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The Advisor’s Corner – Guaranteed Future?

Question:

Can a good strategy define a company’s future?

StrategyDriven Response:

Strategic certainty does not exist. Organizations should, however, leverage a good strategy to establish the vision toward which executives and managers focus employee efforts. Vision combined with excellent execution that reinforces desired behaviors generates a high degree of organizational alignment and accountability that in turn propels the organization toward a more focused and committed, if somewhat uncertain, destiny.

The StrategyDriven website was created to provide members of our community with insights to the processes and actions that can be taken to create the shared vision, focus, and commitment needed to improve organizational alignment and accountability for the achievement of superior results.

StrategyDriven Contributors look forward to answering your strategic planning and tactical business execution questions. Please email your questions to [email protected].

Resource Projection Best Practice 1 – Standardized Assumptions

StrategyDriven Resource Projection Article | Resource Projection Best Practice 1 - Standardized AssumptionsUnderstanding the resource cost of activities is key to creating confidence that assigned work can be completed successfully and on time. Regardless of whether activities are frequently recurring and therefore well understood or one time efforts to produce a unique product or service, the use of standardized resource assumptions greatly helps the organization anticipate the quantity and type of resources needed to perform its approved work.


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Additional Resources

StrategyDriven Contributors recommend the following resource that elaborates and compliments the Standardized Assumptions best practice:

A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, Third Edition
by the Project Management Institute


About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

Strategic Planning Best Practice 7 – Shared Accountability

StrategyDriven Strategic Planning ArticleOrganizational silos act as barriers; hindering the performance of business units, work groups, and individuals as they strive to achieve the organization’s shared goals. Nowhere in the organization are silos more destructive than if they exist within the executive team. Here, silos prevent the free flow of information and resources needed to successfully execute cross-functional initiatives with the barriers to collaboration cascading downward though the entire organization. To help prevent these silos from forming, all strategic plan goals must be shared equally by all executives.


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Additional Resource

StrategyDriven Contributors recommend the following resource that elaborates and compliments the Shared Accountability best practice:

Silos, Politics and Turf Wars: A Leadership Fable About Destroying the Barriers That Turn Colleagues Into Competitors
by Patrick M. Lencioni


About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

StrategyDriven Resource Projection Forum

Business planning is the art and science of identifying what a company should and should not do balanced by its available resources. While much of business planning focuses on setting strategic direction and defining tactical activities, achieving balance requires that significant attention be given to the critical area of resource projection.

Annualized resource projection involves a number of processes that together paint a picture of the organization’s resource availability and needs. Creation of this picture begins with development of two key elements: resource availability and standardized activity assumptions. These assumptions are then applied to the proposed activities identified during the alternative development process. The resulting all encompassing list of resource loaded activities is further honed through an iterative process involving resource projection and alternative selection into the final portfolio of activities to be pursued. Derived from this portfolio is the organization’s time bound resource availability and needs.

Capacity planning refines the annualized resource projections; giving the organization insight to the additional resources needed in order to account for the inefficiencies associated with resource scheduling; personnel hiring delays and qualification; and equipment maintenance, calibration, and retooling. Each of these inefficiencies prevent resources from being available one hundred percent of the time; thereby forcing the organization to either increase its asset base or decrease its level of activity. Capacity planning reveals the average level of inefficiency providing insight to the resource and activity planning adjustments to be made.

Focus of the Resource Projection Forum

Materials in this forum are dedicated to discussing the leading practices of companies successfully executing a resource projection program in support of strategic planning. The following articles, podcasts, documents, and resources cover those topics critical to a strong resource projection program.

Articles

Best Practices

Warning Flags

Documents

Whitepapers

Strategic Planning Best Practice 6 – Focus on Strength

Time and again, organizations – like people – focus on overcoming weaknesses to improve performance. But like people, far more can often be gained by advancing the company’s strengths. Strength in this sense is not simply a corporate competency; rather, it is something the organization can consistently perform at world class levels.

Organizations focusing on their strengths realize several strategic advantages over their competitors. A focus on activities of strength implies reduced managerial attention and resource application to weaknesses; freeing these to further advance the company’s strengths. Workers feel a greater sense of accomplishment with the company’s increased success; improving employee engagement which often leads to an improved public image, both of which build on the strengths.

Focusing on strengths does not imply a lack of awareness or activities to eliminate weaknesses. In fact, it is important that weaknesses be reduced to a level that appropriately manages the risk of exploitation by competitors and minimizes their interference and distraction to the achievement of strength activities.

Additional Resources

StrategyDriven contributors recommend several resources that elaborate or compliment the Focus on Strength best practice including:

Organizational Strength

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t
by Jim Collins

Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great
by Jim Collins

Jack: Straight from the Gut
by Jack Welch

Individual Strength

The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done
by Peter F. Drucker

Now, Discover Your Strengths
by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton