Blog #1: The Strategic Planning Process and Evaluating Current Performance

The article "Building Your Company's Vision" really resonated with me. The organization I work for is a fast-growing healthcare company that focuses on coordinating benefits information for our clients. In an effort to continue growing, we've historically taken on some BHAGs. However, they've been small in scope and taken more along the lines of 2 to 3 years to complete. Unfortunately, these BHAGs didn't always have the best strategy so it was sometimes difficult to tie our core purpose and values to those initiatives.

For example, each department would have its own roadmap of goals and objectives they wanted to accomplish over the next year. There was never any discussion around how the department level goals aligned with the executive's vision for the future. And the teams implementing the work had even less insight into the overall business goals. This led to projects missing deadlines, being shelved, or missing the mark on what was requested all together.

We've since matured as an organization and brought in some folks that have experience in building foundational processes and ideologies for efficient operation. The company is now aligning the initiatives and goals of individual units with those of the board and executives. Communication is also improving as team members implementing the projects have insight into why their building applications. This is not only improving the rate of throughput for our SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle), but it's also improving team morale because people can share in the company's vision and feel empowered to offer opinions. And they know their voice will be heard.

Another thought was how a company's core values and purpose might change over time. Since I've been with my current company, our ID badges have the company's core values printed on the back of them. Most of them are still applicable, but at the time they were written the company was much smaller and doing lots of creative things to try and win business. It prompted an "everyone pitches in and helps" mentality that can be destructive for well-defined processes. For example, some of our IT staff has been employed with my company for a very long time. They've learned invaluable information about the systems and how to resolve issues quickly. This person can become an SME (Subject Matter Expert) and attract random requests from outside their designated work stream. These requests can interfere with their ability to get currently assigned work complete and impact deadlines.

I'm glad to see my organization is committed to continually improving and learning from our mistakes. And I'm looking forward to being able to contribute to that success with learnings throughout the rest of the course.

Blog#1 Some ideas of strategic decisions for start-ups

In the first lecture, when prof. Tim answered the question of why Sony failed but Apple succeeded in the field of digital music, something hit me: too much resource is not a good thing to early-stage companies. The truth is that strategy is to achieve success under unfair competition. Especially for a start-up company, it's important that take the right action to avoid the first wave of hits from opponents which can kill you.
I have spent a few years in developing and manufacturing IoT products. When the product is implemented at the technical level, the team, consisting of four people with backgrounds from EE and CS, immediately decided to put it into the market without any consideration of strategies at all, such as production version and pricing strategy etc. Unfortunately, this “ambitious” business failed soon. After that, I went to a big successful company and worked at the production design department where I learned how to start a business. Teams from different backgrounds meet every half month. Everyone can elaborate their own ideas whether from management or technical even accounting perspective etc. Each idea will be considered into account when it comes to a strategic decision.
“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”, from Sun Tzu Art of war.
This reminds me of a Chinese telecommunication company, Huawei which is the storm center of the US-China trade war. Huawei was founded in 1987, while the best information and communication technology (ICT) companies were AT&T founded in1876 from the United States, Ericsson founded in 1876 from Sweden, and Siemens founded in1847 from Germany. In other words, Huawei entered the ICT industry one hundred years later than AT&T, Ericsson and so on. There is no doubt that Huawei’s correct strategic decision has allowed it to grow rapidly, meanwhile avoiding the hits from the giant companies that have existed for a hundred years, and until the arrival of the 5G era, those giant companies truly realize the threat from Huawei. Think back about how the best strategy is defined, said the best strategies are the ones where you never engage in a fight at all. When Huawei entered its overseas market, it basically expanded in the rural and African countries. These areas were originally not favored by other ICT companies. They are unwilling to pay too much attention to these areas located in the corners or areas where the economy is relatively backward. As for the cake of the communications industry, they feel that they have conquered the major shares. When Huawei entered the market, everyone did not notice and did not foresee a war with it.
From this perspective, no matter how you think about Huawei, you have to admit that the management of this company does have its understanding of strategy formulation. I am not sure about what will happen next, but that why we need to continually learn.

Blog #1. The Strategic Planning Process and Evaluating Current Performance

I am currently working for the U.S. Department of Defense in Europe. 
A year ago, the organization I am working for stood up an information technology  (IT) division comprised of knowledge management (KM), IT project management (IT PM), enterprise architecture (EA), future capabilities and operations. The core function of my organization is to support IT systems that provide intelligence analysis to the warfighter. Previously, IT functions were outsourced to other agencies, and there were no IT specialists in charge to lead the IT division. Currently, there are two intelligence planners that are in charge since the establishment of the new division.

As a result, a year later, we are not functioning as a well established IT division. I was always wondering why our IT division is still reactive to IT requests and continuously in a rush to complete tasks at the last minute (instead of being proactive). Two intelligence planners are leading the division, and they live and breath in developing strategies and plans. In the division, no one knows what their priorities are and which goals and objectives align with their tasks. Initially, I thought the lack of a clear mission statement and strategies was the issue, but I was wrong. When we first stood up the division, we hire a consulting firm to define our mission statement and strategy. We had a mission statement and strategy, but it was not working. Later on, I was reading the article, "Your strategy needs a strategy." I had an "A-ha" moment. I now know what went wrong and what it requires to fix our issues within the division.

The strategy set up by the consulting company works for an environment that is unpredictable where the organization has no control over it. The consulting company modeled our strategy after an IT division who was supporting a war in the Middle East because the company was hired to assist the IT division. According to the article, my division has an adaptive strategy, which applies to KM, IT PM, EA, future capabilities, and operations. At least once a month, we have an all-hands meeting to re-define the strategy and priorities. That is why employees feel like leadership is changing their directions and priorities all of the time. The adaptive strategic style does not work for our IT division. Our division needs more than one strategy; visionary and shaping strategies. Our IT division is not supporting an organization that is currently fighting a war. We operate in Europe, and the environment is very stable and predictable. With enough resources and influence, we can shape or change the environment. Except for KM, we do not need a monthly planning or strategy meeting. Our plans of actions and milestones (POA&M) extend up to 25 years. Therefore, it requires a long-term visionary strategy. On the contrary, KM supports a near real-time visualization of situational awareness. Situational awareness changes each minute, which is suited for shaping strategy. On page 6, the article positions aerospace and defense under visionary, and it should position itself between shaping and visionary close to where the software and multiline retailer are.

Currently, our IT division suffers from a high employee turn over rate. The main reasons for leaving are a lack of vision, guidance, and micro-management. It requires more than a strategic style changing from adaptive to visionary and shaping to retain employees. However, operating in many modes and providing strategic flexibility where it is applicable will help the organization to be stable and sustainable.

Blog 1 - Strategic Planning Process and Evaluating Current Performance

Throughout the week as I was reviewing the articles related to Strategic Planning Process and Evaluating Current Performance I could not help but notice the glaring similarity between how strategy is used by nearly everyone at all levels, both personally and professionally. We need and use strategy in our lives both on a small scale and large scale.

I can say that I never realized just how much of what I do is derived from some form of personal strategy development. My personal core ideology is to work hard, enjoy the simple things in life, and give my kids the best life possible. How I accomplish this may change day to day, but in the end I am always making choices that meet this core ideology. On a small scale, I use strategy daily to make sure my husband and I get to work on time, I get my kids where they need to go, arrange any activities or events for us, plan and coordinate meals, complete my homework, and everything in between to keep our lives running smoothly. On a larger scale I use strategy when I'm planning for our family's future, whether that be our long term financial goals, personal career goals, or education aspirations for us or our children. These would all be on my list of BHAGs. A big thing to note are the large obstacles that can alter even the best laid out plan. Our financial goals could be derailed by a job loss, and getting to work on time may be more difficult if my normal route has a road closure. However, I'm constantly reviewing the obstacles in our path and making adjustments for them in order to keep us on track. These strategic decisions are often made on the fly, not with a group of people sharing opinions and ideas.

When you look at a company's strategic vision you see some of the same decision making processes going on, but with very different decisions and obstacles. The company must first determine their core ideology, the enduring character of the organization is the backbone and purpose of the company. This is something that will never change, no matter what obstacles the organization faces. An organization must then determine their envisioned future, a BHAG paired with a vivid description of what achieving that goal will be like. Good leaders will be adaptable and be able to see what is around the corner for the organization, as best they can.

Attached is an article that supports some of what I've discussed above. It outlines the best steps for creating a personal strategic plan, and also notes some similarities and differences between personal vs. corporate strategic planning.

https://www.briantracy.com/blog/personal-success/personal-strategic-planning-4-step-action-plan-to-strengthen-your-personal-skills-personal-mission-statement/

Blog #1 - Building Your Company's Vision

While reading the article “Building Your Company's Vision" by James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras, I couldn't help but think of Elon Musk.

Elon is on a mission to save humanity from its own self-destructive tendencies. It is his core ideology. On one front, he has created Tesla to usher in a new era of sustainable and renewable energy to prevent (or lessen the devastation from) the looming climate change disasters resulting from our over-consumption of fossil fuels. On another front, he is founder or co-chariman of two AI/ML companies (NeuralLink and OpenAI) that are charged with ensuring humanity doesn’t create uncontrollable technology that ultimately destroys itself (for a good scare, see this list of movies about self-aware AI that turns on humanity). Elon has also established a tunnel digging company called The Boring Company to eliminate soul-crushing traffic by creating alternate transportation solutions underground. Finally, as if these efforts weren't enough, he has built a rocket company called SpaceX with the ultimate purpose of building a colony on Mars just in case his efforts to save life on planet Earth prove unsuccessful.

He says that humans must become an interplanetary species if we are going to survive long-term. Thus, developing the transport to get to Mars and the technologies to sustain human life there are his Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs) for SpaceX.

The company is perfecting reusable rocket technology to bring down the costs of each space launch. He is also investing in BFRs (aka “Big F’ing Rockets”) that will be capable of carrying the largest payloads ever into deep space. SpaceX sent Elon’s own personal Tesla roadster into space with an astronaut dummy (known as "Starman") behind the wheel on the inaugural Falcon Heavy rocket mission just to inspire people to dream big!  In a Business Insider article, Dave Mosher writes: "Musk explained he wanted to inspire the public about the ‘possibility of something new happening in space’ as part of his larger vision for spreading humanity to other planets." Mosher writes that Elon goes on to say, “Life cannot just be about solving one sad problem after another. There need to be things that inspire you, that make you glad to wake up in the morning and be part of humanity. That is why we did it. We did for you."

Doing the impossible, being ‘all in’ and engineering from first principles are three of Elon’s core values.

Elon also has a vivid description of SpaceX's envisioned future. On September 29, 2017, at the 68th International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, Australia, Elon Musk added clarity to his BHAG to establish a human colony on Mars. Jason Davis, writing for Planetary.org writes that “He (Elon) states: ‘two cargo landers would land on Mars in 2022, with four vehicles launching in 2024. Two of those 2024 ships would be crewed,’ meaning, in Musk's timeline, humans could walk on Mars in just seven years. ‘That's not a typo,’ he (Elon) said. ‘Though it is aspirational.’”

Blog #1 What is often missed

I think one of the most important aspects that a lot of this literature is missing is that it does not address the unspoken parts of this process. The authors often assume we as intelligent people can fill in the gaps. However when reading and going over so much I would like it spelled out more.

For instance a lot of the literature talks about how companies who do not use strategy fall behind. 100% true but it doesn't really talk about how these companies still have to go and make these decisions, they just end up not being as beneficial as they could be. This is obvious but I feel the discussion would benefit more from having this spelled out.

Another issue that gets glossed over is that for many companies the main way they can grow is through mergers. These merged companies however often have different strategic strengths. I think about how Snapple was a big deal then got bought out by a company that used different distribution channels and ended up losing 20% of its value in 2 years. "Culture eats strategy for breakfast" Peter Drucker. 

Blog #1

  M. Porter’s “What Is Strategy”, written in 1996, states that “A company can outperform rivals only if it can establish a difference it can preserve.” The article goes on to explain that optimized operational effectiveness isn’t something that can be preserved. It is too easily imitated. In contrast, strategy involves uniqueness and “requires trade-offs”. Tradeoffs protect reputation and clarify organizational priorities for employees who make day-to-day operational decisions.

                I worked in the language services industry for two years as a project manager overseeing the translation of websites, print work, and other material. In this industry, firms called Language Service Providers contract individual freelancers located throughout the world. LSP management teams coordinate these freelancers on projects (assigning and directing translators, editors, localization engineers to tackle various types of language media) on behalf of clients. There are many LSPs located worldwide and few have any appreciable market power. 

My supervisor once explained how it is impossible for LSPs to compete on the basis of quality. If you are in the industry, quality is a given. The work at a minimum must be accurate and appropriate for its purpose. Furthermore, the contractors – the translators, editors, etc. – that work for you simultaneously work for everyone else. So, from a base perspective, LSPs are potentially all selling the same “stuff.”

                The differentiator would have to be that the LSP’s management style must add a specific, unique value to the translation process. My company struggled with a clear strategic vision on this. Somedays, teams were pushed hard to deliver fast turnarounds and to never tell clients “no”. Other days, the same teams were pushed to conjure up technology solutions. Other days, we were pushed to be meticulous: glossarizing vocabulary and creating consistency across projects at the level of individual words and phrase. One of these approaches necessarily takes from the other.  These directives were reactive – made roughly in real time in response to a problem or request that happened to come up that week. I struggled with these competing expectations. Without a single focus or purpose, it was difficult for sales to find a foothold on which to successfully pitch to new clients.

                I think the current economy – which is global and technology-driven – lends itself to this reactive approach. The internet, social media, e-mail makes it easier than ever for any firm – even a small one – to respond to things in real time. “Your Strategy Needs A Strategy” is a newer article, published in 2012. It defines “predictability” and “malleability” and the 4 strategic styles which merge from them. Where the language services industry is closely linked to technology (the internet and software enables the sort of global contracting we engaged in), I feel an “adaptive” strategic style would have been most appropriate for us, which is very different from the reactive behavior the company had been engaging in. Relatedly, the article recognizes that the same company may often need to employee multiple strategic styles across business units. I wonder how this dynamic approach would have worked in a small firm like mine. Our clients’ needs varied. Perhaps different project managers could have been assigned to projects depending on the approach acquired (e.g., turnaround time versus detail versus technology solutions). 

Blog #1: The Strategic Planning Process Under Constraints

After reading the articles for the first and second week of this Strategy Development class, my thinking is still drawn back to my experience with developing strategy with our CISO that I mentioned in the week 1 discussion board. I was largely following the guidance of my senior leadership to prepare for a series of strategy development meetings with the CISO and was new to this topic. After learning about what reputable and established organizations recommend, I recognize that a few blunders were made. I would have changed my advice to senior leadership in hopes to correct the following:

1) Our CISO has always tried to flatten our organizational hierarchy, resulting in about 20 direct reports in our HR system reporting to him. This not only includes the cyber tower leads, but also information security officers that he sees as key influencers, as well as individual contributors (ICs) that do not have any directs themselves. This resulted in having 20-25 people (including my team) in the strategy development meetings. The articles mentioned posturing and politicking as problems when you get a group this large. I experienced a different problem – lack of trust. There were too many people in the room that the tower leads did not trust, so no candid comments were made that dissented the CISO’s opinion. It may as well just have been the CISO and my team in the room, as we received zero input or real opinions from any of the leadership team in the meeting. Any feedback was collected afterwards one on one with the LT, feedback that the entire team should have heard directly from them. Going back, I would have limited the number of people in those sessions to 8-10, forming a tighter circle a trust where opinions could freely flow.

2) Over prepare and socialize the proposed strategy with the CISO and direct reports beforehand. We primarily worked with only one of the CISO’s MVP direct reports to develop an organized strategy for the cyber department. We failed to realize that the CISO already had a specific organization strategy in mind. We assumed that the MVP spoke for the CISO. During the meeting series, we found that this CISO and this MVP were severely at odds. Some of these interpersonal conflicts went above our paygrade, but we still should have fully vetted our plan with the CISO before meeting with the group.

3) Lastly, we needed to accept the leadership style of the CISO. The articles allude to this briefly, but the method to strategy development largely depends on the leader’s willingness to collaborate with his team. We know now that our CISO is more autocratic in nature, and already had his mind set on a vision and strategy for the Cyber department. The series of meetings were not designed to develop a strategic vision, but to rally his LT around his existing vision. Lesson learned – know your audience when developing strategy at the leadership level.

Blog #1. A Cursory Look at Companies and CBT

In the Harvard Business Review article “Building Your Company’s Vision,” I was struck by the similarities between core values, a subordinate component to a company’s core ideology, and core beliefs, a principle commonly addressed in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). This school of therapy tells us that core beliefs can be seemingly automatic responses to stimuli, or can sit latently until bubbling to a point that they can impact our judgement and actions. Yet, they don’t simply form ex nihilo: Rather, they’re the product of long-term reinforcement of self-perception, personal beliefs about yourself and your surroundings, and experiences — and they’re notoriously difficult to reshape.

Perhaps, then, we can think of the difference between core beliefs and core values as one of semantic syntax. Let’s take the Walt Disney Company as an example and hone in on its core values of wholesomeness and imagination. Authors James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras note that those irreducible core values that are so intrinsically linked to the concept of the Walt Disney Company aren’t merely the byproduct of market positioning and economic decisions. On the contrary, they’re the product of laborious dedication to those two tenets. It took considerable time for those precepts to grow to their current status as practically axiomatic.

In much the same way as CBT posits that core beliefs can’t be undone and abandoned with alacrity, a company can’t toss its core values to the winds with little regard for the consequences. But, just as CBT seeks to teach and counsel patients on how to live with their core beliefs — albeit with the caveat that reshaping them will happen eventually, just after a very long amount of time and with considerable effort — rather than just presume that they’ll disappear into the ether the moment that they become an incumbrance, companies must also learn that their core values and, by extension, core ideologies shouldn’t be easily moldable to the capricious whim of changing circumstances.

Although Collins and Porras point out as much, I’d like to turn here to Martin Reeves, Claire Love, and Philipp Tillmanns’ piece “Your Strategy Needs a Strategy,” which was also published by the Harvard Business Review. Of the four strategy styles that they lay out, I think that the adaptive strategy, designed for unpredictable environments in which an operator has little to no power, and the shaping strategy, meant for unpredictable environments in which an operator may leverage their standing to affect the outcome or conditions, are especially relevant.

If I were to assume that I was a representative of a company with an unalterable core value, then the adaptive strategy may suit me best as a guide for my activities as I “constantly refine goals and tactics” as appropriate. In line with my running comparison to core beliefs, I think that the parallels are also pronounced in how the shaping strategy, in which I would seek to bend the fickle environment around me to my benefit, could be applied not only to business, but in CBT for those working with deleterious core beliefs, as noted above.

Thus, as noted, it would appear that there are some through-lines of commonality between some of the principles and methods covered in CBT and those of which this week’s reading assignments provided an overview. Furthermore, some cursory searches revealed that the differences may be more vernacular-based than all else, as I proposed. For example, Williams describes its company under the banner of “Core Values & Beliefs,” and a 2012 study from Deloitte that polled executives and employees on workplace culture made reference to core beliefs in some of its sampling questions. I believe that this may reveal some merit to this comparison beyond conjecture.

Blog #1 - The Strategic Planning Process - A Personal Perspective

So far, this course has given me an introduction to strategy and this past week we moved into the strategic planning process. I'm a practical person and as I reflect on what I learned so far, I wanted to share my own unique perspective. The stark truth is that I'm not an executive and far from it. I'm currently a Project Manager with no direct reports and really very little influence on my organization's overall strategy. I consider myself a worker bee but eventually my goal is to become a CIO. So, as I read the articles this week concerning the strategic planning process, I found it challenging to relate as I have never been a part of the strategy of the company. Yes, my employers often tell me to think big, but I have very little influence in the grand scheme of things. However, what I found fascinating is that the strategical planning concepts covered this week can be applied directly to your own personal and professional situation no matter the scale. This perspective allows me to better internalize the concepts but more importantly provide a deeper understanding into  those concepts and how they scale up to the organizational level.

First, lets talk about vision. I think any individual at a personal level should have a vision. It's one of those motivating and driving factors that keeps an individual going. As I read the article about core ideology, I shifted my lens for a second and thought about my own core ideology. People just like organizations ideally should evolve. However, my core values and purpose have always remained consistent. There were times in my life when I deviated very similar to how market pressures may require an organization to pivot, however my values and purpose seems to always re-center and that has always kept me grounded and on track towards my own vision. Coincidentally, if you look back at history at some of the most influential individuals and leaders who had a strong vision what is consistent is that their ideology remained steadfast and often times uncompromising. Whether it is Steve Jobs who valued simplicity and elegance or Martin Luther King who believe in equality, that core ideology persisted and ultimately led them to achieve their vision resulting in a strong legacy that was left behind.

Second, let’s talk about finding the right strategy. In my personal life whether it's applying to grad school or searching for a new job, I often employ my own strategy that is specifically catered for me. The article touches on the importance of executives picking the right strategy that fits their current industry and situation. As I touched in a previous discussion post when I applied to grad school, I really had some work to do. I knew I needed a strategy to get into grad school but what I ended up eventually doing was coming up with a strategy for that strategy. My strategy started inward, and I spent months doing some personal reflection and analysis on my current situation first and then choosing a strategy based on that analysis before executing the core strategy.

Third, let’s talk about strategic planning. As a PM my responsibility is to gather consensus, create a project plan and execute multiple tasks. I'm all about harmony and garnering support from the collective. I'm the type of person that would schedule calls with the entire organization if I could. However, what I found recently was that sometimes it’s more efficient to skip the formalities. My recent strategy for gathering support and consensus for my projects has shifted to a more informal process in which I schedule small calls and scrums with team members first and only bring those in that absolutely need to be there. This is something I'm actively working on but has helped me tremendously the last couple of months.

I guess this blog post was how I was able to frame these readings in the context of my own personal experiences. As stated before, I'm not really an executive (yet) however the concepts mentioned this week are applicable really no matter what the scale is. At the end of the day, strategy is strategy :)

Blog #1

“Your Strategy Needs a Strategy” is quite enlightening where different styles of strategic planning could suit different situations. But “The Real Value of Strategic Planning” had me reflected a lot on past working experience.

I had worked for an online media company that just spun off from media giant AOL a couple of years ago.  The company was bought by a private equity company which was pretty good at turn-around management and flipping the company for profit.  It was war time shortly after the spin-off, shift of power and control, massive lay-off, etc. you name it. 

Every Friday morning, the new company management brought in by the PE would hold strategic meeting for at least half of the day. I would always looked through the meeting room glass, wondering how they talk about strategy.  Came from accounting background and just freshly out of college, often time when I thought about strategic planning, I pictured that the top management review the corporate moves with discussion of budget and financial goals.  Particularly because the company was on the edge of bankrupting, and the PE was trying to stop the company from bleeding out. I realized how terribly wrong I was til one day, the CFO asked the team to model out the worst case scenario: fire 90% of employees, and just let the site run by click-bait contents and ads.  

Now I think about it, the task assigned by CFO and the weekly strategic meeting echo several good points of strategic planning raised in the article ‘The Real Value of Strategic Planning’.  First, the management was committed to the planning with high frequency of meetings and time commitment. Second, the management constantly follow up on the strategic goals with KPIs (I need to update financial and traffic KPIs weekly for the planning meeting). Third, same as Emerson mentioned in the article, management was discovering options, and exploring the boundaries of strategy.  All these processes are crucial for the participants of the meeting to come out the war room with prepared mind in action, and then communicate to the subordinates.  As a result, this prepared mind helps make  'Real strategy made in real time’ during a troubled time. 

It also got me thinking about recent China-US trade war. In the center of fighting for 5G turf, the Chinese tech company Huawei was undermined by US at every turn from supply, marketing, etc. But interestingly, the company’s founder envisioned the clash between US many years ago. Hence, he devoted significant resources to found a company named Hisilicon as a back up plan for Huawei to weather the worst winter.  Whether Huawai survives or not, I believe the founder did not come up with the expensive decision out of nowhere or just because he is a business genius, but rather from formal strategic planning. It is just like the ending of article said, it an help managers make solidly grounded strategic decisions in a world of turbulence and uncertainty. 

An article about Huawei’s back-up plan:

https://www.techinasia.com/hisilicon-exec-bares-plan-huawei-survival

Blog # 1 - The Strategic Process

I recently took my professional certification exam for urban planning and luckily some of the studying stuck in my head; this week’s topic raised a lot of thought comparing urban planning processes and strategic planning.

The first point of comparison I found was from the framework of strategy development. Three questions framed around a series of steps: “where are we now?” is answered through current performance evaluation, “where should we go?” looks at environmental, industry and company analysis paired with the strategy options. Those strategy options and evaluation answer the final question of “how do we get there?”.

This framework brought to mind a model used in community-based visioning. Called the Oregon Model, it is based on five questions – !) Where are we now?, 2) Where are we going?, 3) Where do we want to be?, 4) How do we get there?, and 5) Are we getting here?. Even though the Oregon Model is intended to be applied for community visioning, the alignment is essentially the same.

Applied at two similar but different levels – visioning vs. strategic planning, my second line of thought wonders how engagement plays into these efforts. Historically, community planning has done poorly at incorporating the voices of all (especially marginalized populations) but there is a high importance placed on public outreach and involvement. Most federal planning processes require it to some degree. The tools we use to engage the public are often a topic for improvement -surveys, activities, maps, community conversations. The strategic model discussed in lecture includes engagement as a method for creating prepared minds. I can certainly relate to the need to create prepared minds; it’s a great term! I am curious about how managers create prepared minds as part of strategic planning. I imagine there is some relation across the spectrum but there could also be ways the two fields can learn from each other.

My final takeaway from this week is the notion that values never change. I have often made this conclusion about communities People are often looking for the same qualities in their neighborhood – safe, healthy, availability of opportunities. It makes sense that this would apply to organizational culture. Values remain the same but manifest themselves in different purposes and tactics. I’ve never made that comparison and it helps bring home the values/mission/vision jumble of organizations.

Blog 1: Strategic Planning for an Army Faced With Multifaceted Threats

What keeps you up at night? For many service members, we view the world in threats and it is those threats that keep us up. Geopolitical tensions, cybersecurity, critical infrastructure, insurgencies, peered adversaries, and many other threats plague our thoughts from those of us serving at the tactical level all the way up to strategic decision makers. High-level leaders tout the Army as an adaptive fighting force prepared to engage any number of these threats. However, in practice, our strategic planning takes a far more classical approach. Depending on the premier threat, we adapt our strategic priorities to meet it. For years fighting a counter-insurgency in the Middle East we modified doctrine, invested heavily in Special Operations and light vehicles to counter Improvised Explosive Devices. Meanwhile, our Main Battle Tank was designed in the early 1970s. Today, having burnt out our special operators, we're standing up six Security Forces Assistance Brigades to reduce the demand we place on Special Forces. Yet, the geopolitical situation today largely revolves around peered, conventional threats like Russia and Iran.

These frequent shifts are costly. Rather than accepting that multiple threats will always exist and developing specialized "business units" to handle these threats, we consistently lose our competitive advantage. We make strategic trade-offs based on present conditions but we can't realize the change until years later under new conditions. We rely on a predictable and stable approach to developing strategy yet the environment remains volatile. This is rooted in misplaced confidence in our ability to forecast threats.

The productivity frontier continues to push outwards as we share best practices with allies, sell our military technology, or the Chinese steal it. Yet, every two years, we decouple associated skills and competencies in the interest of “talent management” and destroy our operational effectiveness. Infantry officers must jump from mechanized to light units regardless of propensity in one or the other. Armor officers who know every part of a tank must then serve in cavalry units to diversify. As a Signal officer on my fourth assignment in Special Operations, I’m regularly told continuing to serve in this capacity will dramatically hinder my career. Yet, my personality, experience, skills, and competencies all lend towards this particular culture and mission set.

As an Army, we can’t continue to merely react to present conditions and make strategic decisions accordingly. We must make trade-offs but not in the activities we perform rather how we perform them. All different types of threats will continue to exist and we must be prepared with the equipment, leaders, systems, and processes to counter all of them.

Blog 1: Strategic Fit for Non-profits

I’ll spend a good bit of this course thinking about how the concept of “strategy” is applicable to my professional experience in the nonprofit and public sectors. When I google “non-profit strategy,” the search results reveal that much of the discourse around strategy in the nonprofit sector relies upon the same concepts used by profit-seeking ventures. Surely, a SWOT analysis reveals beneficial information for nonprofits, too.

But the non-profit and public sectors do face strategic challenges different from for-profit ventures. As an example, human service agencies do not receive revenue from their service recipients, as is the case in for-profit consumer sales. Non-profit and public agencies often provide services to one group of people, and rely on separate relationships for funding. And sometimes those funding relationships are in direct conflict with the organization’s mission (e.g., when producers of cancer-causing chemicals donate to a foundation for cancer research, etc.). In the best cases, I think, non-profits find fit between their fundraising and mission-driven activities.

I previously worked for an environmental advocacy group, Clean Water Action, that employed door-to-door and phone canvasses. Canvassing is not glamorous work, and canvassers are often avoided at all costs – making one wonder why some non-profit operations still employ them. The reason, I believe, has roots in the concept of fit. Canvassers can perform separate, mutually reinforcing activities simultaneously: raising revenue and mobilizing grassroots support for legislative campaigns.

Clean Water Action’s canvassers first build issue agreement with their audience, and then secure their audience’s commitment to support a legislative campaign through a non-monetary action – most often writing a letter or making a phone call to an elected official using the organization’s carefully developed talking points. This activity advances Clean Water Action’s legislative goals, by demonstrating grassroots support to officials the organization is lobbying. Secondly, Clean Water Action’s canvassers fundraise. This activity builds off of, and benefits from, the agreement and relationship established through the first activity described above.

Other examples of fit between a non-profit’s mission-driven activities and fundraising are provided by national advocacy organizations such as Planned Parenthood and the ACLU. These organizations employ advocacy and fundraising activities that are mutually reinforcing and beneficial. As an example, when Planned Parenthood blasts an advocacy alert to its members, the activity serves to inform, mobilize, and generate donations all at the same time.

Sometimes, though, non-profits move farther away from the concept of fit as they pursue funding opportunities. I worked for a human service organization that relied heavily on federal and state grants and, in an effort to bring revenue in the door, went after every opportunity available. The result was a disparate set of services, none of which were executed particularly well. The organization – and the individuals it served – would’ve been better off making trade offs. That is, passing up on some opportunities to devote its focus to the ones that aligned most with its mission.