Posts in Strategic Planning

Take A Leap Hump Day

Business Consulting Meandering Genius Process Improvement Strategic Planning Take A Leap Wednesday Think Big February 13, 2019

Happy Hump Day!

Voltaire said, “Great is the enemy of good.” While Cardone said, “‘Thinking big’ simply isn’t enough.” Which statement do you believe?

What is your passion? Are you living it? Are you aiming low and hoping to hit the mark? Are you accepting the status quo…the, “We’ve always done it that way,” or “That’ll never work?”

Taking a leap doesn’t mean completely throwing out the old for something totally new and scary! You can take the leap, just by doing one thing a week that scares you. It might be enrolling in a new college class, taking a different route to work, parking in a different location, or even eating at a new restaurant.

Taking a leap is a way to hijack your sedentary brain and shock it into awareness. Wednesdays are perfect days for taking little leaps. Simply start doing one thing different that improves your work or life.

What’s your one thing this week?

Why Do You Do What You Do?

Business Consulting Meandering Genius Speaking Strategic Planning August 5, 2017

Many people start their own business for a variety of reasons: extra income, want to be their own boss, freedom of when and when not to work, stay at home parent, and a whole host of other reasons. However, many of these businesses fail over time, often because the owner didn’t document, follow, and constantly update a strategic business plan. The often overlooked and seldom thought about aspects of any strategic and business plan, is deep down, why you’re doing what you’re doing and where you want it to go — the mission and vision. Sure, many companies have an idea and even some of them they write it down. But, how good are these statements for your company?

Join John Knotts, a strategic business advisor with over 25 years’ experience working with companies of all sizes to improve their business operations. The first questions he asks in any engagement are: what do you do, why do you do it, where are you today, and where are you going. These questions begin to form, what he calls, the ‘Strategic Bridge’, a visual representation of your strategy at work.

Bring your current mission and vision statements for you company and let’s examine, along with John, what you do and why you do it.

Bulverde Spring Branch Business Networking
Friday, August 18, 2017, 8:45 am
St. Paul Lutheran Church of Bulverde (The Red Roof Church)
29797 US-281, Bulverde TX 78163
Free to attend

Experience-based Operational Excellence

Business Consulting Meandering Genius Performance Measurement Process Improvement Strategic Planning January 30, 2016

The Customer Experience

Experience means many things. An experience is a direct observation of or participation in events as a basis of knowledge. In other words, the customer experiences something through observation or participation. Experience also relates to a customer as the fact or state of having been affected by or gained knowledge through direct observation or participation. In other words, the customer has experienced things with the company that they base opinion on. Also, experience is related to an individual based on their practical knowledge, skill, or practice derived from direct observation of or participation in events or in a particular activity. Customers all have different experiences that make up their background. Individual experience is often related in the terms of degrees, certifications, and/or years of involvement in a particular thing.

In a nutshell, customer experience (CX) is something personally encountered, undergone, or lived through by a customer with a certain company. It is the product of an interaction between a company and a customer over the duration of their relationship. This interaction includes their attraction, awareness, discovery, cultivation, advocacy, and purchase and use of a service.

CX is simply the result of everything that makes up the company’s product or service delivery, visible or not.

Problems with Customer Experience Today

Many companies today only focus on the ‘touchpoints’–the critical moments when customers interact with the company and its offerings to establish the customer experience. This is often depicted in marketing as an experience map. Often, this is a narrow focus on what is important to the customer’s satisfaction at specific moments and often creates a distorted picture of the overall experience. This can lead a company to believe customers are happier with the company’s products and services than they actually are. This approach also diverts attention from the bigger and more important picture–the customer’s end-to-end journey.[i]

An emphasis on Operational Excellence within an company as the driver of the CX is important to carefully consider.

Experience-based Operational Excellence

Operational Excellence (OpX), as an official business concept, has not been around very long and is often misconstrued. The best way to look at OpX is to think of it as an end-to-end enterprise-wide management practice that aligns everything in the organization toward driving excellence.[ii] From a perspective of the CX, OpX essentially represents an organization’s focus on all things that affect the customer’s experience (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Experience-based Operational Excellence

Normally, companies view CX as a result of the product itself. Some broaden the view into the processes that impact the product delivery and many companies see OpX as nothing more than the application of process management and Lean Six Sigma improvement processes.[iii] In reality, true OpX represents the end-to-end enterprise-wise business management. The ‘experience’ is at the very center of where the product, process, and employee intersect–this is what the customer sees and feels. The entire experience is influenced by high-level company strategies, internal and external communication, and employee development. Everything within the company is supported by an innovative layer that includes technology and information.

Thus, everything in the organization is important in the CX equation and focusing simply on touchpoints will represent a lack of true focus on the CX. From a company’s perspective, there are several representative performance metrics that are important to the overall CX. A company cannot simply look at metrics like sales and net promoter score, but must consider all company performance as critical to the CX. There are many things that measure the experience, but can generally be referred to as satisfaction, sentiment, and relationship.

Summary

In summary, the traditional view of CX as a stand-alone activity represents a shortsighted view of what is important to the customer. Although much of what makes up OpX is out of the customer’s view, it all leads to the CX and must be considered and aligned.

[i] Rawson, A., Duncan, E., & Jones, C. (2013). The Truth About Customer Experience. Harvard Business Review.

[ii] Boothe, W., & Lindborg, S. (2014). Handbook to achieve operational excellence: A realistic guide including all tools needed. Ft Myers FL: Reliabilityweb.com.

[iii] Crabtree, R. (2010). Driving operational excellence: Successful lean six sigma secrets to improve the bottom line. Livonia MI: MetaOps Publishing.

Four Types of Companies

Business Consulting Meandering Genius Performance Measurement Process Improvement Strategic Planning September 29, 2015

When dealing with any organization, it is important to understand the things that are important to it and the employees. For instance, they may be focused on improving compliance or increasing revenue, but each company focuses on things that are important to it.

Knowing this when dealing with the company or their employees helps understand how they behave.

One way to examine any organization is through the lens of purpose versus process. When looking at organizations from this lens, there are four possibilities. The organization can be purposed-based, process-based, blended, or neither. How they are says a lot about how they operate.

Let me define what I mean by each of these types of organizations:

1. Purpose-based. A Purpose-based organization relies on a strong organizational purpose and reason for being. At the heart of what they do everyday is a greater reason everyone works there. Sometimes the organization defines this in their mission and vision statements and sometimes it is just known. Making money is NOT a greater purpose. A good example of a Purpose-based organization would be a philanthropic nonprofit or military organization. Their reasons for existence, even if not written down, are usually quite clear.

2. Process-based. Organizations that focus on perfecting processes to run an effective and efficient organization, are process-based. Strictly process-based organizations are focused on exceptional product or service delivery and not their reason for being. Money is normally very important to them. Many commercial companies fall into this categor, more so in manufacturing.

3. Blended. A blended organization has a strong purpose or reason for being and operates with strong processes. Organizations with both are difficult to find, but can come from anywhere.

4. Neither. Many companies and organizations have neither a strong defined purpose nor effective and efficient processes. These organizations are quite easy to find because they are everywhere.

Kickstarter Project: Overcoming Organizational Myopia

Books Business Consulting Change Management Leadership Performance Measurement Process Improvement Publishing Speaking Strategic Communication Strategic Planning June 27, 2015

At 2:30 pm, Central Time, on June 27, 2015, KS Project, Overcoming Organizational Myopia lifted off. Overcoming Organizational Myopia will be a new nonfiction book about successfully breaking through stovepiped organizations to obtain organizational effectiveness.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1551087231/overcoming-organizational-mypoia

The Short Story: I discovered that it really does not matter what company or organization I work with, they all have stovepipes. What I learned is that they are a product of human nature. The problem is that everyone wants to “break down the silos” as the typical management response. Unfortunately, this NEVER works! All you do is cause confusion and drive unproductivity as the people in your business seek to rebuild the stovepipes that make them feel secure. This book is about breaking through the stovepipes to become an effective and efficient organization. It respects the stovepipes and teaches you how to navigate through them using a consistent and systematic application of full-spectrum strategic and organizational methods. The book is designed to provide you with situational examples so you can self-diagnose your organization. Across nine areas, the book helps you identify problem areas and, like a business doctor, treat the root causes with solid business solutions.

Fix Your Roof When the Sun is Shining

Business Consulting Meandering Genius Process Improvement Strategic Planning April 25, 2015

Lisa Hershman, Denovo Group, has a phrase, “We never fix the roof when the sun is shining.”

I don’t know if I really need to explain the saying, but often businesses wait until stuff goes wrong to try to fix it. Then, it becomes an emergency break fix and it is done poorly because they lack sufficient time to really solve the problem.

The thing is, in business, fixing things when the sun is shining applies to everything. This basically means fixing things that really are not broken.

Off the top of my head, here are a few items that we neglect until it is too late and then do wrong because we are hard-pressed to simply get it done.

Planning. Strategic, operational, and even tactical planning, we are tremendously poor at in business, but specifically strategic planning is often overlooked. All too often, businesses look to strategic planning when they are having significant problems and they think it will solve their problems (the proverbial silver bullet). The problem is that strategic planning is a long range effort (hence strategic) and not designed to solve tactical problems.

Process improvement. All too often businesses let shoddy processes continue as the company grows and they ignore things like defects, poor customer service, and excessive process variance until too late. Then, when everything related to the process is falling apart, suddenly the business tries to solve the problems that took years to manifest in the process. What is worse, all too often all of the business processes are in the same state of disrepair and instead of just fixing one process, the business tries to create a full blown process organization and expect it to happen overnight.

Development. Businesses often look to training to solve a problem, but do not look at development when there isn’t a problem. If you are considering going into a leadership position, this is when you start learning about leadership, not six years after becoming a leader and you suck at it. However, we get very tactical when it comes to solving problems with training as the solution.

These are just a few examples of how businesses become very reactive to things and treat everything as a fire fighter versus a fire marshal. Living the advice of Lisa Hershman is very important for all of us.

Bad Leadership is Becoming an Epidemic

Business Consulting Leadership Meandering Genius Organizational Commitment Performance Measurement Process Improvement Strategic Communication Strategic Planning April 5, 2015 2 Comments

It might be me, but the more I look around, the more I am finding bad leadership. Specifically leadership apathy and leaders that lack accountability. “It’s good enough” leaders and leaders who are “just getting by.”

“Why are we seeing this,” I ask myself?

Bad leaders hire and promote bad people. Bad Leadership isn’t just destroying corporate America, but they are doing it at a record pace and doing it way into the future.

These leadership charlatans are building armies of apathy to follow in their footsteps. If you are someone that gets things done, you are kept in a position to get things done because bad leaders don’t want you–you threaten them.

No wonder more than 70% of employees are disengaged at work. Who wouldn’t be with such a sorry leadership outlook.

Often, we talk about the qualities and actions of good leadership, but I think it is important that we learn to spot bad leadership. Here are the top ten results of bad leadership:

1. The realm under the leader has little if no strategy or plan to inspire and drive people. Literally there is no vision, the purpose of the business is primarily focused on making money, becoming bigger, and taking care of itself. Any goals are developed to ensure each subordinate leader can justify their position in the strategic plan and do little to overcome barriers to a future vision. Any vision and goals are such low targets that they in most cases have already been attained.

2. Program accountability is slowly eroding and nothing is done about it (i.e., deadlines are missed, people not qualified are in positions, reports are misleading, etc.). Expectation barely exists in the organization because targets, rules, and requirements are ignored. Organizations like audit, risk, and compliance are seen as the enemy and kept away from the organization. When there is a finding from one of these organizations, the leaders spends all resources to make it go away and cover it up, but does little to nothing to solve the root causes that created the issue in the first place.

3. There is a complete lack of organizational performance and process management and accountability. No one knows deeper than monthly what they are doing from a measurement perspective and there is a complete lack of process focus. Everyone simply does their own thing and what little process documentation is lodged tightly in the heads of the employees and passed down like tribal knowledge. Knowledge systems are busting at the seems with senseless information without any organization. Variance across processes run rampant and unchecked.

4. There is a significant lack of communication both internally and externally. What communication that is occuring lacks any direction or strategic intent. The leadership doesn’t even know who their stakeholders are to communicate to. The term customer is used, but they are a faceless entity that nothing is really known about. Specifications for work are all internally created and bear no resemblance to competition or what customers actually want. In some cases, the customer is seen and portrayed as the enemy.

5. The organizational structure looks like a Christmas tree and is broken into functional and operational departments that are so siloed that the company looks like an island chain. There is little communication and less cooperation across departments. Each silo is only focused on what they do for themselves, they see everyone else as a competitor for money and manpower, and they simply throw work over the wall versus work in an end-to-end process.

6. Education and training opportunities might exist, but there is no plan or strategy to develop employees and leaders. The activity, if it happens at all, is chaotic and clearly broken. Employees mainly spend resources to gain skill through training so they can leave the company.

7. Operational effectiveness, based in things like defect counting, process timing, first pass yield, on time delivery, customer satisfaction, etc. is barely looked at (if at all) and nothing of substance is done about it.

8. Leaders across the organization focus on tactical operations, ignore problems, lack methodical problem solving, micromanage work, and have little vision at work.

9. Good, hard working employees are consistently overlooked for promotion opportunities and are kept “getting the work done.” The great employees have either turned apathetic in the workplace, are looking for other opportunities, or have already left.

10. Almost all the leadership and management below a bad leader looks the same. The problems above spread to every corner what that leader controls. Bad leaders conspire with other bad leaders to corrupt the entire organization because this eliminates the need for accountability. Soon, the disease has spread to the highest level executives and even possibly the president or CEO. The leadership ranks become bloated with high-paid executives who do little and hold no one accountable to organizational values.

These companies are like the undead. The disease has corrupted the body so badly that it doesn’t even realize it’s dead. It just keeps operating and destroying everything in its path. This mindless company lumber on making money in spite of itself and it decays and starts to collapse. Yet, the bad leadership are so unaware of the situation that they can’t even fathom there is a problem.

Bad leadership is running rampant in corporate America and the undead companies are lumbering across the landscape. Is there nothing that can be done?

When You Need A Swiss Army Knife in Business

Business Consulting Change Management Leadership Meandering Genius Organizational Commitment Performance Measurement Process Improvement Strategic Communication Strategic Planning March 13, 2015

Lately I have met several organizations that are at a crossroads in their own evolution. Many companies realize the importance of things like strategy, change management, process improvement, strategic communication, and employee engagement. However, these organizations are making tactical decisions on the direction of these areas versus truly looking at this from a strategic perspectives.

Instead of hiring several different individuals or creating separate teams all focused on doing the same thing, companies today should should focus on bringing all their Operational Excellence activities under one team working directly for the CEO or President of the company. This group should be led by a senior leader that sits at the same table as the companies other leaders.

This Swiss Army Knife professional–SVP/VP, Operational Excellence–should manage things like:
– Strategy development, execution, and change
– Performance optimization through process, product, and functional continuous improvement
– Strategic communication inside and outside the organization
– Strategic human capital management to include education, training, and development and employee satisfaction, commitment, and engagement
– Information and innovation engagement

This team does not need to be big…depending on an organization’s size, it could be as small as three or four people. However, it should leverage other support areas throughout the organization, like Human Resources, Finance, IT, etc. These organizations would not report to the position, but work with the position.

Today, some organizations have some or all of these activities occuring, but they are scattered across the organization and have very little singular direction. By bringing the functions together into a small effective team, an organization is equipped to deal with the challenges of today and the future.

Of course, the leaders of these types of organizations have to have a solid understanding of all these functions at strategic, operatiomal, and tactical levels and not focused on creating some massive sandbox of people with various skills. They need to be highly skilled with a focus on lean and mean.

Incorporating Scenario Planning into Your Planning Offsite

Strategic Planning Think Big May 24, 2014

Strategic planning, as a structured and systematic process, is successful when it is leader-led and overcomes the five reasons 70% of all strategies fail. Learn how to see your plan through to success. The strategic planning process is where leaders of an organization establish the vision of the organization’s future and then develop and implement the actions necessary to achieve that future. This article expands on the strategic planning concepts addressed in Think Big, Take Small Steps and is designed to help you achieve success in your strategic planning process.

Several weeks ago, I talked about Application of Scenario Planning in Strategic Planning. Then, we discussed the actual building of the potential scenarios to address possible future occurrences. Now, in the Facilitation of an Effective Strategic Plan Offsite, we use scenario planning to generate potential ideas around what an organization should strategically consider.

Let me provide you with an example of a scenario that I used before with military privatized housing.

First, you should develop three to five scenarios that address potential concerns that you identified in the blogs covering How to Conduct an Organizational Assessment. Review them with the senior person you are working with and narrow these down to three. Any more probably is too much.

We’re not talking about aliens landing and capturing market share…focus on potential future events that are based in reality. if you look at the above example, this proved to be a very possible event and raised concerns that the military determined to strategically deal with.

There are two ways to primarily address a scenario. The example above provide the first way and that is to point out a potential vulnerability in current operations allowing the senior leadership to discuss and determine potential ways to mitigate the strategic risk. If the organization already has a mission, vision, and goals, I like to provide scenarios that challenge their current strategy and have them determine if the strategy is still valid or does it need to be changed.

Either way, these are used to promote discussion, which leads eventually action items that I talked about last blog in Building a Strategic Plan from the Bottom Up.

My recommendation is that you have fun with the scenarios, but be realistic. I have found that senior leadership enjoy thinking about the strategic what ifs and discussing them. You just don’t want to do this too much during your offsite, or overuse the approach because the leaders will wonder if the plan is being built off reality or fiction.

So, 70% of all plans fail to some level; however, by following these guidelines you can help ensure your strategic plan will be one of the 30% successes that everyone reads about.

Building a Strategic Plan from the Bottom Up

Strategic Planning Think Big May 10, 2014 2 Comments

A Successful Systematic Process to Apply at Your Strategic Offsite.

How many of you attended, participated in, or facilitated a strategic planning session where you started with the mission and vision and then went around the table coming up with goals that every felt the organization needed?

FAIL!

Welcome to the world of the Good Idea Group. Where leaders come up with things they think they want to work on and everyone gets assigned a goal so everyone is “part of the strategic plan.”

If you have been or are doing this, you are going to build a strategic plan without an Executable Focus and you will undoubtedly become one of the 70% that fail at achieving desired results.

The bad thing is that I have done this too! Yep, I, even as a leader of organizations, have created plans built this same way.

Want to break this mold?

What to walk into a strategic planning session and walk out the end of the day with the best strategic plan possible?

Want everyone who attended the offsite feel like this was the most productive time they’ve ever had planning?

Want a plan the makes sense and is easy to implement?

If you answered yes to those four questions above, than this blog is for you. As part of Leading Your Leaders to Develop an Effective Strategic Framework, this blog specifically describes how to build a strategic plan quickly, efficiently, and effectively. You will find this technique is applicable to anything you are trying to solve. Ready for this?

I Certify, that if you follow this approach, you will create a strategic plan with a solid executable focus that is designed to overcome problems in your organization and leverage your strengths and opportunities. The resulting plan will, without a doubt, be fully implementable and you will always know why and how every action supports the vision of the organization.

Imagine this (above) as your company. You have a Mission (where you are today) and a Vision (where you want to be in the future) that you have validated during the first part of the offsite–we discussed this in the last blog, Facilitation of an Effective Strategic Plan Offsite. Between the mission and vision, there is a raging river that prevents you from getting to the river. What you need to build is a bridge that connects the too so you can actually get your organization to the vision.

The troubled water between the two banks was outlined by your organizational assessment that we covered in the How to Conduct an Organizational Assessment portion of this blog. This is what you must overcome–what is in that water are the things that prevent your organization from reaching its vision. However, scattered here and there in the river are low spots and rock outcroppings that help you in your journey of building a strong bridge to you vision.

If you keep this analogy in mind, you will easily understand this approach–as a matter of fact, I show a similar slide on the board to kick off this part of the offsite with their mission written out on the left and their vision written out on the right. During the offsite, I cal these series of exercises “What We Need.”

This exercise happens in three parts:

What We Need…
Diagramming…
Ownership…

What We Need

At this point, we have reviewed the Organizational Assessment and finalized a solid Mission and Vision Statement (I will talk more about these in upcoming blogs). I normally send everyone on a break and then I update the appropriate slides for the next section.

When everyone comes back, we review the high-level SWOT assessment, which encapsulates pretty much what is going on in the organization. I might refer to white boards or flip charts where specific items where added. This refreshes everyone’s thoughts on what is happening. Then I bring up the bridge slide with the new mission on the left and new vision on the right. At the top of the slide is the statement, “What we need…”

I give the team (normally) 60 minutes to silently finish this sentence:

What we need to achieve our vision is…

I ask them to write each thought down on a 5×7 post it note. The statement should be a concrete thought like “professional development training for all levels,” not something simple like “training.” They have 60 minutes to silently brainstorm ideas to finish this sentence.

Each idea should be focused on overcoming the challenges the organization faces today and leveraging what’s good.

I like to have two or three people working with me at this point. One or two go around and simply pick up the post it notes and bring them to me. I then start arranging them as they come in into group using affinity diagramming. I stick them on the wall in their groups. Sometimes I use a large white board or I hang empty post it butcher block paper around the room and organize the groups that way.

As you can imagine, this can be a fast and furious activity, especially if the leaders are strong thinkers. You can quickly generate hundreds of ‘what we need’ ideas.

Once everyone appears done, or at the 60-minute mark, I stop the exercise and put everyone on break. While they are on break, I get the helper(s) to review my groupings and help me finish them up. At this point, this is my affinity diagramming–not theirs.

Diagramming

When everyone is back from break, the first thing I like to highlight is the number of strategic ideas they came up with (number of post it notes) to achieve their vision. This number is normally well into the hundreds and is always impressive that in an hour or less, they could come up with so many ideas.

Then I explain how I have organized their ideas on the wall. Note that I don’t talk about group titles or anything, just explain the process I used. Several times the executives I work with have never seen affinity diagramming at work–many have never even heard of it.

By the way, this approach has been so effective with organizations that many executives have asked me to help them apply the same technique to many other types of projects.

For the next 10-15 minutes (or so), I ask the team to come up to the board and review all the ideas and validate the grouping. They are free to discuss and move anything on the board, but they cannot remove any idea–all ideas are valid at this point.

Once they have agreed on the final groupings, we walk through each group and discuss the items–I normally read them off. Then I ask them to label that group with a name. After all the groups are named, I ask them if any of the groups are similar in nature and could be grouped into a larger group–this is what is called tree diagramming (grouping the groups).

Once the final large groups are done, I step back and point out that they have just come up with their strategic plan. They have their Goals–the large groups, Objectives–the original affinitized groups, and the Actions–the ideas on post it notes.

It is normally at this point that every executive in the room is so amazed that they have created so much and done it in under two hours!

Of course, the plan needs work by me, but everything is there. My next job is to write it all up in a structured document. But the plan is now theirs! It was their ideas and their groupings, all i did was facilitate their thoughts in a beneficial direction to achieve their vision. This breeds ownership of the executives of the plan.

Ownership

The next and final step (normally) is for you to strengthen the ownership of the plan in the executives. List out the goals (hopefully you have between three to five at this point) and pose to the group, who will own each of these Goals. There should be one owner for each goal. I have seen where they have multiple owners, trying to give everyone ownership, but that fails, because it gives leaders an out when you share the accountability. Everyone will end up being involved in implementing the plan, but right now, you simply need accountability for each goal resting with one throat to choke.

This is a point where you would hope that the senior leader of the company would weight in (I normally prep him or her before hand) and make a determination after discussion.

The end result…

You have just created a new mission, vision, goals, objectives, and actions in one day following this approach. The executives at this event will be amazed at how simple and effective the process was and can definitely see the value of the strategic plan.

Your next step, outside of the offsite is to bring it all together in a concise document for them to review. I normally put this together in a detailed PowerPoint after action review that talks about what actions took place, what additional information was learned along with the SWOT, the final mission and vision with the goals between them marching across the bridge left to right (often referred to as the bridge slide), and a slide for each of the goals with written out objectives. backup i have all the ‘what we need’ statements on slides aligned to their appropriate goal and objective.

This after action report take a week or less to put together…sometimes I can have it done the next day. Most of it I build before the event and simply fill in the data after the event.

Following this approach is fast, efficient, and effective. You will be recognized by the leadership for one of the best planning offsites they have ever been to, and you will have a rough strategic plan built with a solid strategic framework and executable focus. The next step will be to translate this strategy into execution.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll discuss some of the finer points of products from the strategic planning offsite. we will look at:

Scenario Planning
Mission Statements
Vision Statements
Values and Principles

So, 70% of all plans fail to some level; however, by following these guidelines you can help ensure your strategic plan will be one of the 30% successes that everyone reads about.