Posts in Strategic Planning

The Robust SWOT Assessment

Strategic Planning Think Big March 1, 2014 3 Comments

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.

Taking SWOT Assessment to the Next Level in Strategic Planning

It was probably back in the early 90s that I first heard of the term SWOT Analysis / SWOT Assessment. I started to hear about it a lot more when I was in Germany from 1997 to 2002. The acronym was the easy part, but actually building one was, in my mind, difficult.

Now some of you out there might have never had difficulty with building a really good SWOT, so this blog really isn’t for you. However, if you are currently challenged by this tool and developing what you really think is a good SWOT, then this blog is for you!

I welcome input from those who have other techniques and experiences for getting to a great SWOT.

I call it an Assessment tool, versus an Analysis tool as it’s commonly referred to. It’s part of your Organizational Assessment as I talked about in Understanding the Different Assessment Tools, or at least should be, and can be part of any effort to examine the current state of something. I’ve since used SWOT in communications studies, marketing plans, etc. We will focus on its use in strategic planning.

The first thing that really propelled my thinking is that the SWOT is actually a high-level representation of a much deeper analysis. It’s really more of a way to capture organization’s themes and present them for further discussion during the Strategic Planning Session, which is the next stage of strategic planning as outlined in Think Big, Take Small Steps.

I have seen some very poor examples of a SWOT and even created several in my own time. If you are using brainstorming (personal or as a group) to build your SWOT, you’re going to end up with a poor SWOT Assessment. The key is to align the results of your assessment interviews, like I talk about in Assessing Your Organization Using the Military’s DOTMLPF – FREE Assessment, and build the SWOT off a more robust analysis using Affinity Diagramming. I use Affinity and Tree Diagramming a few times as I help organizations build their strategic plan and will discuss it in later blogs as well.

Understanding the design of a SWOT Assessment is the first important part. There are many key aspects of a SWOT that are not as obvious as the words would lead someone to believe. What I want to talk about is not only the four vectors, but how the tool was designed and how to use the tool moving forward. See the image below as we discuss:

As you can see from the image, things are either positive or negative in nature and either internal or external to the organization. Positive aspects are what an organization can leverage to overcome negative aspects. Internal aspects are those they control and external do not currently reside within the organization’s control. Note that something can be more than one thing (i.e., Employee longevity can be a Strength because you have a low turnover and a great deal experience, but also a Weakness because the employees might be resistant to change and you might have a large wave of retirement coming).

Strength. Strengths are internally positive aspects about the organization. These are the things that make the organization strong and are the main things an organization can leverage to overcome internal weaknesses and external threats. Organizations tend to focus only on their weaknesses and take their strengths for granted. A failure to focus on and nurture your organizational strengths can quickly turn them into a negative. When you brainstorm to build a SWOT, you tend to come up with a lot of perceived strengths, some of which might not be true.

Weakness. Weaknesses are also internal to the organization, but these are the challenges that could prevent the organization from achieving its eventual vision. Only the most glaring weaknesses are normally highlighted by an organization when brainstorming and usually this list is short. When done correctly, this tends to be a long and difficult list for leaders to swallow. Although it doesn’t sound like SWOT, I often refer to this box as Challenges (a SCOT). Nothing in an organization will prevent it from achieving its vision, unless they fail to address the challenges in front of them.

Opportunity. Many times Opportunities and Threats can be the same thing, but simply it’s the way you look at them. Basically, these both fall into a risk category. Opportunities are positive and external to the organization. If you have an opportunity that exists within your organization, then it is a Strength that you just aren’t leveraging at the moment. The importance of focusing on the external factor of it is that there is less of a guarantee that you can turn Opportunities into Strengths. Many organizations, especially those that don’t currently have a strategic plan or the one that exists is poor, fail to focus on the external factors. Extremely effective strategies focus more on the external factors then the internal. This is how you develop strategic positioning and become prepared for the what might happen versus dealing with it when it happens.

Threat. Obviously, Threats are the external negative aspects surrounding an organization. These are significant threats that the organization faces or could face in the future that they have no control over. Competitors and government regulations often fall into this category. If your organization is part of a bigger organization, things like down-sizing, reorganizations, and funding, even though they exist in the greater organization, still can be external to your control. The two biggest things about Threats is to determine ways to either turn a Threat into an Opportunity, or to develop a mitigation plan should the Threat materialize.

As you can see, the SWOT in itself isn’t really an analysis tool…it’s a way to display what you have learned in your assessment so that leadership can review it and discuss it. I have put them on separate pages before, but its best that leadership can see them all on one page and thus compare and contrast in discussion. This is why a good SWOT really is only a high-level view of what’s going on in and outside of the organization.

So, this is how I build a robust SWOT Assessment:

1. I gather all the findings that I collected in my assessment interviews and research. Refer to my earlier blog, Assessing Your Organization Using the Military’s DOTMLPF – FREE Assessment, for my techniques in interviewing. At this point you simply have a lot of detail–detail that you (and your team if you have one) need to completely read through and understand.

2. What I do is look for themes that form out of the comments and responses from the interviews and from that were gathered from my research. I use Affinity Diagramming to group these items–I will discuss this more in the next phase of my blog under Leading Your Leaders to Develop an Effective Strategic Framework, but for now, let me highlight how I do this. Normally I start with pen and paper and list out high-level groups of the information I have. Then, I transfer this to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, putting the grouping titles at the top of each column. Then, I copy the information I’ve collected in rows below the appropriate column headers and I allow for information to end up in more than one column. This is an individual (not group) method of doing Affinity Diagramming.

3. These column headers and all the information listed in the rows below the columns are what I call Trends, Issues, and Problem Statements (TIPS). When working with the Army, I referred to them as Emerging Insights. You could also call them Strategic Focus Areas–it really doesn’t matter. The importance of this is that you have a great deal of detail under each major heading to really explain what is going on both positively and negatively in the organization. The TIPS heading and major themes within the TIPS are what form the words on the SWOT Assessment chart. Now you can see why a SWOT is a high-level tool.

The purpose of building the SWOT Assessment is not to analyze the organization–this is why I don’t call it a SWOT Analysis. This is a high-level assessment of the deeper analysis done in the TIPS. The SWOT is a primary tool used to facilitate discussion during the Strategic Planning Session, which we will discuss in five weeks. There are still four more important topics that I want to expand upon during the Organizational Assessment. They are Scenario Planning, Innovative Thinking, Measures, and Audience-Focus. The reason I focus so much on developing the Organizational Assessment, is because if done correctly, you will really make your Strategic Planning Session go smoothly.

A SWOT in itself is not a really great tool. If you understand it and develop it correctly, it can be extremely effective in leading discussion during the Strategic Planning Session. Simply sitting in a room and brainstorming to build a SWOT will lead to a useless document. You will end up with very limited information that is heavily weighted on internal and positive aspects. A true SWOT must come from a detailed analysis of the interviews and research done in the organization.

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.

Related Links:

1. I love Dr. McDonald’s “SWAG” http://youtu.be/V6NhsoVSD88 – MUST WATCH

2. http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_05.htm

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affinity_diagram

Are You Ready for Change?

Change Management Strategic Planning Think Big February 22, 2014 19 Comments

Understanding Your Company’s Readiness for Change Prepares for Strategic Planning Success.

It always amazes me that people don’t inherently understand that strategic planning equals strategic change.

If you have a “vision” then that means you are looking to go somewhere in the future that you aren’t at today. If you live in Kansas and have a vision of moving to California, do you think anything is going to change as a result of that move? Unfortunately, many executives fail to understand the magnitude of change that they are embarking on when getting into serious strategic planning–I say serious because many are not and this is the primary reason plans fail as I pointed out in The Importance of Strategic Planning.

Like many companies, we foray into changes without even considering the readiness of our organization for that change. Some of these changes are small, like moving a few executives around, creating a new product, or improving a process. Some are rather large, like mergers, organizational changes, and layoffs. However, nothing is quite like strategic change. A strategic plan is a long-term project–what I like to think of as the “forever project.” Your organization, when embarking on a serious strategic planning effort, needs to be ready for constant change forever.

Managing the change after you’ve started implementing a strategy will probably fail. At the onset of your assessment you need to assess the readiness of the organization to make the changes that will ultimately be required.

There are many Change Readiness Assessments available for free on the internet. I encourage you to look for one and apply what you think is best, but I’m going to share with you some basic questions that might help you assess without using someone’s tool (free or not).

First, do the senior executives in the organization understand and agree on the need for change? Are they happy with the status quo or do they feel that something big needs to change? Are they engaged in the direction (vision) that the organization needs to go and do they agree with it? If the leadership don’t feel that there is a need for huge change in the organization, they won’t support it. The shadow they will cast on their people will ensure heels dig in and strategic change, if possible, will take much longer than necessary. More than likely, the strategy will be abandoned the first year because you can’t get leadership traction.

Once you’ve defined the direction the organization needs to go and the executive leadership is behind it, how well do the employees understand and agree with the direction and need for change. Is it a predominate opinion across the staff that everything is fine and they are doing well? A good factor to analyze is the longevity of the employees. Long-term employees are much more resistant to change because they have a lot more invested in the organization. Strategic change usually means that people will move, organizations will change, lots of new skills will be introduced, etc. You’re not thinking about moving someone’s cheese here–you’re looking at throwing away the old moldy cheese and making new cheese–a much stronger version no less. You can always expect some resistance to change, especially in the employees, but massive resistance will cripple your effort. Understand it up front.

Before you really sit down and consider the strategy going forward, think about how things on a high-level need to change. Your organizational assessment should show you this, even though you haven’t formalized anything. Consider what potential knowledge, skills, and abilities will be required of your leaders and employees. Then assess if your leaders and employees have these things. For instance, let’s say that the consensus is, based on what you’re seeing in the organizational assessment, that your company needs to consider outsourcing several non-core functions to focus on core activities and the core activities need to be more process-focused activities. The overall plan would be to redirect non-core employees to the core activities as you outsource so employee strength remains the same, but capacity increases and you envision obtaining industry expertise at a reduced cost through a managed services model. Do the employees left behind to oversee the managed service have the current capabilities to perform this partnership management role? Do the non-core employees need to learn new core capability skills to be able to operate? If everyone is going to be process-focused, do you have a small team of expert practitioners and is there appropriate process-related knowledge, skills, and abilities at all levels of the organization?

The last major point of this type of assessment is if the organization has any current way to effectively recognize and reinforce successful change? It is important to leverage these opportunities throughout a change effort and if they don’t exist, then they need to be created. Positive reinforcement of successes and dealing effectively with resistance (negative reinforcement) are key to the long term success of strategic change.

Having a plan isn’t enough–being able to implement that plan is where the strategy emerges. However, strategy means change–change like you’ve never felt before. If your organization isn’t ready for that amount and type of change, your first strategic activity might be to build the organization’s readiness for strategic change. If you ignore the organization’s current readiness, then more than likely your strategy will fail.

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.

2. http://www.lencd.org/learning/howto-readiness

3. http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/109019/chapters/The-Organizational-Change-Readiness-Assessment.aspx

Energized by a business plan

Meandering Genius Strategic Planning February 17, 2014

Ever been interested in starting your own business, but wasn’t sure where to start? Have you started to build that new business and lost some drive floundering on the next step?

Well, I’m in the process of building a new business, which requires writing a new book, an assessment tool, creating a website, developing extensive training materials, and creating a consulting approach and appropriate certification program.

I have the idea, but what gets me jazzed and on the road is writing the business plan. Maybe this isn’t for everyone, but I just can’t see anyone risking all the effort and potential money in the development of an idea as a business and not have a plan.

The best part about writing the plan is that it documents everything running around in my head, which gets in the way of other stuff I need running around in my head.

The first task is to outline the plan. Like any good paper, you need a framework. If you plan to seek funding (loans or investments) you will need a good business plan–ideas without plans are just that. Few will financially support that. So this is where you start.

I’m at the second step…the fun part. Describing the idea–the business–and writing out the mission and vision. This is what truly frames out what you are trying to do. Many people think that “Making Money doing something” is their mission–if you start there, you’ve failed. Chances are that your business will fail too, probably in the first six years. Your mission is really WHAT you do–the purpose and part of the why you exist. Your business will either plan to make something or to provide something (product or service); possibly both. What is the expected outcome of these products and services.

I always thought that Booz Allen Hamilton had a pretty effective mission statement.

We solve our clients toughest problems.

That in itself is powerful–we weren’t there to make money off whatever job you needed, no you were calling in experts to focus on the hardest things you had to deal with. Yes, we made money at it, but that wasn’t the purpose of the company.

Next is the vision. This is really powerful and can send a definite message as to what you are all about. Throw out the statements like being best, being world class, etc… Think big and think about what effort you are willing to put behind your vision. Being the best at something means devoting time and money into becoming the best. Are you willing to do that, because if you are not, your vision will be empty.

Consider Booz Allen’s vision:

Delivering results that endure.

What this meant was that we came in, solved your toughest problems and then taught you how to keep the problem solved. We didn’t build a position or a technology that required regular financial support to keep it running. Many contractors do that–they create solutions that you have to continue to fund or they will collapse.

This was very empowering to me–it meant that I had to be so good that I was the solution that they couldn’t live without. Basically, I would become their trusted provider and the person they constantly turned to for their toughest problems.

Your vision should reflect that. It should scare you and excite you at the same time. It should represent a belief that puts you at risk, but promises much more.

This is why writing a business plan jazzes me and motivates me when thinking about starting a new business. Not only am I clearing my mind by fully documenting my ideas, but I’m really framing out the why in my new business endeavor. This is exciting.

Implementation of strategy is barely visible by the naked eye.

Change Management Meandering Genius Strategic Planning February 16, 2014

I think that one of the reasons most people see strategies as a failure is because they don’t ‘see’ them unfold when implemented.

Strategy is not about massive change, it’s about strategic change. Massive changes are tactical activities that slowly bring about the vision over many years.

Honestly, the best vision is a lasting one that you don’t have to change every three to five years. The Air Force Sergeants Association’ purpose is to fight for Air Force enlisted benefits on Capitol Hill. Their vision is simple, To be the professional organization of choice to Air Force and the families. This is a measurable long term vision that AFSA will strive to, but may never achieve.

So, why do I say that strategy is invisible?

Strategy is about placement and preparedness. To implement a strategy, normally, you are (to use a military term) prepping the battle space for operations. The strategic actions in themselves are seldom that noticeable, but what they do is prepare you for opportunities that are sure to reveal themselves–opportunities that probably would not have shown themselves if you were not prepared.

Recently, I had a senior leader tell me that all the successes the group I’ve been working with was happenstance (i.e., luck). I disagreed. The strategic activities that we were intertwining over the last two years allowed for the successes to occur.

This is why people who are implementing strategic plans seldom see the forest through the trees. They have to go on faith that what they’re doing will have impact. Even to the employees, they seldom see the subtle changes taking place in the organization.

It is the leader and the strategy experts job to watch for these changes and to stand on the mountaintop and scream out these changes so everyone will know what has happened.

Strategic programs being put in place, strategic organizational changes, strategic development of employees… These things happen over time and when something happens over time, it is often. Viewed as ‘normal operations’ — just part of the daily routine.

This is so far from the truth. In my current role, we started two years ago to “improve document management.” Today, everyone in the document management space meet once a week under a developed governance structure. Today their is a six-person team that matures the do unenthusiastic domain slowly every day. Today there is a 26-page document strategy that highlights how we got here and where we’re going. Today there is an end-to-end understanding of the document life cycle. Today there is a robust document metrics program with accompanying metrics collection strategy.

Those things were strategic in nature and have produced tactical actions, which will lead to us moving closer to our vision of being the leader in document management.

Strangely enough, after two years of discussing and working with ten to twenty industry consultants, we are beginning to think that we are already a leader in this space. The beauty of our strategic effort is that we see how far we have to go and if we can achieve that over the next several years, we will not only be a leader, but ‘the leader!’

A year ago, we researched the only book written on document strategy–written by Kevin Craine. Kevin is a nice guy, who wrote his book based on a Master’s program. Today, he has a blog and regular pod casts about document management and strategy. That’s the authoritative leader in this space.

The harder you look at your strategic implementation the clearer it will become that you are improving. Take the time to understand why you are doing the things your are doing and look for the subtle outcomes. You just might find out you’re well on your way to your vision already and you just can’t see it.

The Importance of a Stakeholder Assessment

Change Management Strategic Planning Think Big February 15, 2014 2 Comments

Conducting a Stakeholder Assessment When Developing a Strategic Plan is Crucial

I see a “strategy” being made up of three things: A mission, a vision, and goals on how to get from where you are now to where you are going. Those goals represent CHANGE in an organization–strategic change.

Anytime there is a change, there will be people who are for it and against it. The rest are the movable middle. Anytime you are planning a change, you need to analyze the audience that will be impacted by that change and continually manage that audience through the change.

Case in point: One of my clients had the words, “Meet customer’s expectations through product delivery,” in one of their goal statements. The strategy had been in place for several months, and the head of their operations was not supportive of the strategy–he wanted to create it himself versus as a leadership team. He also liked living in the realm of strategy because then he really wasn’t accountable for doing anything. Note that ‘accountable’ is a key word here. I was in a meeting with the head of the strategic planning department and the operations director and he said, quote, “I will not hold my people accountable for meeting customer expectations.”

Who, in the right mind as a leader, can say something as ludicrous as that? By this time, the strategy was really rolling out–plans were in place and changes were occurring. All this went on regardless of how much he tried to stop it. This was the cry of a desperate man. As a result of the shadow he cast, one of his directs was responsible for deploying part of the plan–specifically under this goal. We were attempting to establish actions and dates, when he broke down in a whiney voice almost on the edge of tears, and cried, “But, I don’t want to be held accountable to this.”

These situations are real. Strategy–good strategy–means change. If you are not prepared for this type of behavior from people that have influence and you require to make the strategy reality, then you will get stopped by this type of behavior.

I know in Good to Great, you are supposed to get people on the bus and off the bus to make things work, but in the real world, some organizations don’t have that luxury. Then you have to determine how to deal with them.

In a strategic change, there are four potential groups that you have to consider. Obviously, first are the stakeholders–those who have a vested interest in the change and impact of the change. Second are the customers–those who direct your organization to deliver goods and/or services. All customers are stakeholders, but not all stakeholders are customers. Two other potential groups are Partners and Suppliers. Partners and Suppliers are those you work with to deliver your goods and services to the Customer. Sometimes they can be everything, or sometimes, not. Understanding who they are and who of them are key–make a difference and can impact the change–is important. Note this Venn diagram and how these audiences interact.

Once you know who they are, list them out and try to determine what you know about then and what you don’t know about them. List out what stake they have in the change–what will be impacted and how they feel. On a scale of 1-5, rate their level of support of the change and on the same scale rate the level of influence that can have to impact it–1 being lowest. This tells you where you potentially could have your most difficult problems. As you can imagine, the Operations Director in my above example was low in support and high in influence–not a good combination. Those that are high in both can also become your greatest champions. Those who are low in both probably can be ignored–best to spend precious resources on the most important stuff.

With those that are important to this effort, plot them each on this continuum:

If they are low, or not even on the continuum, then, strategic activities designed to raise them on the continuum might help their acceptance and assistance. Sometimes they fully understand what is going on, but, getting them higher is impossible. In the case of the Operations Director, we basically forced him to retire and the next director that was hired supported the strategy. The bus activity; however, this took time. Obviously, if someone is simply aware of the strategy and doesn’t understand why it’s being done and what its impact is, then desiring advocacy and ownership is impossible. So, if you have someone at awareness, but you need them as an advocate, then you need to first get them to understanding, and then next to acceptance. Makes sense, right?

This is also helpful to determine if you already have someone at advocacy and that’s where you want them, then you don’t need to do anything. If someone has little influence on the strategy and change, then maybe awareness or understanding is fine. These decisions again allow you to focus your efforts in strategic areas.

Another way to map your audience is through this tool:

It’s a bit simpler in its approach, but can be effective. For a strategic plan, which takes years to implement, I like a much more detailed assessment and action plan than this, but you can choose. I also am Prosci certified in ADKAR, so I like to use that approach, but I am not free to share their proprietary process on this blog. You can read about it in books from Amazon and their certification is very effective. The approaches I’ve shared here are based on my Master’s-level Change Management certification from Georgetown University and are not proprietary.

So, you can see how important a Stakeholder Assessment is to develop during the Organizational Assessment. This, like any change effort, when done early, helps to prep the space and get people on board quickly or identify those you need to work around. This tool, is a lasting assessment that you may revisit regularly to see how things are progressing.

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.

2. http://www.amazon.com/Change-Management-The-People-Side/dp/193088561X/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1392477543&sr=8-2

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stakeholder_analysis

Assessing Your Organization Using the Military’s DOTMLPF – FREE Assessment

Strategic Planning Think Big February 8, 2014 11 Comments

Understand How to Use this Military Assessment Tool to Assess Your Business

Several years ago I was working with a major Army headquarters in the north central United States. They had been growing over the past several years, merging various related responsibilities into their organization. The problem was that they were more just bolting these new capabilities on, versus really integrating themselves to deliver a seamless capability.

I was called in to help them come up with a multi-year strategic plan. This was mainly because the headquarters over this headquarters was developing a new strategic plan. So there wasn’t a lot of buy in for strategic planning.

They even had a planning department with five people that were responsible for strategic planning. After the kickoff, I sat down with the head of the strategic planning team and he told me they had already developed three strategic plans over the past five years and I would fail at delivering anything useful, but he was here to support the year-long project.

Nice start, huh?

In the first blog of this series Think Big, Take Small Steps, I talk about the three things that you must have in strategic planning or you probably will fail:

Executable Focus
Strategic Framework
Traceable Implementation
Rigor and Accountability
Communication

In that article, I point out that all successful plans have an Executable Focus. If a plan lacks focus on fixing organizational problems and overcoming barriers to the organization’s vision it is not built on the realities of the environment impacting the organization.

Well, this team had built three strategic plans by themselves by coming up with fancy words that started with mission and vision, but were not built off any discernible assessment. As a matter of fact, they were so proud of their last “strategic plan” because they were able to get it to one page.

So, I’ve explained why doing an solid organizational assessment is important to ensure the success of your plan. The reason I highlight this client over many others that were much the same, is because this client is where I developed my DOTMLPF-FREE approach that I still use today.

It was very important to the commanding general of this organization that we use Army and Joint Force strategic planning guidance and approaches. Actually, the plan was actually called a “Campaign Plan” to fit this desire. So, I needed an assessment approach that he and his staff understood and accepted. The term “Environmental Scan” was foreign to them–this is something I’ve run into before with military clients. I decided to use the framework used in Joint Force planning called DOTMLPF. Unfortunately, their literally is nothing significant written about this, aside from what the letter mean.

D — Doctrine
O — Organization
T — Training
M — Material
L — Leadership
P — Personnel
F — Facilities

I was also concerned about things this approach didn’t cover, so I added the acronym “FREE” to the end of this assessment tool:

F — Finances
R – Relationships
E — Efficiency
E — Effectiveness

So, to use this in phonetic terms, say, “Dot Mil P F, Free.”

I won’t talk about it here, but I have since added “Plus I Squared,” to the acronym (DOTMLPF-FREE+i²). This incorporates Innovation and Information.

I outline my interview template following this format. I also ask through the interview for the interviewee to rate a particular item from 1 to 5 and I’ll ask, if it’s not a 5, what would it take to get to 5. I gather all these score and present the results in a Radar chart (see below).

Doctrine
Doctrine covers is current mission, vision and guiding principles of the organization. Here is an example of how in depth I get with the questions associated with the mission part of doctrine:

1. A “mission” captures and expresses the enduring nature of what the organization is about – its purpose and focus. The current mission statement of your organization is, “XXX.”
1.a. What does this mission statement mean to you?
1.b. Do you feel the mission statement articulates the fundamental purpose of your organization? If not, what needs to change?
1.c. Do you feel the mission statement provides enough focus to define your organization’s reason for being, yet allows maneuvering room to execute it? If not, what needs to change?
1.d. Do you feel the mission statement focuses on “what” your organization does or “how” ASC does their mission? If not “what,” what needs to change?
1.e. Do you feel the mission statement clearly reflects customer and stakeholder needs and expectations? If not, what needs to change?
1.f. Where does your role in the organization fit in the mission statement?
1.g. If you would define the mission of your organization differently, how would you define the mission of the organization?

As you can imagine, I get quiet in depth with the categories.

Organization
In organization, I’m looking at structure (looking for stovepipes), accountable governance, and internal communication.

Training
Training covers organizational education, training, and development of all leaders and personnel.

Material
Material or Materiel, covers equipment, suppliers, tools, and information systems and software.

Leadership
I’m looking at capability, emotional intelligence, servant leadership, and engagement.

Personnel
Your employees are your greatest asset. In personnel, I examine the knowledge, skills, and abilities; how they are being used (8th waste in Lean); do they have the right types and amounts; capacity and productivity; and their engagement.

Facilities
Facilities includes things like buildings, space utilization, conference rooms, and furniture. I look at this from a main headquarters and distributed offices perspective…normally HQ is much better than the geographically located offices.

Finances
I ask several different questions. How well is the organization budgeting and forecasting? How close is their planned and actual? What do they do with excess or when they overspend? Do they use any activity based costing or management techniques.

Relationships
Relationships covers how they interact with their customers, stakeholders, partners, and suppliers. I also talk to the key ones in each group and find out what they think about the organization and how the relationship is. It’s always amazing how much different the two are.

Efficiency and Effectiveness
Efficiency and Effectiveness speaks to their use of metrics, process management, improvement activities, total cost of ownership understanding, and operational excellence.

As you can see, by following this guideline, you can really obtain a very well-rounded assessment of any organization. Although this was a military tool that I repurposed, it works for any organization. Today I have added Innovation and Information as two other areas I look at, but I think you get the gist.

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.

Related Links:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOTMLPF

2. http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/new_pubs/jp1_02.pdf

3. http://soldiersystems.net/2012/05/11/dotmlpf-what-is-it/

Understanding the Different Assessment Tools

Strategic Planning Think Big February 1, 2014 6 Comments

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.

Knowing What Assessment Tools Exist is Half the Battle.

Last week, I highlighted several organizational assessment tools in my blog How to Conduct an Organizational Assessment. This will be a relatively short blog, compared to my others, because I just want to highlight some tools and in future articles, I will describe them in more detail. Please Follow My Blog to keep up with this running story. If you want to start at the beginning, check out the linked article in the first paragraph.

The most important thing to do, when conducting an assessment, is to structure your approach. I use an approach that I term DOTMLPF – FREE. This covered the areas of Doctrine, Organization, Training, Material, Leadership, Personnel, Facilities, Finances, Relationships, Efficiency, and Effectiveness. This is a fully rounded approach that allows you to score, evaluate, analyze, and report out an organizational assessment. I will fully cover this tool next in Assessing Your Organization Using the Military’s DOTMLPF – FREE Assessment.

When I conduct an organizational assessment, I always use three specific tools: a Stakeholder Assessment, a Change Readiness Assessment, the SWOT Assessment.

The Stakeholder Assessment is great for any change-related activity to determine who will be supportive and who will not of the change. It helps to outline what actions you need to take to gain their involve or mitigate their negative influence. Being a certified Prosci practicitioner, I use the ADKAR model for my assessment. All strategic plans, if implemented, result in change, so this is a very helpful tool to prepare for the development and eventual implementation.
Additionally, I like to use a Change Readiness Assessment to determine how ready the actual organization is for the upcoming strategic change. This is different than the Stakeholder Assessment, because it looks at change readiness from the organizational point of view. It is very helpful and a relatively short assessment that is easy to perform with a small team.
The SWOT assessment, if generally how I report out everything I find from my interviews following the DOTMLPF-FREE format. If you didn’t know, SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. As a general rule, I change the word Weaknesses to Challenges–it just goes over better. Most leaders have heard of the term SWOT Analysis from some business class or in the course of their work–seldom do you find anyone who can conduct one. The trick is, that I don’t “conduct” a SWOT Assessment–I assess what I learn about the organization using a SWOT grid and present the results in that manner.

SWOT, in my mind, is a high-level assessment and report. I also assess what I’ve learned from the DOTMLPF-FREE approach through a TIPS Assessment–Trends, Issues, and Problem Statements. What I do, is, using Affinity Diagramming, I build the major TIPS that the organization is faced with. These are also called “Emerging Insights,” which I’ve used in Army Campaign Planning. Under each major issue (defined through the Affinity Diagramming), I provide this general view:

Emerging Insight, Focus Area, or TIP Title
Assessment Observations: Things learned from the research and interviews aligned to this specific area.
Initial Recommendations: Specific recommendations I have, based on the observations, that they need to do to overcome this issue.

When I collect information from my research and interviews, I normally start organizing it in Microsoft Excel under buckets. The beauty of this type of analysis is that it provides the leadership with key areas that they need to work on to make their strategy successful. In many ways, these formulate at least some of the objectives during the facilitated session. Everything else builds to these key items.

You may find use for several other types of assessment and I would love to hear about ones you’ve used, especially if you can share links in the comments below. I love using maturity models for assessing organizations. I’ve even created a specific maturity model when none existed. These models provide a very organized view of the organization’s or domain’s maturity, benchmarks them against industry, and provides a roadmap for them to follow to get better.

Additionally, there are a number of industry specific assessment tools–like a specific assessment to look at non-profits, or assessments to look at finance, information technology, innovation, etc. When you discover a specific (major) challenge with a company, I suggest you research possible assessment tools, or don’t be afraid to create your own. A key point is, normally an assessment tool is nothing more than a structured survey method. All of these assessment tools ask specific questions and the results (answers) formulate the assessment of the organization.

A good example of a powerful assessment tool would be Gallup’s Employee Engagement Survey. This is a widely-use industry standard assessment tool to determine how engaged (or committed) an organization’s employees are. This can be a very helpful assessment and I’ve worked with the results for a couple years now.

Another example, would be ISO 14001–Environmental Management System. For several years, I worked for several EPA and DoD clients in the world of Environmental Management. I used this ISO standard as a key assessment tool for these engagements. This brought a level of professionalism and validity to my work with them, but also gave them something to use year-after-year, much like the Gallup Survey.

The summary of this article, which I expected to be shorter, is that you need to develop a stable of key assessment approaches and tools to analyze and present your analysis in the next phase of the strategic planning effort. You also should be aware of other possible tools for the industry you’re dealing with or tools that can help the organization focus on a specific area. A key factor is that you can overanalyze a situation by bringing in too many tools. Make sure the ones you use are effective and you keep overlap to a minimum. For an example, I use a Stakeholder Assessment and Change Readiness Assessment with every organizational assessment. They both deal with change capability, but they are focused differently and together complement each other.

Stay tuned to future weeks where I will explain some of these specific assessment tools and demonstrate more about how I use them for analysis and for reporting. I will also try to provide at least one example of the tool for your use.

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.

Related Links (find three links related to the topic of the article):

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWOT_analysis
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOTMLPF
3. http://www.gallup.com/

How to Conduct an Organizational Assessment

Strategic Planning Think Big January 25, 2014 10 Comments

Establishing an Executable Focus to Ensure the Success of Your Strategic Plan.

It really doesn’t matter what you are doing; if you are planning to change something from what it is today to something different tomorrow, then you need to understand the way it is today. The reason this is important in strategic plan development is because a strategy and associated plan should be designed to overcome current barriers to your vision. I like to use the image of building a bridge over troubled water. Today you’re on one side of the bridge and you need to get to the other side.

If you didn’t know how deep, how fast, and what lies below the surface of the water you plan to cross, then you’re bound to fail. So, an organizational analysis is a survey of the river and a testing of the banks to determine the best way to build your bridge.

I have heard many terms over the years, like preplanning analysis, environmental scan, SWOT analysis, etc. There is nothing wrong with these terms, but my plan is to show you how to ensure whatever you call it, it provides you with the data you need. I use the term organizational analysis, because that seems to be the least technical and better understood by my customers.

Some of those terms used above are tools that you might use during an assessment. I plan to cover many of these tools next week in Understanding the Different Assessment Tools. Also, I want to share a very specific tool that I learned about in the military and now apply in all of my assessment activities. I will talk about this tool in two weeks in Assessing Your Organization Using the Military’s DOTMLPF – FREE Assessment. Future articles in this series will cover other tools, like a Stakeholder Assessment, a Change Readiness Assessment, the SWOT Assessment, and Scenario Planning.

Today is simply an overview of the approach I use and when I apply these various assessment tools. I look forward to your ideas on the approach and others you have used.

The closest approach to what I use to assess an organization, that I have seen documented, would be the Delphi Technique. The Delphi Technique is comprehensive, but I add some things to it. Let me outline the activities as I like to see them occur during an assessment. Sometimes, this approach changes, or (in many cases) things happen at the same time. I’ve completed assessments as quickly as a couple of weeks and I’ve had one take four months. This will depend on the size and complexity of the organization. Additionally, if the organization already has somewhat of a grasp of strategic planning and a plan in place that isn’t too bad, it can speed up the process. Don’t simply rely on what they’ve done–there is a good chance they missed things to get it done quickly.

Here are the activities I employ to conduct the assessment:

RESEARCH

First I start with conducting as much research on materials and data the organization uses to communicate, direct, evaluate, and improve the organization. I review everything they put out about their company in print and through the web and social media. I look at current strategies, policies, and directives. I review their organizational structure and understand the purposes of each organization and relative employee and contractor strength. I look at what training programs they employ and attend and the level of knowledge, skills and abilities of employees and leadership. The list goes on…

In two weeks, I will lay out the specific framework that I use to review an organization and formulate the next stage. A key component of this research is to determine who to interview and what to ask. The next step in my assessment is developing interview questions that are influenced by my research.

The most important thing is that you can’t conduct an assessment on research alone. What people put in writing is never exactly how things are really working. You must interview people to verify your findings and get to the entire picture.

Expect your initial research to take up to a week. You will continue your research even after you’ve started your interviews, because you will come across other things to consider and review.

INTERVIEWS

Interviews with key leadership, knowledgeable employees, organizational stakeholders, customers, and strategic partners are key to the success of an organizational assessment. Your interviews should be focused on obtaining a good picture of what the organization is facing. Much of the topics listed in the research section are repeated here. The framework I use to gather data is the same framework that I use to interview. I call it DOTMLPF-FREE.

The number of interviews vary based on organizational size and complexity. I normally can get away with simply 10 to 20 interviews, but my longest project had 44 interviews. The client was adamant about us getting many views from across the organization and outside the organization. Honestly, in three or four interviews, I normally know what’s going on…the remaining interviews simply validate what I know and what’s already been said.

To ensure that you are systematic in your interview approach, make sure you use an interview questionnaire. Don’t ask the questions word-for-word, but use it as a template to drive your interview and make sure you don’t miss anything. It can be helpful to send the questionnaire out before the interviews to help people prepare their thoughts and possibly provide key documents that you might need. However, don’t allow them to fill it out and send it back–you will lose everything in this approach, Trust Me.

Written interview templates help your clients see the breadth and depth of your assessment before you are too deep into it. I normally have them approve the questions and also ask if there is any question(s) they would like added–something they really want to know. Your clients should also approve the interviewee list and can recommend adding names of people you hadn’t thought of.

Be careful with the number of interviews–rule of thumb is it take three hours for every interview–an hour for the interview, an hour to document the interview, and an hour to tie the results into your analysis. So, ten interviews is 30 hours–almost an entire week. When you apply how busy the interviewees might be, getting on their calendars means you can expect a week per ten. If the interviewees require travel to other locations (in other states or countries), then you can expect this timeline to increase. The organization that took me four months, took a month for the research, and three months for interviews due to schedules and traveling. Part of that time, of course, is the next steps of putting it all together.

Having written interview templates helps if you have multiple interviewers working with you on the team. They can follow the template and bring back data. Make sure they know what and how to ask questions–they can’t simply follow the questions, it has to be a guide. But, for large efforts, a team can help. I always try to have someone to take notes, so I can simply ask questions. I do take my own notes and write everything down afterwards, but having a second person helps me focus on the interviewee. Once I used a recording device, but I think this was a distraction for the interviewee and don’t recommend it.

ADDITIONAL ASSESSMENT TOOLS

Based on time and availability of staff, I like to conduct various different analyses of the organization. These take the form of change readiness assessments, stakeholder assessments, culture assessments, process and enterprise maturity assessments. Using these types of tools, if you understand them, can provide a measuring stick for the organization to use over-and-over, year-after-year. This way they serve as a solid stake in the ground for the current state, a progression meter for the future, and in some cases a basis for comparison against other organizations. A great tool used by many organizations is the Gallup Employee Engagement Assessment. This tool measures employee engagement within the organization off a small set of questions. I will discuss several of these tools in future blogs, but the Gallup tool, I’ll leave to your own research.

Once you’ve done your research, I like to organize my assessment presentation in a very specific manner. I normally (taught by Booz | Allen | Hamilton) use a very detailed and in-depth PowerPoint presentation, but the format can work with a written assessment as well. Here are the major areas of the assessment:

1. Purpose.

2. Key Recommendations.

3. Planning Approach showing the entire planning approach being used and where we are at the point of this report.

4. Assessment Inputs:

a. Number of Interviews.

b. Key Documents researched.

c. Assessment tools used.

4. List of all interviewees by type.

5. List of key documents reviewed.

6. Identification of key Stakeholder, Customers, and Partners. I will talk much more about this in a future blog.

7. Organizational structure at a high level and manpower/human capital assessment.

8. Key metrics used by the organization that highlight strategic progress. Thos in the areas of satisfaction, financial, performance, and personnel.

9. Assessment tool results.

10. A high-level Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis — like an executive summary of the big study.

11. Consolidate and prioritize the trends, issues, and problems (TIPs) facing the organization and develop them into single issues. This is the meat of the assessment and what formulates the Key Recommendations in the front of the assessment.

Once I’ve completed my assessment, I will sit down with the primary Client so that he or she can review it before anyone else in his organization sees it. This way, they get the unfiltered view of what is going on, but can adjust the product so as not to embarrass or throw anyone in the organization “under the bus.”

At this point the assessment is completely truthful and if the client is part of the problem I will say it. I honestly do not pull punches, I just deliver with tact. Never tell someone they are the problem without justification and examples and always be prepared with recommendations on what they could and should do about it.

Also, I don’t highlight anyone’s specific opinions from the interviews. This protects them for telling the truth and protects your reputation. I caveat my analysis based on research and interviews. What I saw, might not be the full truth, since sometimes you only see a slice of what really is happening.

The strategic plan should be a transformational document for the organization. It will clearly outlines the mission and purpose of the organization and where they are going in the next 3-5 years, which is codified in the vision. A good strategic plan should lays out a systematic plan to close the “gap” between where they are now and where they are going. This “gap” is identified by the organizational assessment results. A good and throughout assessment will help define a very strong strategic plan.

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.

Related Information:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphi_method.

2. http://www.gallup.com/.

3. 12: The Elements of Great Managing, by Rodd Wagner and James K. Harter

When Does Your Company Need a Strategic Plan?

Strategic Planning Think Big January 19, 2014 3 Comments

Realizing When You Need a Ship and When You Need a Life Raft

You know you have a problem in your company. You see your profits dropping, your customers are leaving you, your market share is eroding, employee turnover is at an all-time high. All signs point to a company on the rocks–and I mean “on the rocks!”

Shaking your head as you read over your latest figures, you wonder what’s going wrong? In that business class you took a few years back–the one that you thought would help you run things better–they talked about the need for a strategic plan. “Every organization should start with a plan–a business or strategic plan,” you remember the professor saying.

Looking back at your numbers, you realize that’s something you really never got around to. When you came back from the class, you remember drafting up some words that describe what you do and calling it your mission statement. You even created a lofty vision statement just like the man said to do. You had them posted in a frame in the front office for all your customers to see.

That seemed like the thing to do. You really weren’t sure, because you didn’t put much stock into planning at the time. Maybe you were wrong? Maybe you should have paid more attention during that lecture? Perhaps it’s time to create a strategic plan after all?

Nope!

The first rule of strategic planning is that it’s never a quick fix for your company. Planning–good planning–takes time. The result is a plan, not action. In reality, it can take one or two years for an organization to actually mature their strategic plan into something that actually makes a difference. And that’s if you get the plan right in the first place. An implemented strategic plan doesn’t actually fix your organization, what it does is position you strategically to take advantages of opportunities in business and provides capability to improve operations.

Thinking that a strategic plan will solve your problems when you are “on the rocks,” is like throwing a lifebuoy to someone who fell overboard in a hurricane. There isn’t much chance of survival.

If your organization is bleeding that much, you need immediate professional assistance–you need a tourniquet, not a band-aid. Call in the professionals and have them conduct a throughout assessment of your operation. Chances are you might even be part of the problem–learn to accept that and move on. Most likely, not only do you have back office business problems like a lack of communication, lack of training programs, lack of performance and process management, and a lack of strategy, but you probably have significant operational issues too. What you are delivering to your customers lacks quality, doesn’t meet their needs, or is constantly being delivered late.

For organizations that have a pretty solid operation–they’re delivering good work, but seeing stresses on their organization and operation, generally there are business constraints that are holding them back from delivering better service. Ignored for too long, these stresses turn into stress fractures and everything starts to fall apart. When the operation is solid, but there is room for improvement, then strategic planning is the first step. It should have been the first step anyway, but if you have issues in your organization, I’m going to guess that what plan you currently have (if you have one at all) is pretty weak.

When the operation–the core thing you do–is failing, then immediate triage is required. Fix the operational issues first and then look to the strategic plan. I’m not telling you that you don’t, or won’t need a solid effective strategic plan that overcomes the five reasons that strategic plans fail, but it’s not going to save you. Right now you need CPR!

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.

2. http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/happiness-know-when-to-plan-and-when-not-to.html

Consultant is a dirty word

Business Consulting Leadership Meandering Genius Strategic Planning January 17, 2014

When someone uses the word “consultant,” what comes to mind?

The age old joke is that a consultant is someone that will take your watch and tell you what time it is.

Consulting as a rule has a bad rap because of a lot of bad consultants. It’s really quite easy to do a lot of interviews and research only to tell an organization what they really already know. Sometime this is valuable to the organization if you are honest in your assessment. That’s where really bad consulting takes shape–the consultant tells the client what they want to hear. This is a sure fire way to destroy your credibility.

In my 15 – 20 years as a consultant, it is pretty clear that you need to find out what’s happening in the organization and document the as-is. The most important aspect of this is to be honest, followed closely by really being able to understand an organization’s issues and operation fully. Delivering an as-is that is honest and complete can sometimes be difficult, but when done tactfully, I have yet to be thrown out f someone’s office.

The real skill is to know what are the top issues facing a company before you even start doing your assessment. If you’re calling me in, your number one problem is a lack of communication. You probably have leadership and management issues, there is a lack of formalized performance and process management, your organization lacks any formal employee development approach and probably is doing little to deliberately develop employees. You might have a strategy, but you came up with it in a conference room. Most of all, you know you have a problem but you have no clue why it’s happening.

So, before I start and assessment, I already know what to look for. Plus, I know what needs to be fixed and how to generally do that–plans vary based on the organization.

That leads to one of the most important things that a consultant can do–become one with your client’s mission and vision. If they don’t have it written down, ferret it out of them. Being part of the team focused on the purpose f the team and focused on where they are going builds a level of trust that you “get them.”

The other thing is that you have to have the ability to provide quick improvements, sometimes even during the interviews–solve the immediate needs and get quick wins. This means a consultant has to be an “executor.” Be willing to roll up your sleeves and turn a wrench or two when you see a bolt that needs tightening–no extra charge.

Lastly, you have to be able to turn that assessment into a gap analysis between where they are today Nd where they need to be–even if they don’t know where that is today. Out of that analysis you determine the things that MUST CHANGE for them to be successful. Most of all, I find organizations are doing well operationally, but on the business side they have. Lot of roadblocks. That’s because in order to safe on inefficient operations, they lean out the professional staff or neglect them altogether.

Consultants, focus on being a partner to your clients and delivering solutions that last not telling them the time with their own watch. Clients, look for the consultants that can already tell you what is wrong in your organization before they step one foot inside it. Also, have the intestinal fortitude to accept that you might be part of the problem and let the consultant tell you the truth.