All Posts Tagged With: "strategic challenges"
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 | ContinuedImplications of a $300 House
How would the world change if you could build a house for $300? Who would benefit? What would it require? Could it affect your organization?
There is a movement afoot to “bring together people, institutions, and businesses in a ‘creation space’ to turn this idea into a reality and test it out in the field.” Before you dismiss it, check out the Web site devoted to the concept by clicking here.
A lot has been written lately about serving customers at the bottom of the pyramid. Grameen Bank has been doing this since 1976 when Muhammad Yunus pioneered the idea of microfinancing with the goal of helping to eradicate poverty. Today, the bank has more than 7.5 million customers.
That’s the promise of the bottom of the pyramid: millions to billions of potential customers. When you factor in the opportunity to do well by doing good, this market is appealing to many companies.
Whether or not it appeals to you, you will want to consider the impact it may have on your organization. To figure out a way to make low-cost, low-tech, green houses that homeowners can build themselves out of local materials, innovation must take place. Breakthrough processes must emerge. New ways of thinking must take root. How will they reshape the construction industry? What will they mean to the companies that supply that industry? How will they challenge governments and education?
A lot of companies are busy devising ways to serve the bottom of the pyramid through banking, cell phones, computers, energy, clean…
4Oct2010 | Steve George | 1 comment | ContinuedChallenge Your Assumptions
In yesterday’s article about AtlantiCare, I listed its strategic challenges and talked about how similar they are among healthcare organizations. While there may be differences in the challenges other organizations face, one that keeps appearing on most lists is the effect of the economy.
According to economists, the recession has ended. Business is looking up for many companies even if they are slow to rebuild their workforces. So what does mean for your future?
One of the critical elements of effective strategic planning is the quality of the information that feeds the process. You can develop the most elegant and comprehensive plan on the planet and deploy it to everybody in your organization but it will fail if the plan is based on faulty or incomplete information. The Baldrige Criteria ask how you collect and analyze information about your opportunities and threats, major shifts in relevant areas, and your long-term sustainability. The point in the process when you collect and analyze this information and discuss it as a planning team is the best time to challenge your assumptions.
One such assumption is that the end of the recession means that the economy will get back on track and business will return to whatever was normal before the bottom fell out. That’s an important assumption to challenge because it’s probably wrong. Sure, there may be some pent-up demand for consumer goods from people who were cautious about their spending during the recession, but that’s a short-term blip. The data show that for all but…
21Sep2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedAtlantiCare’s Baldrige Journey
It’s always interesting to read about the journeys taken by Baldrige Award winners. This month’s Quality Progress describes AtlantiCare’s nearly decade-long integration of the Baldrige model, which resulted in receiving the Award in 2009.
Like a lot of organizations, it used the state award process first, receiving a bronze award from Quality New Jersey in 2001. It first applied for the Baldrige Award in 2006 but did not get a site visit. That came in 2007, and again in 2008, before the site visit in 2009 led to the Award. In the article, AtlantiCare’s president and CEO, David Tilton, said, “You don’t know how much work you have to do, but we knew we were not Baldrige worthy when we had our first site visit. We knew we could be better.” (“Jersey Score,” Brett Krzykowski, Quality Progress, September 2010).
Organizations that are new to the Baldrige Criteria often struggle with identifying their strategic challenges. It’s been my experience that most healthcare organizations have very similar challenges. With that in mind, here are AtlantiCare’s:
- Engaging physicians in new models of collaboration and partnership.
- Creating sustainable growth outside of the primary service area.
- Identifying and prioritizing healthcare service opportunities for investment and recruitment.
- Developing new business and care models to support and grow primary care.
- Identifying and improving critical success factors for community health and wellness.
- Increasing quality of care through clinical communication and transparency.
- Using technology to improve patient safety and clinical quality.
- Recruiting, training, and retaining a highly skilled workforce.
- Succeeding in an environment of decreasing reimbursement and access to capital, and…
Sustainability Forces Wheel
In strategic planning, the quality of the plan depends on the quality of the information collected and analyzed to guide the plan. The Baldrige Criteria ask how you collect and analyze information about your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats; early indications of major shifts in technology, markets, products, customer preferences, competition, or the regulatory environment; long-term organizational sustainability; and your ability to execute your strategic plan.
The goal is to build a sustainable organization that can survive change in whatever form it takes. Andrew Winston has created a tool to help navigate the forces that may affect your organization’s survival. He calls it the Sustainability Forces Wheel.
In “A New Tool for Understanding Sustainability Drivers” (HBR, July 13, 2010), Winston describes the three rings that make up his wheel and his idea to “spin” the wheel to line up different forces on each ring, which could then spur discussion among leaders about what that combination might mean for their organization. For example, he looks at the issues that currently line up at 9:00: “Consumers increasingly want to know what’s in products and where they come from; technology is enabling more data on a product’s origins; and there’s no denying the rising concerns about chemicals and toxics in our bodies and our children’s bodies. If your company operates in the consumer products world, how are you handling this trifecta of concerns?”
From a Baldrige standpoint, your strategic planning process should include a systematic approach to identifying the factors that are likely to impact your short-term…
13Jul2010 | Steve George | 1 comment | ContinuedRevolutionary Thinking
The ability to disrupt your industry is something you want to possess but fear someone else may already have. The Baldrige Criteria address disruptive change indirectly in several places by asking about any changes taking place that affect your competitive situation, what your key strategic challenges and advantages are, how you identify potential blind spots, and how your planning process detects early indications of major shifts in technology, markets, products, etc.
Having systematic processes in place to answer these questions may help you spot a disruptive change in time to counteract it but none of the questions really explores your processes for developing your own disruptive change. A recent post by Umair Haque on HBR provides an interesting perspective on this subject, using Apple as an example, by explaining “How to Challenge Your Industry Dogma”:
- Challenge products. Offer an alternative that gets people to rethink what such a product can be used for, as Apple has done with the iPad.
- Challenge strategy: Find an area that your competitors are ignoring and become the best at it, as Apple has done with the design of electronic gadgets.
- Challenge distribution. Look for innovative new ways to distribute your products or services, as Apple did with iTunes.
- Challenge business models. Companies protected how their products are used until Apple introduced a new business model: The App Store gives software developers a huge market for their new products, making Apple’s products more valuable as a result.
- Challenge sales and service. At the Apple Store, “the act of exchange became personal,…
Planning for 2035
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), which is the statistical agency of the U.S. Department of Energy, reported today that world energy consumption is expected to increase by nearly 50% by 2035. Asia in general and China and India in particular will account for most of the increase. Together, they accounted for 20% of total world energy consumption in 2007. Their combined energy use more than doubles by 2035 while world energy consumption by the U.S. would decline from 21% in 2007 to 16% in 2035, although actual consumption would increase.
Where is that energy going to come from? Who will control the sources? How much will it cost? How will it affect your organization? How will it affect consumer needs, governments, healthcare, and education? Since the increase will be steady for the next 25 years, the impact will be felt along the way and not just in 2035. Your strategic planning process should consider that impact.
Of course, any increase in energy usage means an increase in carbon dioxide emissions, which is a key cause of global warming. The EIA predicts such emissions will jump by 43%.
How will global warming affect your organization? How will it affect your customers, employees, and suppliers? Your strategic planning process should consider this, too.
The EIA’s report is based on the assumption that current policies are unchanged. That seems to be a safe bet, at least until we’re faced with an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenario. Based on its recent history, the U.S. government will drag its heels until…
26May2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued
