StrategyDriven Expert Contributors' Blog

Strategic Planning Best Practice 2 – Prioritize the Mission

July 12, 2007/in Strategic Planning/by Nathan Ives

Ideally, an organization’s mission statement would convey a singular purpose. However, mission statements often enumerated several purposes, such as creating shareholder value, contributing to the community, and offering workforce prosperity. When this occurs, organizations struggle to serve multiple masters.

Prioritizing the mission establishes the relative importance of an organization’s multiple purposes; focusing decisions and driving actions toward achievement of the organization’s primary purpose while allowing progress to be made on objectives of lesser importance. The amount of emphasis given to each purpose should make their relative importance obvious to all members of the organization. Additionally, decision-making should demonstratively reflect and reinforce the mission priorities such that a proportionate amount of managerial attention and organizational resources are applied to the achievement of each purpose.

About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal Nathan Ives is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

StrategyDriven Strategic Planning Best Practice Article

Strategic Planning Best Practice 1 – Make the Mission Measurable

July 10, 2007/in Strategic Planning/by Nathan Ives

An organization’s mission statement defines its purpose, its reason for being. These statements, however, tend to be broad and somewhat vague; making it difficult to identify the specific products, services, initiatives, and people that will most directly enable the organization to achieve its purpose.

Making the mission measurable provides the added clarity needed to focus decisions and drive actions toward achievement of the organization’s purpose. The mission is translated into a time-bound measure of performance rather than a specific goal. The value of competing alternatives can then be evaluated against the measure; offering executives and managers a mission contribution basis for the selection and pursuit of specific business opportunities.

About the Author

Nathan Ives is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

StrategyDriven Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice Article

Horizontally Shared

July 7, 2007/in Organizational Performance Measures, Premium/by Nathan Ives

StrategyDriven Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice Well-constructed performance measurement systems provide a means of comparison between various products, services, and business units by ensuring relevant measures are horizontally shared across the organization.

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Vertical Cascading

July 6, 2007/in Organizational Performance Measures, Premium/by Nathan Ives

StrategyDriven Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice Performance measurement systems should be anchored on the single measure of organizational success (defined by the organization's mission) and vertically cascaded down through the organization Each successive measurement tier becomes more specific than its predecessor with the lowest tier describing individual contributor behaviors and resulting outcomes.

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StrategyDriven Strategic Planning Forum

July 4, 2007/in Strategic Planning/by StrategyDriven

StrategyDriven Strategic Planning Introduction A company’s true value is largely determined by its long-term performance potential as shaped by management’s decisions made today. These decisions guide the translation of the company’s mission, its purpose for existing, into the products and services it provides and hopefully the market wants.

Strategic planning is an iterative, ongoing process consisting of:

Analysis: assessment of the internal and external factors effecting the organization’s ability to achieve its mission
Alternative Development: detailed assessment of the costs, benefits, and risks associated with strategic alternatives including both major, ongoing and newly proposed activities
Alternative Selection: identification of the current portfolio components and proposed activities that will be pursued and the time frame for execution
Resource Projections: aggregation of the personnel, financial, physical, and technological needs including an assessment of the ability to acquire these resources within the needed time frame
Plan Development: final validation of the organization’s mission and compilation and approval of its long-range and annual business plans

Execution of these iterative processes takes place throughout the year with a frequency dictated by the pace of market change.

Focus of the Strategic Planning Forum

This forum will focus on the principles, best practices, and warning flags associated with the leading practices of companies that successfully execute strategic planning processes to define objectives, drive alignment, and enhance performance. The following articles, podcasts, documents, and resources cover those topics critical to an exceptional strategic planning program.