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Strategic management lays the foundation for tomorrow's success while competing to win in today's marketplace. It's supported by an aggregate of interdependent disciplines that all must be executed successfully and repeatedly for an organization to achieve planned results. Three fundamental elements comprise the system:
Strategy is the integrated set of actions that an organization undertakes to build value for constituents over time.
Many organizations have strategic plans that we refer to as "shelf documents." They're ornamental. They adorn the top of a credenza collecting dust. By contrast, our approach to strategy creation and execution contains some key elements and suppositions:
The definition of strategy included the words "over time." There's an old joke that asks: "What's the best way to eat an elephant?" The answer: "One bite at a time." If strategy is the elephant, operational planning is the bite.
Operational plans define organizational objectives and actions for a given period of time, typically a fiscal year. They further detail accountabilities, target dates and necessary resources. Operational plans also must create interdependence. How frustrating it is to have different parts (divisions, departments, units) of an organization pulling in different directions. Our process provides the appropriate linkages in accountability and actions.
Organization-wide operational plans direct divisions and departments to the organization's top priorities. Those are accommodated and supplemented in department plans which then become the basis for individual accountabilities which drive individual objective setting.
To complete the cycle, an organization-wide performance management process is the linchpin. That includes performance and reward systems, to be sure. More important, however, is the priority of reviewing results versus plan on a scheduled basis at every organization level. Corrective actions must then be developed and rigorously implemented where variances exist, to get back on track in real time. Information systems have to yield information that enables people to measure what they want to manage rather than the situations that exists in many organizations. People use management information that's been "cobbled together" over time and end up managing what they can measure. Management information needs to be the cart, not the horse.
We will help you design and implement a management system that will enable you to create your organization's destiny rather than it being a victim of its circumstances. In the process you'll develop a competency at strategic management and leadership.
That can include:
