MIS, compensation, values. Absence of support and reinforcement/rewards for the new changes.
5. Accountability Failure. The lack of specific accountability, responsibility, and consequences at every level of the organization. Inadequate executive accountability and leadership of the change—failure to understand that their role is to actively champion the changes.
6. Time Pressure. Too many changes at once and a quick-fix mentality. Too short-term an orientation by the senior executives. Even greed and obsession with short-term, fast-buck, super-profits. Failure to budget adequate “lead” or “lag” time.
7. Management Resistance. Middle and first-line management resistance, apathy, or abdication.
8. Turf Battles. Opposing and conflicting messages and turf battles in and from top management, along with a split of executive views (as cancer) toward the change. Lack of focused and clear direction, teamwork, and consistency.
9. Change Structures Missing. Missing the formal structures, processes, and needed dedicated resources to lead and follow-up on the desired changes.
10. Reactive Posture. The failure to act in advance in a proactive fashion; allowing issues to fester and grow, or reacting in a eclectic fashion without a plan or organized framework and philosophy.
11. Status Quo. Vested interests and power in the status quo, the auto pilot mind-set/complacency, and the hierarchy can all defeat change efforts.
12. Stubbornness. Stupidity and stubbornness by senior management in not using proven research on what works. Instead, relying on their own inadequate models of change, mindlessly imitating the latest fad, or using outmoded theories of motivation.
13. Control Issues. Senior executive desire to maintain control over people and events (vs. strategic consistency and operational flexibility) and their low tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity.
14. Participative Management Skills Lacking. Inadequate senior management knowledge and skills on what to do and how to manage change; just plain poor execution—the routine blocking and tackling that great organizations do consistently well. Lack of skills by managers and executives in participative management techniques; including those of trainer, coach, and facilitator. This is where an organization’s greatest assets are—with management so they will empower and use employees as their other greatest assets.
15. Fatal Assumption Made. Making the fatal assumption that everyone is for it and understands it, and that execution is only a matter of following your natural inclinations.
16. Redistribution Failure. Failure to redistribute financial resources based on future priorities/direction because strategic budgeting was not done. Denial and unwillingness to make the required tough decisions.
17. Politically Correct Desire. The perception that it isn’t politically correct to be a strong leader with convictions, expertise, and strong directions/opinions. Putting up with poor performance. It wasn’t always like this; megalomania— the one-man show—was once what worked (the benevolent or not-too-benevolent dictator).
18. Initial Bias Wrong. A bias toward thinking that success will come if you communicate direction, educate people, form teams, and hold meetings. Bureaucracy and trivial activities will fill up the time allotted.
19. Lack of Senior Management Modeling. The unwillingness of senior management to model and gain credibility and trust toward the desired changes first, and to change their leadership and management practices and communications.
20. Multiple Consultants and Philosophies. Ineffective use of multiple consultants and/or philosophies on a piecemeal basis. Paradigms and belief in analytic approaches to a systems problem.
21. Lack of Customer-Focus. Failure to focus on customer wants and needs and satisfaction as your only reason for existence.
22. Skeptics Not Involved. Failure to value skeptics and to involve all the necessary people for change. Failing to use high involvement methods, the Parallel Process, and opportunities for personal and group growth and development. People support what they help create!
23. Poor Cross-Functional Teamwork. Lack of horizontal, cross-functional communications, teamwork, collaboration, and task forces.
24. Unsupportive Organizational Design. Unsupportive organizational structure and design for the desired changes.
25. Lack of Follow-Through. The failure to follow-through and sustain the energy, momentum, buy-in and stay-in, effort, and commitment (as well as accountability over the longterm). Perseverance in the face of the first difficulty (vs. pulling the plug) is the key.
26. Middle Manager Skills Lacking. Failure to direct, train, empower, leverage, support, and build the skills of middle managers and first-line supervisors.
27. Poor Communication of Direction. Insufficient or hazy communication about direction; the single most pressing problem in many organizations.
28. Cherished Values Violated. Violation of cherished values without understanding and communicating why and what will replace them.
29. Debrief and Learn. Failure to conduct postmortems, debriefs, and distillation of learnings from previous change efforts.
30. Cultural Diversity. Failure to understand local, global, cultural, or ethnic diversity—thus taking wrong, insensitive actions.
31. Lack of a Game Plan. Failure to have an “Implementation Game Plan” for the process of change—not just the content/tasks of the Strategic Plan.
32. Political Environment. The presence of a political and politicized environment, and multiple agendas that block real progress.
33. Powerlessness. Inability to make decisions and changes in a timely manner (paralysis/bottlenecking).
WHY CHANGE EFFORTS USUALLY FAIL—SUMMARY
1. Which 3–5 efforts are our change strengths? Why?
2. Which 3 + mistakes do we usually make?
Just below the surface of an iceberg—ever persistent but also rarely discussed—is the “process” of organizational change. We call it the Rollercoaster of Change.
The Rollercoaster of Change Explained
“Organizational Change” is really a myth. Change is an individual and psychological matter for each of us; the bigger the organization, the more difficult it is to get everyone to change and focus on the customer. The Rollercoaster of Change is a term I coined a number of years ago for a phenomenon that occurs and is written about in numerous fields and disciplines, especially mental health. While the terminology may be different, the dynamics are the same and the rollercoaster exists as a reality of life.
For Example
The question is not “if” each employee will go through the Rollercoaster, but when, how deep, how long will it take, and will they successfully reach the other side. Reaching the other side successfully is quite a challenge for most organizations. Executives were trained in the skill of telling others what to do. In Rollercoaster of Change terms, “telling” is the “skill” of inducing shock and depression in your employees. It is a given that each of us will go through stages #1 and #2 of the Rollercoaster (shock and depression). However, going through stages #3 and #4 (hope and rebuilding) is optional, and depends on someone leading and managing the change process effectively.
“A Menu”
1. Visionary Leadership—CEO/Senior Executives with Personal Leadership Plans (PLPs)
• For repetitive stump speeches and reinforcement
• To ensure fit/integration of all parts and people toward the same vision/values
2. Internal Support Cadre (informal)
• For day-to-day coordination of implementation process
• To make certain that the change structures and processes don’t lose out day-to-day
3. Executive Committee
• For weekly meetings and attention
• To ensure follow-up on the top 15–25 priority yearly actions from the Strategic Plan
4. Strategic Change Leadership Steering Committee (formal)
• For bimonthly/quarterly follow-up meetings to track, adjust, and refine everything (including the Vision)
• To ensure follow-through via a yearly comprehensive map of implementation
*5. Strategy Sponsorship Teams
• For each core strategy and/or major change effort
• To ensure achievement of each one; including leadership of what needs to change
*6. Employee Development Board (Attunement with People’s Hearts)
• For succession—careers—development—core competencies (all levels)—performance management/appraisals
• To ensure fit with our desired values/culture—and employees as a competitive edge
*7. Technology Steering Committee/Group
• For computer—telecommunications—software fit and integration
• To ensure “system-wide” fit/coordination around information management
*8. Strategic Communications System (and Structures)
• For clear two-way dialogue and understanding of the Plan/implementation
• To make certain that everyone is heading in the same direction with the same strategies/values
*9. Measurement and Benchmarking Team
• For collecting and reporting of Key Success Factors, especially customers, employees, competitors
• So there is an outcome/customer focus at all times
10. Annual Department Plans
• For clear and focused department plans that are critiqued, shared, and reviewed
• So there is fit, coordination, and commitment to the core strategies and annual top priorities
11. Whole System Participation
• For input and involvement of all key stakeholders before a decision affecting them is made. Includes Parallel Processes, Search Conferences, management conferences, etc.
• To ensure a critical mass in support of the vision and desired changes
*Subcommittees of #4: the Leadership Steering Committee
1. Clearly define/agree on the new vision.
2. Set up a “Change Management Leadership Steering Committee.”
3. Manage the Rollercoaster of Change
a. How/where/when to acknowledge the depression; explain the why face-to-face.
b. How to build in hope and involvement/WIIFM?
The other catch 22 of the Rollercoaster is the fact that once you start it, you cannot go back and erase what you started. Instead, attempting to reverse changes already begun just kicks off another Rollercoaster; this time it will begin where or when you tried to reverse the process. Since this is usually at Stage #2 (depression), it generally means that the new Rollercoaster will take employees deeper down into depression. It will rarely get you out of the hole you are digging for yourself, your firm, and your employees. What will help people through Stage #2 (depression)? Listening, asking questions, empathizing, constantly explaining the Vision of the Future, and letting people experience first-hand the executive’s presence and rationale for the change.
However, the only way up the right (and optional) side of the Rollercoaster is through leadership and management. In other words, you must be Drucker’s “monomaniac with a mission” and have “persistence, persistence, persistence” in implementing, correcting, and improving the changes as you go. Participation and involvement in the change are key to rebuilding the hope of Stage #3.
In other words, depression is normal, and is to be expected as a resistance to change. The worst thing an executive can do is to push people further or tell them they should not feel that way. The more resistance you feel and express to an employee in telling/pushing them, the more they are likely to resist you, as well (the action-reaction syndrome).
This Rollercoaster concept points out how difficult it is to create a critical mass in support of your desired changes. Exhibiting “buy-in” and “stay-in” throughout the Rollercoaster and its bottoming out are both critical. For examples of how this can go wrong, consider the problems former Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev had as he tried to reverse his 500-day market economy plan. The ex-communists in the old USSR’s People’s Congress also had problems trying to reverse Boris Yeltsin’s reform programs. Failure to reverse change was the end result of both; chaos was a byproduct.
THE AFTERNOON OF THE PLAN-TO-IMPLEMENT DAY
The afternoon of this Plan-To-Implement Day is taken up with review of our Year #1 Strategic Change Process Checklist (see page 109).
It is also a time to organize and establish a “Strategic Change Leadership Steering Committee” (SCLSC) to guide the changes dictated by the strategic plan (see following pages). A roll out and communications plan is created for the newly developed strategic or business planning document. It is finalized during this phase by using the KISS method (10–20 pages in overhead, desktop-publishing format). This allows the planning document to be used in a practical day-to-day fashion vs. the dreaded SPOT Syndrome (Strategic Plan on the Top Shelf, gathering dust).
Step 8 is also when the same 30–50 collective leaders in Step 7 are lined up to participate in a 3-day skill building workshop entitled “Leading and Mastering Strategic Change.” This more-detailed workshop develops and builds the knowledge and skills necessary to manage change successfully.
Ultimately, a “Yearly Comprehensive Map” of all these implementation processes is developed to summarize your first year’s game plan (see page 115). This becomes the final page in the Strategic Planning document.
The afternoon culminates in the presentation of Personal Leadership Plans by top management—what they are personally committed to doing and leading (Goal #2— successful implementation).
This afternoon is also when the Strategy Sponsorship Teams are transformed into change agent teams who will track and report on each Core Strategy at each Steering Committee meeting. Usually they are given time to meet and get organized.
For Example
Pacific Gas & Electric’s marketing organization planned bimonthly SCLSC meetings in order to jump-start their efforts to meet rapidly changing customer demands.
Year #1: Strategic Change Process
A shorter list to tailor for transitional/evolutionary change
|
Status |
* = Absolutes Prevent Failure and Achieve Success |
|
H-M-L |
Final Year #1 Task Check: Score this H-M-L, depending on your needs. |
Committee Meeting Frequency
1. Phase I: Monthly or bimonthly as the process begins
2. Phase II: Quarterly, once the process is functioning smoothly.
Core Steering Group Roles (in-between Strategic Change meetings)
1. Led by the top leader of the organization (i.e., CEO, superintendent, Executive Director) who coordinates regular weekly/monthly meetings of all the other members.
2. Internal Staff Overall Change Management Coordinator responsibility by a competent and credible senior level executive with the time/energy to coordinate the activities—supported by a competent assistant/secretary support person.
3. An Internal Communications Coordinator to make certain that ongoing communications to all key stakeholders are maintained.
4. A Key Success Factor Coordinator to make certain that measures are tracked/reported regularly.
5. An Internal Staff Facilitator involved and trained to take over some of the duties from the external consultant over time.
6. Strategy Sponsorship Team Leaders who are leaders of the cross-functional teams set up previously for each Core Strategy. If not set up, do so at this time.
7. A secretary/support and administrative person with a computer to take notes and keep minutes.
8. Facilitated by an external master consultant who is skilled in this process and in your content areas of change.
Note: This interactive strategic planning implementation follow-up day is to include learning, change management, and team building.
1. Welcome—Agenda—Logistics—Norms—”Last” To Do List Reviewed Interactive “change” icebreaker (i.e., change is …) Where in the yearly planning cycle/map are we?
2. Review Status of Key Success Factors vs. targets (KSF Coordinator)
3. Learning Activity: Conduct communications and interpersonal skills, coaching, presenting, facilitating, team building, or other change management skills needed to have the Committee work effectively— and for the change to succeed.
4. Review Core Strategies, strategic change projects, and top priority annual action items (Strategic Sponsorship Teams/presenters—be interactive, questions and answers, etc.)
• List top 3 successes to celebrate
• List top 3 issues/concerns and address them
Note: Rollercoaster of Change—Each topic needs to answer three questions:
a. Where are we as a team on this Rollercoaster?
b. Where is the rest of the organization? Differences—Location— Department—Level
c. What actions are needed to bring us all through these desired changes?
5. Review of Annual Plan Status (or business/functional plans)
• For each department, follow-up results obtained
• Maintain the organization’s “systems fit, alignment, and integrity” with any other major changes.
6. Changing Priorities? Environmental Changes? (SKEPTIC?)
• What are they? What will we do about them?
7. Deepen Change Management Understanding and Assessment
At each meeting, cover one new change management tool and apply it to an issue/strategy:
• Best Practices List
• Wheel of Detail
• Empowerment Criteria
• Cross-Functional Teams
• HR Management Practices
• High-Performance Survey
• “Change Implications” List
• Menu on Alignment/Attunement
• Leadership Development Competencies
• Positioning/Customer Star Results
8. Communications to Key Stakeholders (Continue the Parallel Process)
• In writing and face-to-face
• Stump speeches
• Unit/department meetings also (cascade communications)
9. Next Steps
• To-Do List reviewed—assign accountability/timing
• Next Change Steering meeting—prepare agenda
• Next year’s timetable for annual strategic review/planning and budgeting cycle?
10. Process—How did it go?
(Takes Two Years to Institutionalize)
|
Date |
Task |
|
June—Year #1 |
1. Begin Strategic Planning (Plan-to-Plan: 1 day) |
|
July–October |
2. Do Strategic Planning (5–8 days overall) |
|
November |
3. Develop Annual Work Plans/Budgets * |
|
January—Year #2 |
4. Conduct Large Group Department Plan Review (1 day) * |
|
January |
5. Conduct Plan-to-Implement (1 day) * |
|
April |
6. Quarterly Steering Committee Review Session —or bimonthly— |
|
July |
7. Quarterly Steering Committee Review Session |
|
April—July |
8. Develop 3-Year Business Plans * (for Business Units/Major Support Departments) |
|
September |
9. Evaluate Plan’s Year #1 Success—Rewards based on this |
|
October–December |
10. Conduct Annual Strategic Review (and Update: 2–4 days overall) * |
|
January—Year #3 |
11. Develop Updated Annual Department Work Plans/Budgets |
|
January |
12. Conduct Large Group Department Plan Review (1 day) |
|
April |
13. Quarterly Steering Committee Review Session —or bimonthly— |
|
July |
14. Quarterly Steering Committee Review Session |
|
October–December |
15. Institutionalized—Strategic Review/Update Again—as a way of life |
* These are the steps often missed—resulting in failure to implement your Strategic Plan.
GOAL #2 Phase D: Ensure Successful Implementation
This step results in transforming the strategic or business plan into thousands of individual plans and efforts, and tying a rewards system to it. The integrity of all the organization parts fitting together in support of the Vision is very difficult to achieve and is a key organization design issue. Human Resource issues and programs are one key. So are your business processes. For instance, your performance appraisal should evaluate everyone on their behaviors vs. the Core Values and their contributions to results vs. the Core Strategies of the Strategic Plan.
Implicit in this step is the understanding that we have to manage change before it manages us (in ways we may not like). Bimonthly or quarterly meetings of the Strategic Change Leadership Steering Committee (SCLSC) are absolutely essential. No organization we have worked with has successfully implemented their Strategic Planning without an effective Steering Committee. There are three agenda items that are mandatory (as a minimum) for each of these SCLSC meetings. They include:
(1) continually scanning the changing environment for Strategic/Business Planning implications
(2) tracking, reporting and problem solving Key Success Factor issues
(3) status of core strategies and top priority actions
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY “STRATEGIC CHANGE”? (And how do you actually accomplish it?)
Change surrounds us. In fact, we now say that the only thing that is constant anymore is change. Not one of the 29 executives in a recent Banff Center for Management course had ever taken a formal academic course on Change or participated in a five-day skills training program on it! Have you?
So, while change may be all around us, it does not necessarily mean we know how change occurs, or how to lead and manage it successfully. Many of us have “learned” how to change something by having had it “done to us” earlier in our careers. So, if we have learned anything from our more autocratic bosses of the past, it probably was the wrong way to do it.
What is strategic change and how does one manage it? First of all, strategic (or large scale) change must flow either from a strategic plan or from a strong thrust (or driving force) led by the CEO/Business Unit Head or Executive Director. Anytime the business top executive is not a “monomaniac with a mission” (as Peter Drucker says) to implement the strategic change, chances are the change will be seen as a side program, and not essential to the business. This is what is happening with TQM in a number of firms today. Top management delegates and then bows out of the process, resulting in failure of the desired change.
For Example
While Ford has believed in “Quality is Job One” for at least a decade and a half (and backed it up with training and a focus on quality), GM has done the opposite. They have a “Quality Network” set up jointly with the UAW, but only give it lip service.
My observations have led me to the conclusion that people at GM did not view the program as a core business strategy (or driving force), and this is why it is not working at GM.
In order to synthesize all the many tasks needed for systemic change into a useful listing, we have compiled a list of ten “Areas” to focus upon for effective Strategic Change.
SO, IF THIS IS STRATEGIC CHANGE,
HOW DO I MASTER IT?
If you look at all that’s required to create a customer-focused, high-performance organization, it should be obvious that change takes 3–5 years, even with concentrated and continual action. The issues in Mastering Strategic Change are many:
1. The need for a CEO who totally commits to the change effort.
2. The need for a Strategic and Business Plan, and Core Strategies to guide the change.
3. The need to position the organization to navigate the dynamic and global marketplace in which we now exist.
4. The need to truly understand the customer’s wants and needs better than our competition does.
5. The need to understand and master the skills embedded in the Rollercoaster of Change (and all its nuances).
6. The ability to create the amount of active support needed to effect the desired changes. Remember: “People support what they help create.”
7. The need for people with leadership and management skills who can make sure changes are made successfully, while still paying attention to day-to-day crises (i.e., a Leadership Development System).
8. Installing Strategic Human Resource Management practices to make certain that people are part of your competitive edge.
9. A complete revamping of your Organization Design to fit with the core values and core strategies.
10. And lastly, the need to understand the concept and framework of an Organization-as-a-System to ensure the fit, alignment, attunement, and integrity of all the elements in support of becoming a customer-focused, high-performance organization and creating customer value.
Traditional, analytical, or partial systems thinking will help you focus on those elements of an organization that are important to you personally or professionally. However, you are not likely to be able to pay attention to ALL the needed elements or tracks of an organization.
If the best writers and management theorists of our time don’t pay attention to all the elements, why do you think that you will pay attention to them all?
If these 10 issues are key to becoming a customer-focused, high-performance organization, then the next question you must answer is: At what level of Mastery am I now in my SKILLS of managing strategic change?
It is generally assumed that there are four potential skill levels of professionalism:
#1 Trainee/Rookie
#2 Technique-driven
#3 Model (or theory)-driven
#4 Mastery (or Jazz/strategic) level
It is commonly accepted that all disciplines or fields of endeavor have these four levels. You may have something in common with the Banff course executives noted earlier who did not have much formal background in managing strategic change. Executives with the skills necessary for changing to or creating a customer-focused organization are even harder to find. A customer-focused organization with a quantifiable measurement system based on a Systems Thinking Framework is definitely NOT the norm for western business and society—and not familiar to most management writers.
Thus, many readers are probably somewhere at the second skill level—that is, utilizing some comfortable techniques. Are those techniques effective, and do they result in the desired changes WITHOUT any unintended negative side effects in the organization?
Unfortunately, the Change Mastery challenge facing most executives is multifaceted:
#1. You must search out and eliminate any change techniques that have unintended negative consequences.
#2. You must as leader master all five steps in the Rollercoaster of Change; not just the skill of telling (or inducing shock and depression).
#3. You have to learn how to use the Organization-as-a-System framework in all that you do, so it becomes second nature in how you think, act, and lead.
#4. You must also develop an “automatic pilot” mentality that keeps EVERYTHING that you and others do focused on the customer. Remember: the customer is the only reason for your existence.
#5. Lastly, you will also need to develop the new skills of effective management and leadership: Trainer, Coach, and Facilitator (again, your needed leadership development system).
Developing your thinking, management, and leadership skills in the five areas above will certainly bring your skills up to the third skill level of professionalism (a Systems Framework/Theory). It will result in a marked improvement in your ability to create a highly effective customer-focused organization. However, that still leaves the fourth level of Mastery for those who are responsible for or desire to strategically and successfully lead a large organization of any type—public or private.
This fourth Level is the true Mastery level of Strategic Change, one where you can be a jazz musician. You need that jazz ability to lead your organization in strategic and successful efforts to satisfy (or even exceed) customer wants and business needs. This Mastery Level includes your ability to be flexible yet authentic with your own personal style and the circumstances you are dealing with, and still hold true to your Vision, Strategies, and the customer. You are able to move off the melody, so to speak, the way a great jazz musician can, and still return to the Vision and Framework; you can be faithful to the customer’s wants and needs, without missing a beat!
For Example
The leader-jazz musician is happy to make exceptions to policies and reacts positively to the innovations and creative ideas that normally make other executives uncomfortable. This kind of leader also encourages changes in any one of the change menu elements that will break with the status quo. Their only question is whether any of this creativity and innovation will improve the way they satisfy the customer. Flexibility, encouragement, and positive reaction to creativity and innovation are what allow employees the freedom to act, be empowered, take risks, and not be penalized for it. It is a key skill for today’s executives to master, and it is what the Deming “Drive out Fear” principle is all about in TQM.
This executive-level Mastery results in exceeding customer expectations, the only way to retain customer loyalty long-term. Statistics have consistently shown that it is about 5 times as hard (and expensive) to find a new customer as it is to retain a current one.
For Example
On a recent Friday, my travel agency realized it had forgotten to deliver my airplane tickets for a two-week business trip. I was scheduled to leave the next day and travel all across North America. You can imagine the problems (and cost) this forgetfulness created! Not only did I hear from the travel agent, but the owner went out of his way to call and try to help. They never denied the problem; instead, they sent me an apology card at my hotel in a foreign city. They called to again apologize, sent champagne to my hotel room, and said they wanted to pay for any and all added costs I had incurred. They even gave me credits for future travel. This is what is meant by Recovery Strategy and Unsurpassed Customer Service with your customers. Forget the policies and costs; just improvise, play jazz, and exceed the customer’s expectations when you are recovering from a mistake.
Following-up, correcting mistakes, and showing disciplined persistence and integrity are key in Step #9.
In addition, Step #10 includes an Annual Strategic Review and Update of the Strategic Plan (the key to sustaining your vision over the long-term).
GOAL #3 Sustaining High Performance
This step is similar to a yearly independent financial audit and includes:
(1) Reacting to changes in the environment
(2) Reviewing the Strategic/Business Planning and updating annual action and budgeting priorities for the next 12 months
(3) Updating the Strategic Management System itself, the Strategic Change Leadership Steering Committee, and the Strategy Sponsorship Teams
(4) Reviewing and problem solving the status of the vital-few strategic change leverage points, especially Creating Customer Value
The key to sustaining a customer-focused, high-performance learning organization over the long-term is this formal yearly review (and update). And it is the one step most often overlooked by executives.
The specific Annual Strategic Review and Update process includes five steps:
(1) Contract for a Plan-to-Review by an outside consultant/impartial observer.
(2) Conduct a strategic review and diagnosis (statistics, interviews, and observations).
(3) Synthesize data, write the report, and make recommendations for improvement.
(4) Hold two Strategic Change Leadership Steering Committee meetings, each two days in length.
Standard Agenda for This First Meeting:
• Receive the report and feedback.
• Discuss its recommendations.
• Update your Strategic Plan—especially re-confirm and/or refine your Vision, Mission, Values, Success Measures, and Core Strategies.
• Conduct an environmental scan and Current-State Assessment (SWOT analysis).
• Make decisions regarding next steps, focusing on the vital few leverage points for strategic change and Customer Value Star Results.
• Set new action plans and priorities for each core strategy to guide this next year’s annual planning and budgeting process.
• Make decisions regarding future strategic process and structural mechanisms to guide next year’s change process, while building next year’s Yearly Comprehensive Map of Implementation.
(5) After this off-site meeting, integrate changes into the: (1) quarterly Strategic Change Leadership Steering Committee meetings (2) specific strategic change projects (3) day-to-day tasks, and (4) weekly executive team staff meetings in order to ensure sustained achievement of the Vision over time.