All Posts Tagged With: "strategic advantages"
The First Critical Phase of Strategic Planning
Strategic planning is one of seven Baldrige categories. Organizations that conduct Baldrige assessments tend to do reasonably well at plan development, which is usually an annual process that involves a specified group of people in producing a strategic plan document. They tend to do less well at deploying that plan throughout the organization, the “plan gathering dust on the shelf” syndrome. But where they really struggle is with the first part of the process, which is gathering, analyzing, and reporting the information and data upon which the strategic plan is built.
A strategic plan is only as good as the information upon which it is based. The Baldrige Criteria specify some of the key factors that need to be considered as you develop your plan:
- Potential blind spots
- Your core competencies, strategic challenges, and strategic advantages
- Your organizations strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats
- (SWOT analysis)
- Early indications of major shifts in technology, products, customer
- preferences, competition, or the regulatory environment
- Long-term organizational sustainability, including core competencies you need
- Your ability to execute the strategic plan
Considering these factors is not a cursory exercise. Baldrige Award winners have processes in place to identify who will gather information about each and how it will be presented and discussed.
One area that can be hard to nail down is the potential impact of disruptive change. Technology companies are particularly sensitive to this because technology is changing at such a rapid rate. When Ray Ozzie joined Microsoft five years ago as its chief software architect, he laid out his vision for the future and how…
15Nov2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedWhere to Play and How to Win
What makes a good strategy? According to Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and author of The Design of Business, it is two fundamental, reinforcing choices: where and on what basis you will compete.
In “Why Most CEOs Are Bad at Strategy” (Harvard Business Review, January 6, 2010), Martin argues that most executives and strategy consultants are good at strategic analysis but not at strategy, which requires creative insight. “Strategy is a creative act,” he writes, “and the way to produce good strategy is to go beyond basic analysis to creatively integrate your choices concerning where you play and how you propose to win.”
The Baldrige Criteria ask a number of questions to guide your strategic choices including:
- How do you identify potential blind spots in your planning?
- How do you address long-term sustainability?
- How do you determine your strategic challenges and advantages and your core competencies?
- How do your strategic objectives address them?
- How do your strategic objectives address your opportunities for innovation?
The focus of the Criteria leans more toward analysis than creative insight. That’s not to say that Baldrige Award recipients haven’t excelled at figuring out where to play and how to win, but integrating these choices creatively to plan the most promising course of action is not something the Criteria specifically request. The Customer Focus category comes close with questions about how you identify current and future customer groups and markets, how you determine which customer groups and markets to pursue, how you identify and anticipate key…
21Jan2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedToyota’s Strategic Challenge
The automotive industry is a great example of what happens when a few competitors gain a strategic advantage by setting a high standard in a critical area. Toyota and Honda have been the quality leaders for more than two decades, attracting car buyers who had been Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler customers but who wanted better reliability in their vehicles. Toyota rode its quality wave to worldwide leadership in car sales, only to slip at the same time competitors’ quality matched and even surpassed it.
The Economist recently described the problems Toyota faces and how it is addressing them (“Losing Its Shine,” December 10, 2009). While the company seems to have fixed its quality issues—Toyota had 18 of the 48 leading vehicles in the recent Consumer Reports reliability study—quality is no longer a big differentiator in the automobile industry. Instead, Toyota’s “vehicles will inevitably be judged increasingly on more emotional criteria, such as styling, ride, handling, and cabin design.”
Akio Toyoda, grandson of the company’s founder and its president since June, recognizes the need for innovative design. He recently said, “I want to see Toyota build cars that are fun and exciting to drive.”
That may be a challenge. Toyota’s value proposition has been built upon quality and reliability. Its culture, defined by the Toyota Production System, completely supports that value proposition. Steering in a new direction using a system developed for a different purpose will prove difficult.
That’s the strategic challenge Toyota faces. It has set the standard for quality and reliability in its industry and…
17Dec2009 | Steve George | 1 comment | ContinuedBeing Good at the Right Things
The questions in the Organizational Profile of the Baldrige Criteria ask you to describe your organization’s characteristics and competitive environment. This includes the key requirements of three groups: employees, customers, and your supply chain. It also asks about key strategic challenges and advantages that relate to creating a sustainable organization.
The strategic planning category picks up this thread by asking how you determine your core competencies and strategic challenges and advantages. It also asks how your strategy development process identifies potential blind spots and your ability to execute the plan.
Some organizations use simple priority quadrant diagrams to help identify blind spots and assess capabilities. Here’s an example that matches organizational capabilities to customer requirements.
The diagram may be simple but the data, information, and analysis behind it is not. First, you need a profound knowledge of who your customers are and what they require. You can read articles about this here and here. If you assume you know what these requirements are, the decisions you base on your assumptions can lead you in the wrong direction.
Second, you need a profound knowledge of what your organization’s capabilities are. Again, if you assume you know what they are without doing a reality check, your assumptions can lead you astray.
Once you know what your customers require and how well your organization can meet those requirements, you can complete the priority quadrants. You can also use this process with employee and supply chain requirements. You can use it with any key work process since each process has…
18Nov2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued10 Critical Questions: Strategic Planning
In previous articles we listed 10 critical questions you can ask about your organization’s leadership and its key strengths and opportunities for improvement. As we noted, the best way to evaluate your management system is through a Baldrige assessment using the Baldrige Criteria. You can find out how to do that here.
The Criteria consist of powerful questions, rarely asked, about how an organization functions. If you cannot do a full assessment but want insight into how to improve strategic planning, here are 10 questions to ask and answer about your strategic planning process:
- How do you conduct strategic planning including the key strategic planning process steps and participants in the process?
- How do you identify potential blind spots during this process?
- How do you ensure that strategic planning addresses: (a) your organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT); (b) potential major shifts in technology, markets, products, customer preferences, competition, or the regulatory environment; (c) long-term organizational sustainability; and (d) your ability to execute the strategic plan?
- What are your current strategic objectives, the goals for each, and the timetable for achieving them?
- How do these objectives address your strategic challenges and advantages, opportunities for innovation, core competencies, and the needs of all stakeholders?
- How do you develop and deploy action plans to achieve your strategic objectives?
- How do you ensure that financial, human, and other resources are available to support the accomplishment of your action plans?
- How do you establish and deploy modified action plans as circumstances change?
- What are your key human resource plans to accomplish your strategic…
10 Critical Questions: Your Organization
In any field, being the best means knowing what is important and working to improve in those critical areas. Organizations are no different. Those that have received the Baldrige Award have used the Baldrige Criteria to help determine and address what was important to their success. The Criteria consist of powerful questions about how an organization functions: How do you do what you do? They are questions that have never been asked or that have been overlooked by people too busy to step back and consider how their organization operates. As a result, important decisions, processes, and information are missed. Continuous improvement is difficult to sustain and the mission and vision of the organization remain a distant dream. I encourage you to assess your organization using the Baldrige Criteria. You can find out how to do that here. If you cannot do a full assessment now, there are critical questions from the Criteria that, when answered, will illuminate key strengths and opportunities for improving your management system. Let’s start with 10 critical questions from the Organizational Profile:
- What are the key characteristics of your organizational culture?
- What are your organization’s core competencies?
- How do your core competencies relate to your mission?
- What are the key factors that motivate your employees?
- What are the key requirements and expectations for each customer group you serve?
- How do you communicate and manage relationships with suppliers, partners, and collaborators?
- What principal factors determine your success relative to your competitors?
- What changes are affecting your competitive situation?
- What are the key available sources of…
