VII. How to Get Started in
Strategic Management
OPTION A—Plan-to-Plan: There are three main ways to get started with creating your customer-focused organization. The first method is a one-day Executive Briefing and Plan-to-Plan event (Step #1). This is an inexpensive way to educate, organize, and create that pursues four objectives:
1. To gain a common set of principles and knowledge about how to reinvent Strategic/Business Planning for the 21st century.
2. To understand that reinventing Strategic/Business Planning is really a three-part Strategic Management System, and what that means in terms of our Three Goals toward Creating a Customer-Focused, High-Performance Organization.
3. To diagnose your strategic issues and to examine certain components of your current Strategic/Business Plans as a way to tailor your strategic/business planning and strategic management process.
4. To conduct an actual “Plan-to-Plan” session in order to determine next steps (if any) for a tailored and crafted strategic planning process that fits your unique situation and needs.
OPTION B—Plan-to-Implement: The second way to get started is the one-day Plan-to-Implement Day (Step #8). Afterwards, you will be more organized for implementation and change. During the first year of implementation, the Strategic Change Leadership Steering Committee takes the lead in identifying and completing those aspects of the full Strategic Planning process that make sense to them.
OPTION C—Tailored to your needs: Begin anywhere you want on our 10-step strategic planning and strategic management process and then continue on from there— filling in the blanks as you go. For example:
Since we use the Systems Thinking Approach and framework, we can jump in at any point where you need assistance. For example, we can help you:
1. Set up a Strategic Change Leadership Steering Committee to guide and coordinate existing (in process) change.
2. Conduct annual planning via core strategy/goals and yearly action priorities.
3. Finish budgeting and then set up Strategic Change Project Teams for big, cross-functional issues.
4. Have internal staff get trained and licensed to facilitate strategic/business planning.
5. Have internal staff get trained and licensed for Mastering Strategic Change.
6. Conduct a Visionary Leadership Practices Workshop to kick-start strategic/business planning.
7. Conduct a Mastering Strategic Change Workshop simulation to kick-start or re-energize a major change project.
8. Conduct pilot strategic planning for a major support department or a Strategic Business Unit. Use it to learn and to develop internal support.
9. Conduct only the strategic/business planning phase you need now—such as Visioning, measurements (Key Success Factors), or Core Strategy (issues) development … and then appoint a Strategic Change Leadership Steering Committee to guide implementation.
10. Arrange to have your management staff trained in strategic planning concepts through a three-day workshop we call Reinvented Strategic/Business Planning for the 21st Century.
11. Arrange for a keynote address at your management conference on Strategic Planning/Strategic Change, a one- to two-hour session, using four-color models and summary articles as handouts.
12. Schedule an Annual Strategic Review and Update as a starting point. Then proceed according to the recommendations/decisions from this audit.
This is a long-term process. Quick fixes are not lasting. The Systems Thinking Approach is a multi-year change effort to create customer value and achieve your ideal-future vision.
FINAL SUMMARY
As a final summary, here are the 15 Absolutes for Strategic Management Implementation Success.
THE TOOLS—TIPS—TECHNIQUES FOR SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION
1. Have a clear vision of your Ideal future, with values and customer-focused outcomes/measures.
2. Develop focused core strategies; they are the glue for setting and reviewing annual goals and action plans for all major departments or business units.
3. Set up Strategic Sponsorship Teams of cross-functional leaders to develop, track, and monitor each core strategy.
4. Focus on and phase in the Vital Few Leverage Points for strategic change over the next 2–5 years, starting immediately with leadership skills—and then focus on being a “Star” in value-added delivery (organization design).
5. Create a critical mass for change that goes all out to become self-sustaining, and develops 3-year business plans for all major divisions/departments.
6. Develop and gain public commitments to the development of personal leadership plans by all top management leaders—then communicate, communicate, communicate.
7. Set up an internal cadre—a support team for overall change-management coordination that reports directly to the CEO/Executive Director.
8. Establish a Strategic Change Leadership Steering Committee (led by the CEO, and armed with a yearly Process Map) that meets on a regular basis to guide, lead, and manage all major changes.
9. Redo your HR management systems to support the new vision/values, especially your performance/rewards system and your performance appraisal form (evaluate against core values and core strategies).
10. Institutionalize the parallel process with all key stakeholders as the new participative way you plan, change, and run your business day-to-day.
11. Set up KSFs and a tracking system to ensure clarity/focus on the scoreboard for success.
12. Use a consistent annual planning format to link strategies/priorities to annual plans and results.
13. Set annual priorities and confine them to two pages to focus everyone on what’s important next year.
14. Conduct annual large-group review meetings each year so that everyone is up to speed and in sync with everyone else.
15. Conduct the annual Strategic Review (and Update) as if it is an independent financial audit, to keep your Strategic Plan updated as a living document.
As you begin to turn your firm into a Customer-Focused, High-Performance Learning Organization, try to follow all the recommendations in this Manager’s Guide. However, it is very difficult to stay focused on the Vital Few Leverage Points for change when you must also take care of trivial daily tasks. If you are to be successful in your efforts, however, you must be consistent in your actions. As Ed Lawlor states in his book The Ultimate Advantage: Creating the High Involvement Organization:
“Sometimes having a good management system is confused with having high-quality employees. This is a mistake—the two are quite different in some important ways: Having high-quality employees does not assure an organization of having a sustainable competitive advantage.”
Thus, our final argument in this Guide is this: Today’s executives desiring to develop high-performing, customer-focused organizations need to install a “Strategic Management System” as a new way to run their business day-to-day. Senior management traditionally spent only 5–10 % of their time on strategic issues.
However, it’s no longer adequate; senior management must now spend at least 20% of their time on strategy and strategic thinking … and then use that to STRATEGICALLY MANAGE the organization as an entire SYSTEM (i.e., a Strategic Management System).
This is what the Centre for Strategic Management does. We help visionary senior executives and top management teams develop and institutionalize this kind of a system.
The Strategic Management System is how we assist these executives in the creation of customer-focused, high-performance learning organizations. The processes we have developed and fine-tuned over the years will help align organizations and their people in delivering real value to their customers.
To do this, we place a special emphasis on choosing successful strategies and then focusing on selected areas where we can create customer value and reach optimal performance.
The “art” of creating and managing strategic change is to find a way to balance the processes required to achieve this with the right strategies and content.
Ultimately, Senior Management must show strong leadership, and the organization’s Human Resource programs and practices must fit and be integrated to the organization’s vision. Again, the key to this is to focus on the five Star Results customers desire … and then to work backwards through the organization to deliver on these customer wants and needs—the first time and every time!
Successful navigation of the turbulent waters in today’s highly competitive and global marketplace demands a holistic approach that works. If you spend the time planning the right strategy, implementation and sustainment will be successful, as well.
In summary, this Manager’s Pocket Guide is your guide toward defining and implementing the actions that come with sound strategic management. It will not always be a smooth path, but to avoid tough choices is to let the future health and performance of your organization be determined by circumstances that are increasingly beyond your control. The proven best-practices and systems approach we recommend will help you successfully design, build, and sustain your Ideal-Future Vision as a customer-focused, high-performance learning organization.
Are you ready to develop the disciplined Systems Thinking Approach needed to create a customer-focused, high-performance organization or business unit?
“What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence …
The only consequence … is what we do!”
Good Luck in developing your Strategic Management System.