Everyone understands that rapid and tumultuous change is about the only thing we can predict for the new millennium. Perhaps at no other time have the prospects seemed so dazzling, nor the possible pitfalls so numerous and deep.
In the Industrial Age, public and private enterprises built their futures by incrementally expanding technologies, assumptions, and day-to-day operations. In today’s global Information Age, building on the present is not enough, by a long shot.
Worldwide markets and the instant global communications of the Internet and 24-hour cable news broadcasts are multiplying the opportunities available to every entrepreneur, not to mention consumers and employees. Today, organizations must keep pace with changes in their environment and overhaul current businesses, programs, and operations.
They must completely reinvent their future vision and then begin thinking backwards to this future with the strategies and actions needed to achieve their goals. They must also react to the changing values and demands of customers and employees, as the intangible goals of personal growth and fulfillment become as important as material needs.
The danger of this dynamic “new reality” is that corporations and governmental bureaucracies can be swallowed up before they know what is happening to them. The experiences of former Communist Bloc nations are a lesson to us all.
Rapid change has taken its toll in the West, too. Thirty-three percent of the firms on the 1970 “Fortune 500” list have vanished. San Diego alone has seen the demise of its five biggest financial services firms. In a troubled and rapidly changing economy, the mortality rate for firms that refuse to change goes higher and higher, while Information Age start-ups create young millionaires many times over.
It is within this global sea change that new ways to do planning are emerging: the Systems Thinking Approach, based on years of rigorous scientific work by General Systems theorists and augmented by extensive research by the author, has led to the reinvention and creation of a new way to plan and create one’s ideal future. The chaos and complexity in today’s world demand that we change our approach; the key is thinking backwards to the future. It will create an ABC-like elegant simplicity that can be used by first time supervisors all the way up to senior executives.
How can the modern organization cope with the future's appetite for the slow-footed? Should we all hire fortune-tellers to help us? Should we hang onto every word uttered by Peters, Senge, and the century’s other gurus? Or should we just hunker down and wait for the environment to stabilize?
My own experience and research in a wide variety of public and private organizations has convinced me that the only way to guarantee the future you desire is to design and pursue a Customer-Focused “Ideal Vision,” using the Systems Thinking Approach. In this guide we will discuss how to achieve this “Ideal” through this unique and integrated perspective, using the three primary goals of any Strategic Management System:
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GOAL #1: |
Develop a Strategic Plan/Document |
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GOAL #2: |
Ensure its successful Implementation |
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GOAL #3: |
Build and sustain High Performance over the long term |
In order to show you how we assist private and public organizations in achieving these three goals, we have organized this Pocket Guide into six main sections, as follows:
1. The first section covers our underlying assumptions (Three Seemingly Simple Elements) and the benefits our clients have achieved using the Systems Thinking Approach detailed here.
2. The second section briefly shows our copyrighted “Strategic Management System” in a logical (yet circular) way. This should give you a clear picture of our approach, which uses our two goals mentioned and three Seemingly Simple Elements.
3. Thirdly, we will discuss the ABCs of Strategic Management based on the Systems Thinking Approach (and the science of General Systems Theory).
4. Fourth, we will discuss in detail the first eight steps of strategic planning within three phases.
5. Then we will finish the discussion of the last two steps of the D Phase of Strategic Change, thus completing the entire Strategic Management Process.
6. Lastly, we will show you how to get started on your own journey toward creating a customer-focused, high-performance learning organization.
Keep in mind that we will discuss this Strategic Management System within the sequence of the three goals: strategic planning; successful strategic change management; and sustaining high performance.