Strategic Planning From A Board of Directors

A little under a year ago a friend approached me to join a board she was entering. She was actively pitching to two other women of color also involved in politics/government to participate in our region to join as well. She believed that the organization was not going to be more successful until it changed its outreach strategy on recruiting more diverse pools of women. Her approach was to recruit a group of high-level ladies who had both name recognition and influence. She understood that the women already on the board knew that they did not have a diverse enough board of directors which was not allowing them all the benefits that come with such.

Her strategy to bring diversity to the board in such a way that was irrefutable worked. All the women she had gone after were brought on the board not only for their expertise but the new value they added to the organization. Upon the new board of directors first time convening she knew it was the time for the conversation to be raised about the strategic plan that needed to be put in place to start recruiting a more diverse pool of women in the region. She knew her strategy rested on the opportunity to create a chance to create change that was desired but had yet to be achieved and would set the group apart from others.

We knew in our first year we would not be able to affect the incoming class that had been selected to interview but that we did have a hand in the those who were chosen to be in the class. We delegated on ensuring that the pool of women were both diverse in age, geographical location, background, and even which side of the state had more representation. We advocated that there was value in bringing on women that came from rural areas that may not otherwise have an opportunity to engage with us even if they had no vision of running in the next year because that could change over the course of the class but their willingness to participate could die.

We had much success in many of the women who didn't have the intention to run for a public seat such as city council, commissioner, or even state representatives ended up running for something that kept them involved like state committee.  We decided that we needed to open up our application process a few months early as to engage women earlier and to work more strategically in communities to ensure we are truly able to recruit a more diverse pool of women. We know that we already have a competitive edge because our target audience is clear but we know that our plan must adapt how to go deeper into that audience to better serve our mission and vision as an organization.

Blog #1: Personal Experience Reflection on Building a Company's Vision

I really enjoyed reading the article titled Building your company's vision (by James C Collins and Jerry Porras). I constantly think of the real examples in my life where I personally experienced with my colleagues and friends when we were trying to build something. 

First,  I like how the article  structure the two parts of vision by using the Chinese philosophy concepts:  Yin and Yang. In Chinese philosophy, Yin and Yang describes how seemingly opposite or contrary forces may actually by complementary, interconnected and interdependent. Yin could be part of Yang, and Yang can be a part of Yin.  There two important parts are core ideology and envisioned future. I remembered that we took a project course within MPM program where we researched a local Pittsburgh organization. My classmates and I worked on understanding the vision of the organization at that time. However we didnot have the framework to think of the vision as two parts.  and I think now I can do much better after taking this course  and studied this article on vision and strategy. 

Second,  the examples given by the articles are really practical examples for me to understand how a company should define its own core ideology.  The core ideology in a great company can really endures as a source of guidance and inspirations even leaders may dire, products might become obsolete, and market will change.As the article states that core ideology provides the glue that holds an organization together though time. i like the articles gives us a rule on how companies tend to have only a few core values usually between 3 and 5.  It is practical for us to apply in our real life experiences later when we wanted to strength our own companies or build a new company with our colleagues. I like the examples of core value mentioning respect individuals and innovation. I personally relate to this values very much and I think a company will be more likely to succeed with these values.

Third, I learned to understand how to define the core purpose for a company or an organization in general. The core purpose is a company's reason for being.  This could be one sentence statement instead of a long descriptive paragraph. It is so important to think of these issues through before starting up a company.  I am familiar with several companies's examples they mentioned and I think a great company tends to really define who the company is and they stick to these core purpose to be successful. 

The articles suggested that once a core has been identified, managers should generate their own statements of the core values and purpose to share with their groups.  It is important to remember that "if it is not core, change it."

Thanks for letting us read such an inspiring article. 

Strategy in the Nonprofit Sector

Nonprofit organizations typically operate in a vastly different way than for-profit organizations, but can benefit greatly if they employ strategy-setting techniques used by successful for-profit organizations. One case of this is KaBOOM!, a nonprofit organization which has seen extreme growth and made a large impact in many communities through their service-based approach.

In their article, Building Your Company’s Vision, Collins and Porras emphasize the need for a strong core ideology, the guiding principles and values that a company uses to navigate, and the envisioned future, the ambitious plans and goals that drive the organization. A strong core ideology and envisioned future provide the essential foundation for a nonprofit to carry out their mission. KaBOOM!’s guiding principles and envisioned future have fueled their ability to greatly exceed their original goals, so much so that they are now at a point where a critical assessment of their vision is necessary. As KaBOOM!’s reevaluates which direction they want their organization to go, they will also need to closely examine their entire strategy.

Reeves, Love, and Tillmans explain in their article, Your Strategy Needs a Strategy, that strategy needs to evolve throughout the lifecycle of an organization and discuss the importance of having a strategy FOR your strategy:

“With a clear understanding of the strategic styles available and the conditions under which each is appropriate, more companies can do what we have found that the most successful are already doing- deploying their unique capabilities, and resources to better capture the opportunities available to them.”

Reeves, Love, and Tillman provide a framework that matches the demands of your particular industry environments starting with an assessment of predictability (how far and how accurately you can predict demand, market performance, and expectations) and malleability (to what extent you or your competitors influence those factors). They explain four different strategic approaches that fit different levels of predictability and malleability; classical, adaptive, shaping, and visionary. Evaluating these approaches prior to setting a strategy would benefit any organization, and is framework that KaBOOM! can use to align their strategy with their guiding principles and goals. It seems that these approaches would be easily applied to nonprofit organizations too, despite the unique challenges this sector faces.

I am personally interested in establishing or directing a nonprofit in the future and I found this case study and articles to be valuable resources. Setting a strategy can be a daunting task and identifying a core ideology and envisioned future, along with a strategy for your strategy seem like a simple way to begin.

Building Your Company’s Vision (Collins and Porras, Harvard Business Review, September-October 1996)

KaBOOM! (Austin and Porraz, Harvard Business School, 2002)

Your Strategy Needs a Strategy (Reeves, Love, and Tillmans, Harvard Business Review, September 2012)

Strategic Planning as an Enabler for Cybersecurity Policy

During recent research regarding Cybersecurity Policy in the national context and the efforts being made in developed economies such as the U.S., the U.K. and Canada and others, I had the opportunity to delve into some of the strategies put forth by the U.K., for example, the UK National Cybersecurity Strategy 2016-2021, in contrast to similar efforts in the U.S. via the NIST Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity.

Also, I think that before such comparisons can be made, a proper context is needed as to why these national level policies are required in the first place. According to security experts, it has long been established that since its inception the internet has been inherently insecure.¹¹ The evolution from self-contained operating environments, in the mid-1990s, when organizations--banks, universities, government agencies and others—conducted online business within their own computer networks with relative isolation from the outside world, to highly interconnected networks way beyond geographical boundaries just a decade later in the 2000s. At that time cyberattacks or break-ins were thought of as pranks and gradually these behaviors grew into more serious data breaches with limited financial loss but with the reputation of victimized organizations tarnished. 

Now fast forward to 2016’s cyberattacks in Ukraine¹³, in which according to security experts, in 2015 power plants and utilities in the U.S. and Ukraine were penetrated by Russian hackers who were able to gain access to critical control systems and remotely actuated mechanical and electrical components to effectively shut down switchgear stations and caused power outages in the Ukraine. In the U.S. this incident raised serious concerns about the possibility of such attacks putting the U.S. electric grid at risk.¹³ And, most recently there’s strong evidence of Russia’s continued attempts to infiltrate U.S. critical infrastructures.¹⁴

And, when it comes to nation-state sponsored cyberattacks, North Korea is being considered a growing security threat.¹ According to a recent page 1 story in a major news media, “…the nation’s fingerprints have appeared in an increasing number of cyberattacks, the skill level of its hackers has rapidly improved and their targets have become worrisome…,”⁵ said the Journal. 

Now, regarding the UK National Cybersecurity Strategy 2016-2021, I think like the NIST framework above, at the highest level it aims to ensure the security of the UK, its digital foundations and its economy and the privacy of its citizens. The UK policy states that, “The cyber threat impacts the whole of our society, so we want to make very clear that everyone has a part to play in our national response.”¹¹ This strategy is a continuation of similar efforts undertaken five years earlier, in 2011, which created the foundation for this new plan.

Also, the policy is a five year strategy intended to strengthen their systems, infrastructures and defense mechanism, cyber-physical and cyberspace, across all sectors of its society—private and public—by enforcing positive behaviors to business, organizations and individuals to reduce the risks of cyber threats. 

So, the main objectives driving this policy to achieve its vision include the following; Defend, Deter and Develop. These objectives represent a three-prong approach; first, is to protect the UK networks, data and systems. Second, is to serve as deterrence to prevent cyber threats and provide the necessary means for counterattacks. And, third, is to develop a sustainable, domestic cyber security industry to spur research and development and technical skills to stay ahead of future sophisticated threads through breakthrough technologies. 

In addition, the UK designated a new National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) as the governing body and overseer of its national cybersecurity strategy to safeguard its Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) and it works with other organizations to achieve its objectives, such as the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UK), the Center for Cyber Assessment (CCA) and others.  

So, how are these policies implemented? I believe that in the U.S., via the NIST framework, it’s up to every organization to determine course of actions based on their respective Framework Profiles and organizational goals, whereas in the UK, it’s implemented through recommended actions and action plans under its well defined three main objectives. Also, it extends internationally through partnerships with other allied countries with similar national security interests and multilateral organizations such as the United Nations (UN), the European Union (EU) and NATO and others.

In the final analysis, I think both the NIST framework and the UK strategy provide overarching high-level objectives and underlying processes and procedures to enable organizations with policy-making at the enterprise and national level.

Finally, I think that the NIST Framework in the U.S., and beyond, and the UK Cybersecurity Strategy are just two examples of not only policy-making at a national level But a clear illustration as to how strategic planning enables these nations to develop policy at a national level taking into consideration many factors beyond the underlying technologies, which impact our daily lives.

References:

1.     How North Korea’s Hackers Became Dangerously Good: https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-north-koreas-hackers-became-dangerously-good-1524150416?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=7, accessed April 20, 2018.

2.     CIO Journal - The Morning Download: The Corporate Network Becomes the Cyber Battlefield, https://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2018/04/17/the-morning-download-the-corporate-network-becomes-the-cyber-battlefield/, accessed May 6, 2018.

3.     “Security and Privacy,” IEEE Computer Society, Computing Edge, Pub January 2018, pp. 8-14.

4.     “Information Technology,” IEEE Computer Society, Computing Edge, Pub November 2017, p. 22-27.

5.     Peltier, T. R., (2004). Information Security Policies and Procedures: A Practitioner's Reference. New York, NY: Auerbach Publications.

6.     Cybersecurity Framework – NIST: https://www.nist.gov/cyberframework, accessed April 13, 2018.

7.     Update to Cybersecurity Framework: https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2017/12/update-cybersecurity-framework, accessed April 13, 2018.

8.     Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity: https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/CSWP/NIST.CSWP.04162018.pdf, accessed May 6, 2018.

9.     Report From the Cyberwar Front Lines, https://www.wsj.com/articles/report-from-the-cyberwar-front-lines-1514586268, accessed April 13, 2018.

10.  Cybersecurity in the 2017 National Security Strategy: https://www.lawfareblog.com/cybersecurity-2017-national-security-strategy, accessed May 6, 2018.

11.  National Cyber Security Strategy 2016-2021: https://www.enisa.europa.eu/topics/national-cyber-security-strategies/ncss-map/national_cyber_security_strategy_2016.pdf, accessed May 6, 2018.

12.  Comparative analysis of national cybersecurity strategies, http://www.oecd.org/sti/ieconomy/comparativeanalysisofnationalcybersecuritystrategies.htm, accessed May 6, 2018.

13.  Cyberattacks Raise Alarm for U.S. Power Grid, published on Wall Street Journal, December 31, 2016.

14.  The Morning Download: U.S. Officials Say Russian Cyber Attack Targets Power Plants: https://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2018/03/16/the-morning-download-u-s-officials-say-russian-cyber-attack-targets-power-plants/, accessed May 7, 2018.

 

The Real Value of Stakeholders

The article The Real Value of Strategic Planning by Sarah Kaplan and Eric D. Beinhocker (MIT Sloan Management Review: Winter 2003) covers many highlights and questions that should be explored during strategy planning. A common thread that I picked up was the specificity of the decision-makers and how their input creates the most value for a company. This is worth highlighting further.

The article covered the strategic planning processes of over 30 companies in a variety of industries. The term "Prepared Minds" sets the stage for what should be expected at an impactful strategic planning meeting. While the article discusses the timeframe for discussions (let the CEO have 10-30 days for intensive meetings) and locations (have them at the business-unit site that will be affected), a great emphasis is centered around the participants of the conversation.

The authors conclude that groups of 3-10 people net the most effective conversations for "both logistical and political reasons." Meaningful discussion is diminished when the group is expanded due to hierarchical forces within the organization and general politicking across divisions. The authors' research shows that the CEO and the business-unit head are vital participants in the strategic conversation. Perhaps adding a CFO and the head of HR are important, as well as one or two corporate executives and two to three senior members of the business-unit that is involved in the discussion. This ultimately caps the discussion to no more than 12. This limit on the effectiveness of stakeholders, backed by research, is a new discovery for me. It is process that I notice is going against the grain of "community input" on strategic initiatives in larger company or organization settings.

As an employee at a university setting, I have been offered the opportunity to sit on a few strategic planning committees. These are invaluable chances for me to understand how decision-making and strategic planning works in a fairly complex higher education environment. However, after reading the Kaplan and Beinhocker article, I wonder whether my input is of any value or just another data point for the "real" stakeholders. For example, a recent committee I was on had 30-40 members, exactly the number specified as inhibiting effective conversation. Due to this, where is the line between getting broad community input or a select, chosen group of individuals numbering over 30? Is there value in having group this size participate in the conversation or could they be hindering more efficient conversations among the core stakeholders that will ultimately make the decision?

While the article goes on to review how the strategic planning should be discussed and challenged, the framing of questions and the importance of preparation, follow-up, and changes to processes, the authors seem to center around the people making the decisions. It's in that line of thinking I'm attracted to determining how to best set up the most effective team with the ideal size to make those winning solutions. It is something I'd like to continue exploring during this course to learn better strategies for my current work and for future endeavors.

The Right Strategic Style for Your Environment: The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh

According to the article, Your Strategy Needs a Strategy, the majority of companies are all using very similar strategies regardless of the type of company they are or the business they are in. Often these strategies are the ones being taught in MBA programs and business schools across the country. Instead of using similar strategies, companies should be building strategies for their unique business situations, market and environment, ensuring that they are operating at optimal efficiencies.

The researchers suggest that there are four basic categories of strategies that companies fit into – Classical (taught in business schools), Adaptive, Shaping and Visionary – and finding the right type of strategy is key to building strategic success. These four categories take into account two key factors: predictability or how predictable is your business environment and malleability or how much can your company influence the environment your business operates in. If a company can get a handle on these two factors and figure out which strategic category they should be operating in, they can start to build a strategic plan based on actual factors that are in the environment, which the researchers suggest, leads to higher business success.

I work for the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh which is a local non-profit organization that raises money and allocates it out to various local service orientated Jewish organizations. These organizations provide services for the Pittsburgh Jewish community ranging from education, refugee services, general social services and senior care. Not only are we often the main fundraising arm for the community but we are also the main driver for what the future of the Pittsburgh Jewish Community will look like in terms of services provided, programing and ensuring that all the needs of the community are being met.

Initially, I would have said that the Federation should have a classical strategy but upon further reflection, the Federation operates with a visionary strategy. Our business environment is highly predictable from year to year. We raise slightly more money each year and allocate out similar amounts to the same beneficiary agencies. There are only two aspects of our business that would be “unpredictable” which is raising money for natural disasters and the non-beneficiary agencies/programs applying for grants. Both are “unpredictable” in the sense that we do not know what is going to happen but we have established business practices to deal with it.

Partnered with our extremely high predictability is our high malleability. This is due to very low competition (other non-profits) and how we are in the position to be the driving force for the community’s long-term strategic plan. A great example of this is how we are currently in the process of combining all of the young adult programing in the community under one umbrella program housed at the Federation. Without the Federation spearheading this project, there would be many competing programs offered by competing organizations all with limited resources.

Your Strategy Needs a Strategy (Reeves, Love, and Tillmanns, Harvard Business Review, September 2012)

Haier is good at it, why aren’t we?

In the article, Your Strategy Needs a Strategy, the authors briefly discusses the Chinese home-appliance company, Haier. Haier’s strategy is flexible to the extreme, allowing each “minicompany” within the organization to run itself, providing no support if they do not create profit. The article continues on to discuss Haier going nearly bankrupt but turning it around to lead the international home-appliance industry. After reading, Building Your Company’s Vision, it was clear to me Haier was able to turn itself around because it rallied behind a vision.

Building Your Company’s Vision defines two components of a company’s “core ideology”, core values and core purpose. Haier established its core values and CEO Zhang Ruimin focused his company on a core purpose (available at http://www.haier.net/en/about_haier/culture/) and a dedication to the core ideology can be accredited with saving the company. This is not ground breaking, and is more proof the arguments laid out in Building Your Company’s Vision; but what if there wasn’t a strong, consistent leader at the head of an organization? What if the core ideologies of each “minicompany” shifted just as regularly as the leadership? Can that organization survive?

                A company organized this way and operating with little continuity would be an outright failure. An organization, such as large government departments or the branches of the military can continue on, because they have to. Working within one of these organizations for over five years I can confirm they are indeed hectic. Though an overarching hierarchical structure exists, as you move down the chain each operating department acts as its own “minicompany”, developing strategy to achieve results. Haier has shown this can work well, even in the corporate world, but what Haier has is continuity.

Particularly in the military, every single member of each “minicompany” will be rotated out within two to five years. This causes priorities to shift with each rotation, particularly when leadership changes. When leadership is replaced, a new core ideology is implemented. Eventually, each member is required to know and adhere to three or four different sets of core ideologies. This effectively weakens the vision (or visions) into just another set of workplace cliché’s.

Obviously, government organizations don’t need to make a profit, but profit is not the end goal discussed in Building Your Company’s Vision. The point of establishing vision is to attract and retain the talented people you want in your organization, thus success will follow. Here is where the impact lies, without a strong (and singular!) vision, most members of an organization will quickly de-motivate to a level of maintaining the status quo and those not concerned with job security or a steadfast dedication to a career will move on. All organizations need to adopt this mindset, no matter how large or essential.

(For more on how Haier continues to reinvent itself around its visions and the strategies it has employed, check out: Haier Road to Growth, https://www.strategy-business.com/article/00323?gko=c8c2a)

Cities Strategic Planning Needs an Adaptive Strategy

            There has never been a more interesting time to live in a city. For the first time in human history, there are more people living in urban areas than in rural or suburban spaces. By 2050, 66% of the world’s population is estimated to be living in cities. In 1990 there were ten cities with over ten million residents, in 2014 there were 28 of those mega cities. Rural populations continue to decrease due to several factors including the technological advancements in the agriculture industry. This high degree of change has forced city planners everywhere to adapt to develop innovative and unique solutions to problems we have never experienced.

            In my role at the Department of City Planning at the City of Pittsburgh, I have seen how planning departments across the world are grappling with some of these issues. Smart Cities technologies, something CMU is starting to become known for, is one of the strategies cities are embracing to cope this these problems. While I agree embracing smart cities techniques is critical, there is another unique change in strategy I want to discuss. “Your Strategy Needs a Strategy” by Reeves, Love, and Tillmanns resonated deeply with me because of recent discussions our department has been having.

Planning departments historically have used the classic strategic development style when constructing comprehensive, district, and neighborhood plans. Planning departments often still plan in 15-30 year increments for their comprehensive plan. While these plans are often more visionary and generalized than some more localized plans, they do not adapt well to any changes in the city ecosystem. Let’s take Pittsburgh as an example. In the 1920’s, the City of Pittsburgh could reasonably make a comprehensive plan projecting large population growth because of the strong steel industry based here. And they would have been correct in that projection at the time. But globalization and the emergence of technology has increased the speed at which our world and even the local economy can change. Planners are starting to question if doing a comprehensive plan for 2020-2050 is realistic because the likelihood of us accurately planning for the year 2050 is low.

That is why I believe all planning departments, including my own, should move towards an adaptive strategic development strategy. Perhaps a hybrid between adaptive and classic. We need to plan long term for a high amount of future growth, while also understanding the need to adapt to global and technological changes. Our comprehensive plan of the future should function more as living set of ideals we wish to accomplish based on appropriate future projections. This would need to be a fine tuned balancing act between being flexible enough to adapt to change while still accomplishing the desired goals. Cultural mismatches are mentioned in the article and are vital when considering any sort of change at this magnitude. Cities have largely been planned using the same strategies for the last half a century, changing that to become more adaptive will be a significant cultural change.

Reconnecting with Strategy: The PUMP vs. PSL Story

PUMP, an organization focused on making Pittsburgh a diverse and dynamic place to live for young people, was founded in over 20 years ago to help “stop the bleeding” of young people leaving the Pittsburgh region. One of the first of its kind, the organization quickly became known for its ability to convene young people not only for social events, but to advocate for important amenities that Pittsburghers still appreciate today (e.g. Market Square downtown and the smoking ban).

Five years into its existence, PUMP started the Pittsburgh Sport League (PSL), an adult intramural sports league boasting over 20 different sports. While PSL brought rapid revenue to the organization, the amount of staff time and effort required to manage the league meant a shift from PUMP’s social and advocacy roots to almost full-time administration of sports.

In 2012, when the longtime Executive Director was transitioning out, internal operations were in disarray, and the board was in conflict. In comes a new CEO with a public policy background from his legislative work in Montana to determine the future of PUMP. As Porter stated in What Is Strategy?, “The challenge of developing or reestablishing a clear strategy is primarily often an organizational one and depends on leadership.” The new CEO was intentional in assessing the internal and external operations of PUMP to determine next steps. The board and staff undertook a strategic planning process (i.e. the “clear intellectual framework to guide strategy” that Porter references) in which serious questions were considered: Does PUMP return to its public policy and advocacy roots? Does PUMP strictly focus on PSL? Does PUMP sell PSL? Do PUMP and PSL dissolve completely?

After months of serious deliberation, conversations with key stakeholders, and number-crunching, PUMP decided to return to its public policy and advocacy roots, with a new mantra to “Engage, Educate, and Mobilize.” PSL was rebranded as an engagement strategy to bring young people together to play sports while educating and mobilizing them on issues affecting this region. New staff was hired to focus on the policy work, and certain programs were discontinued in favor of new initiatives. The “trade-offs” were difficult for some stakeholders to digest at first, but it allowed PUMP to reemerge as a stronger, more well-rounded, and inclusive organization in which many young Pittsburghers could find a home.

Despite the current success, challenges remain. PUMP’s strategic plan, brand refresh, and policy agenda is heavily focused on equity. While increased membership dues, foundation support, and new corporate sponsorship have helped the organization to diversity its income, most of funding still comes from PSL, which serves predominately White adults (whereas the other programming attracts a more diverse audience). It is imperative that the current board and staff develop strategies to ensure that the vision for PUMP to appeal to all young Pittsburghers manifests through all its programming, even that of which is its main revenue stream. That trade-off is the one that will truly make PUMP the premier organization for young people in the Pittsburgh region.

The Dos and Dont's of Strategic Planning

The MIT Sloan Management Review article titled, "The Real Value of Strategic Planning," by Sara Kaplan and Eric D. Beinhocker provided an overview of the dos and don'ts of strategic planning. While I haven't facilitated formal strategic planning meetings, I've attended them and witnessed the outcomes at Carnegie Mellon University's Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation.

The authors cite management scholar Henry Mintzberg's thought on strategic planning being an oxymoron in the sense that strategy is conducted in hallway conversations, working groups and in quiet moments on plane flights, for example. Yet, it's rarely done in formal planning meetings.  Reflecting on my personal experience, I realize that many of my strategic thoughts on our marketing and communications efforts are realized when I am taking a shower or driving alone in the car.

However, the Scott Institute hosts quarterly meetings with our external- and internal-advisory council members, as well as our Energy Faculty Fellows. We generally facilitate our meetings as Kaplan and Beinhocker advise, "Real conversations take place in groups of three to 10 people; they simply do not happen in large groups for both logistical and political reasons" (72). However, the authors recommend not combining strategy reviews with talks of a budgets and financial targets. Per my recent discussion board post, a recent meeting with our energy fellows resulted in a discussion of the Institute's budget, which resulted in faculty members being fixated on short-term budgeting, such as grant awards, rather than a discussion on long-term strategy. This is our last year of a five-year Richard King Mellon Foundation award so focusing on the long-term budget strategy is important for the organization.

After reading this article, I realize my director has made other mistakes in leading our strategic planning meetings. For instance, the authors recommend sending out the agenda and information to be presented during the meeting to attendees at least one week before. My director is notorious for not communicating well and usually sends agendas and other items for meetings the day before, resulting in attendees not having enough time to review the materials and gather their feedback. I think this issue stems from him being overwhelmed with tasks and wanting to "own" the process of facilitating the meeting without the help of the administrative coordinator producing the materials for it.

When I graduate, my goal is to become a Director of Communications (and eventually becoming a Vice President of Communications) at a higher education institution, a government-run energy organization or nonprofit. Kaplan and Beinhocker provide a framework I can use when I'm leading strategic planning meetings when I am in these roles. I'll plan to ask these questions they provide (among others):

• What are our aspirations?
• What are the critical trends regarding our customers, competitors, technology and regulation?
• How is our business model performing, and how will it likely evolve?

Kaplan and Beinhocker's article provides many more insightful ways for running strategic planning meetings efficiently.

Taking Action on Strategic Planning

“The goal of a strategic planning process should not be to make strategy but to build prepared minds that are capable of making sound strategic decisions.[1]”

“The Real Value of Strategic Planning” has a takeaway I can really understand and suspect that many working professionals have witnessed. Many companies make big productions of strategic planning at regular intervals, involve a large number of people, come up with a strategy, then still have no idea how to actually take actions in support of the strategy.

Kaplan and Beinhocker go on to explain the main steps to positively change the process.

1.     Diagnose the current process

2.     Design a new process

3.     Roll out the new process

4.     Build skills in parallel to the rollout

This is an extremely concise recommendation to help improve organizational strategy. In fact, many people probably begin to think through and diagnose the current process at their organization immediately after reading the first step. At one of my previous organizations, the strategy was fairly clear but processes to implement it were much fuzzier. Long-term strategy planning to maintain our “unique and valuable position[2]” by looking at the future of our industry did not seem prominent. Strategy guidelines or skill-building for management was minimal.

The company’s strategy was to target a portion of the market that demands experts and it was important to attract top personnel as employees. Although the strategy worked well, the more competitive job market is making it tougher to hire experts in our field. We could have foreseen this issue and adjusted in a number of ways if strategy was rolled out and updated correctly. Human resources, leadership, and managers can all heavily influence hiring success while the organization itself should be emphasizing the benefits of working there.

One great example of a practice that could help with the strategy of providing top-end experts would be to study what experienced staff want in an employer and make corresponding adjustments. Even if the company can’t compete directly with salary, benefits can make up for some salary disparity, as can quality of life policies like allowing working from home regularly. Even if these policies are in place, succeeding at the organization’s strategy means that benefits and quality of life should be emphasized in interviewing and hiring to attract more experienced candidates.

Taking actions to make the company more attractive to senior candidates with a lot of expertise is just one way to help translate the strategy to practice and maintaining unique value. To maintain market share in top tier consultants, the company would also need to perform other activities, like identifying work that is a good fit and even turning down potential customers if they or the work are not a good match for the organization’s strategy. It is clearly important to translate strategy into sound decisions.

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[1] Kaplan, S., and Beinhocker, E.D. The real value of strategic planning. (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2003).

[2] Porter, M.E. What is strategy? (Harvard Business Review, 1996).