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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. 

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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