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Strategy
& Strategic Planning
We
believe strategy must flow from values, vision and governance and be
soundly based as part of a three part set of organizational
competencies, execution of the fundamentals, competence in assuring and
improving quality, and the development and execution of strategy. These
elements are interdependent. Strategy cannot be successful unless the
organizational fundamentals can support it. Strategy, in turn, may
point to areas of need for improvement in fundamentals, improvement
cannot occur without competence in quality, and quality improvement
science can be used to continue to improve approaches to strategy.
We also believe that
understanding the organization’s customers, as well as the nature of
the larger market, is a vital part of strategy. This deeper
understanding of the customer is termed the voice of the customer (VOC).
Listening to the voice the customer (be they clients, patients, or
citizen-customers, as in a governmental context) leads to “customer
driven strategy.” When organizations look at prioritizing their
strategic competencies and array truly strategic competencies by “drivers”
versus effects, they discover that understanding the customer will rise
to the level of being at or near the top in any ranking.
This construct, set out above,
provides a framework for thinking about strategy. The best technique we
know for planning and effective follow-through is Hoshin Planning,
developed in Japan to assure ever improving strategy and its execution.
It came out of lessons learned from the quality movement.
Hoshin Planning is based on
first identifying the key needed organization-wide strategies (through
the usual methods such as environmental scans, SWOT analyses, etc. )
required to achieve the desired vision (prepare for the future,
strengthen weaknesses, etc.). Next is identifying the key drivers to be
achieved from that list of strategies and then cascading the strategic
“theme,” or Hoshin, down through the organization with each level
crafting a complementary set of substrategies that will advance the
corporate-wide strategy. Upper and lower levels share information and
plans through a “catch ball” approach. Measurement systems are
designed and implemented to complement and reinforce the focus on the
Hoshin and assure accountability and execution.
The beauty and power of this
approach is its flexibility and applicability to all types of
organizations, for-profit, non-profit and governmental.
An added ability the BroadBaker
Group can bring to the client’s approach to strategic thinking is the
use of systems dynamics and dynamic modeling to test assumptions and
mental models. (See our insert on systems dynamics.)
Complexity in our
systems, economics, and human relations threatens the capacity for
strategic planning. Yet within the complexity of the situation is
tremendous power that reveal opportunities for synergy buried in the
immensity of details. However, many models for simplifying
complexity, such as critical success factors thinking, mitigate or
eliminate opportunities by simplifying complexity in ways that hide or
even eliminate the richness of the reality. Systems thinking offers a
framework and a set of tools that enable simplification but retains the
essential richness - a richness that is loaded with potential for
sustained high performance.
Interested?
Contact
us.
The BroadBaker
Group can assist and facilitate in strategic thinking, including Hoshin
Planning, long view and contingency-based techniques, dynamic modeling,
and VOC-based approaches.
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