We’re included some photos of affinity diagrams that’s conducted for our clients.

M3 Planning helped Washoe County gather community input about the county library systems. To do this we used an affinity diagram. Click to get more information about this project's case study.

The tool is commonly used within project management and allows large numbers of ideas stemming from brainstorming to be sorted into groups, based on their natural relationships, for review and analysis.

The Richland County Recreation Committee of South Carolina hired M3 Planning to help develop their Strategic Plan. Click on the image to enlarge the photo.

People have been grouping data into groups based on natural relationships for thousands of years; however the term affinity diagram was devised by Jiro Kawakita in the 1960s and is sometimes referred to as the KJ Method. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affinity_diagram)

Process

1. Have each member write one idea per sticky note.
2. On a wall, create an affinity diagram by grouping like ideas.
3. Select those with the most sticky notes – identify the value and use the rest of the words to craft a description.
4. Repeat for each grouping until all the information you are seeking has been identified.

You may also be interested in:

• Strategy Tools Great online and traditional media resources can help you give...
• The Tools: Smart Stuff Erica Olsen’s strategic planning savvy led to authoring a...
• Strategy Buzz: E-Learning & Strategic Planning How useful is strategic planning for e-learning? This has been...

1. Consider an annual state of the union message where the finalized plan and vision are rolled out to the entire organization.
2. Make the announcement exciting and get everyone engaged.
3. Give every board member and executive a full copy of the plan.
4. Distribute the entire plan–or at the very least, the highlights–to everyone in the organizations.
5. Post your one-page plan or strategy map in a break room or another common area.
6. Consider giving each employee a card with the mission, vision, and values statements printed on it.
7. Incorporate your strategic plan into the orientation process for new board members and employees.
8. Include portions of the plan in policies and procedures, including the employee manual.
9. Provide copies of the plan for key partners, such as funders or investors, business coaches, vendors or suppliers, and so on.

You may also be interested in:

• Tips for Creating a Strategic Plan for Hospitals 5 Best Practices for Creating a Hospital Strategic Plan in...
• You Say You Want a Living Strategic Plan …what does that really mean, and are you ready to...
• How Does Your Game Plan Stack Up? When the top “most used” business management tools globally were...

You may also be interested in:

• What is Trader Joe’s Strategy? What is Trader Joe’s strategy? The strategy encompasses carrying highly...
• Talking Points: Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail Need talking points to convince your boss or board of...
• The Scorecard of Success The BSC was introduced by Robert Kaplan, a Harvard Business...

• Be a strategic leader. Lead by example and prioritize your strategic plan over everything else. Stay committed.
• Cut out the jargon. Make sure everyone in your organization really understands the plan.
• Hang your one-page strategic plan in the break room or another central location.
• Involve your staff in the final development of the plan. Ask for and use employee ideas.
• Create a “champion” or owner for every goal and action. Make strategy everyone’s job.
• Ask your employees to create the action items to support their assigned goals.
• Review the plan with management or the group.
• Align the organization with the strategy.
• Use a scorecard to monitor progress monthly.
• Schedule regular updates. Hold a monthly meeting, one-on-one with the team leaders, where you only discuss strategy. Hold a quarterly full staff strategy meeting to report on the progress.
• Challenge underlying assumptions. Revisit and refine the strategic plan three months from now.
• Hold yourself accountable through a mentor, personal coach, or business organization.
• Link strategy to performance.
• Continually scan your environment to identify changes that may impact your strategy.
• Reward success! Throw a party when significant goals are reached.

You may also be interested in:

• Creating a strategy-focused organization Organizations that are strategy-focused are more effective with their resources,...
• How to Facilitate a Strategy Meeting According to a past Fortune cover story, 86% of business...
• Tips for Creating a Strategic Plan for Hospitals 5 Best Practices for Creating a Hospital Strategic Plan in...

Creating momentum in your life, just like in business, takes increasing the things that move you forward on decreasing those that hold you back. Sounds like a snap, but we all know that living the life we desire is not always easy to achieve. We have habits and cycles to overcome. But by creating momentum, we can move past those and toward the life we want. Momentum, by its nature, requires a lot of upfront push to get the ball rolling.

Here are ten tips to jumpstart the momentum in your life and strategic plan.

Create Your Picture of Success and Make it a Reality

It’s true—if you can’t see your vision of success, you’ll never get there. As you begin working through your planning process, ask yourself the following questions:

• So what does success look like for you day to day?
• How do you want to spend your time?
• How do you want to define success for yourself this year?
• Write your vision down and post it somewhere you will see it every day.

Pick a BHAG

You ask what a BHAG is? In case you missed it in previous chapters, it’s a big, hairy audacious goal you want to achieve this year that will help you step into your vision of success. So what is your BHAG? Write it down along with the one thing you can do today to make it happen. Here is an example of the power of a written goal: A study was conducted among a graduating class at Harvard to see how many had concrete goals around how much money they wanted to make. Only 3 percent had written their goals down. Ten years later, that same 3 percent were making more than the other 97% combined. Now that is power! Before another minute goes by, put some thought into your BHAG and get it down on paper.

Eliminate Your Energy Drains and Recharge Yourself

Energy drains are those things that drag you down. And when you’re dragged down, you’re probably not putting too much effort into your planning process, now are you? Recharge your energy with anything that inspires you and puts you in a good mood, like an organized desk, an afternoon off to enjoy family or good weather (or both together for that matter), or lunch with a colleague. Spend time doing the things that give you energy and stick a post-it note next to each drain you identify with an idea for getting rid of it. You’ll find you have more spring in your step and can focus a little more clearly on those action items that will help you reach those strategic priorities.

Conquer Your Fears—Concentrate and Be Brave

The greatest source of procrastination is often a deep-seeded fear—fear of success, change, failure, ridicule, or even just the unknown. Take a daily step to remove your fears by asking yourself every day, “What would I do today if I was really brave?” Consider Brian Tracy’s book, “Eat That Frog,” which provides the 21 most effective methods for conquering procrastination and getting more done in less time. Success comes by identifying that single most important task, or frog, that needs to be accomplished, concentrating on it to do it well and finishing it completely. As Tracy points out, “Mark Twain once said that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long.” So go ahead, be brave and eat that frog!

Take Control of Your Finances

Do you feel like you’re on a treadmill, working more to pay for ever increasing bills? It seems like although the more we work, we don’t always have increased revenue. Instead, trim the fat and spend a little less here and there. You’ll soon free up some budget dollars that you can utilize on securing needed resources that will help you in managing a successful strategic plan. Or, if there’s enough savings, start an employee incentive program if you don’t have one already. Start by running a P&L report to see exactly how you are spending your money. Then adjust your budget, making sure what you purchase is in line with your business. Obviously a business with a big focus on sales would incur more expenses for client lunches than one without. Consider decreasing every category (except maybe your rent and payroll) by 10%? Use the money saved to fuel your dreams instead of feeding the treadmill.

Create a Braintrust

Identify a handful of people in your life who you trust to help you move your life forward. Consider pulling from a wide range of backgrounds, ages, experiences, and opinions. Mentors are a great source of guidance, often being the most critical and providing you the best insights. Call on them together or individually to help you move past any roadblocks and keep the momentum going. Even if there are no pending issues or questions that need immediate attention, continue to meet with them and maybe spend some time focusing on those tabled items that always come up in discussion but haven’t been addressed. Or meet without an agenda. You might have an enlightened conversation giving new thought and energy to your plan.

Find the Time

One of the biggest challenges to having the life we want is finding the time to do all we want to do whether it’s at the office or at home. But let’s admit it, each affect the other. Track how you spend your time for a week. At the end, tally up the time spent on each thing – such as meetings, paying bills, preparing reports, checking e-mail, running errands, etc. Look at each category. What things can you do to cut time in each area? Maybe if you struggle with preparing meeting agendas or keeping up the books, pass the task off to someone who is better suited for the job. Or set up your spam filter or organize your inbox to make it easier to sift through the e-mails. Be creative and you’ll soon free up time that will allow you to focus on what’s most important, like your planning and execution process.

Highlight Small Wins

Overlooking the short-term successes because you’re looking at the mid-term or long-term horizon is an easy trap to fall into.  Because strategic management is a process and an organizational journey, help your staff members stay motivated by acknowledging their progress along the way.  The obvious time to highlight progress is when you’re reviewing your plan during your monthly or quarterly strategy reviews.  Call out the small wins by specifically identifying what was accomplished, why it’s important tp the strategic direction, and how the success was achieved.  Additionally, point out small wins as they occur so everyone can feel the continued momentum.

Let Things Evolve

When the flywheel of momentum starts to turn, pay attention to clues, connections and opportunities that are presented. Be aware of environmental shifts and market changes that will affect your organization. With a little agility, allow your future to unfold and change in ways you might not have been able to imagine when you started your planning process. Remember, your strategic plan is a work in progress. Have a goal in mind but be flexible on the process of getting there. It will make the process much easier.

Be Committed

No matter what your organizational goals are, or how difficult they’ll be to achieve, creating momentum to reach them starts with commitment. Be committed to the strategic management process by starting with at least one of the ideas above and you’ll begin to move closer to your dreams. Then take on the next idea, and then maybe another one. Borrow some encouragement from that famous shoe slogan, and just do it! You’ll be happier in the end and will be glad you did it.

You may also be interested in:

• Ten Tips to Creating Momentum in Your Life Creating momentum in your life takes increasing the things that...
• Ten Tips to Creating Momentum in Your Life Creating momentum in your life takes increasing the things that...
• Ten Tips to Creating Momentum in Your Life Originally sent out December 17, 2008. Creating momentum in your...

1. 6 Habits of True Strategic Thinkers
2. Take a Long Term View of Strategic Planning
3. CEOs must find time for strategic planning–here’s how to do it
4. Strategic Planning: 12 Common Mistakes (Part 1 of 2)
5. Bad Meeting Survey & Tips for Better Meetings

You may also be interested in:

• Strategy Buzz: This Week in Twitter Talk Have Strategic Plans Lost Favor? As I have been sitting...
• This Week in Strategic Business Planning for 05-15-09 Let’s Face It – The Economy Sucks (Hospitality Trends)...
• How to Run a Strategy Review Meeting So in my last post about getting out of the...

1. Steve Jobs

• Company: Apple
• Advice: Say no to focus groups and market research.

2. Bill Gates

• Company: Microsoft
• Advice: Find very smart people and create small teams.

3. Fred Smith

• Company: FedEx
• Advice: Rely on “first-level” managers.

4. Jeff Bezos

• Company: Amazon
• Advice: Take regular mini-retreats.

5. Larry Page and Sergey Brin

• Company: Google
• Advice: Spare no expense on innovation.

6. Howard Schultz

• Company: Starbucks
• Advice: Always challenge the old ways.

7. Mark Zuckerberg

• Company: Facebook
• Advice: Embrace paranoia.

8. John Mackey

• Company: Whole Foods
• Advice: Purpose inspires people.

9. Herb Kelleher

• Company: Southwest Airlines
• Advice: Make your customers No. 1.

10. Narayana Murthy

• Company: Infosys
• Advice: Sacrifice today, cash in tomorrow.

11. Sam Walton

• Company: Wal-Mart Stores
• Advice: Give the people what they want.

12. Muhammad Yunus

• Company: Grameen Bank
• Advice: Small gifts can equal big impacts.

You may also be interested in:

• What Chocolate Can Teach Us About Planning Although strategic planning in business seems best, not all things...
• This Week in Strategic Business Planning Here’s a recap of some of the strategy-focused blog posts...
• Idenitifying cash creators Do an expense shake down. Take time at least once...

Often, business owners and executives fall prey to the allure of setting too many financial goals.  Or their goals are exclusively financial.  Thinking too much about the financial side of business detracts from the other reasons they’re in  business, such as employing people, contributing to their communities, or providing a needed product or service.  Enter the Balanced Scorecard.

The BSC is an excellent management tool that ensure you have a holistic and balanced strategy as well as a way to track performance over time to asses whether goals are being met.  To have that balanced and holistic strategy, organizations must have goals that feed off each other. The four perspectives are: Financial, Customer, Internal/Operational Process and People/Learning.

Take Yogurt Beach, a company with a top-line financial goal to increase the revenue by 10% annually: How will the owner achieve her financial goal? Sell more yogurt.  In order to sell more yogurt, she must have a great product that’s different from the competitor down the street and provide outstanding customer service.  And what does she need to do to deliver great customer service?  Have efficient processes that deliver yogurt quickly.  To excel at quick delivery, she has to have well-trained, friendly employees.  With this example you can see how every step of the Balanced Scorecard is needed for an organization to be successful.

You may also be interested in:

• The Scorecard of Success The BSC was introduced by Robert Kaplan, a Harvard Business...
• Messing up the Balanced Scorecard At MyStrategicPlan, we love the Balanced Scorecard because it provides...
• Strategic Planning with the Balanced Scorecard Often, business owners and executives fall prey to the allure...

When we are working with clients to create their strategic plan, we stress the importance of customer research and environmental scans because we believe that it helps sculpt the most effective strategic plans.  A lot of the time organizations feel like they have plenty of research already done and just want to jump right into the strategic planning process.  However, in order for us to have a successful strategy, we need that in-depth research to grow the strategy out of.

We suggest thinking about the customer insight based on the four perspective of the Balanced Scorecard.  The Balanced Scorecard is a robust and holistic way of looking at your strategy.  We also suggest this approach because we need to understand where the organization stands in the eyes of our customer, employees, etc.  You need insight at all levels (Financial, Customer, Internal/Operational, People) so you can get the best use of everyone’s time during the strategy session.  With these tips and your customer research, you will be armed with plenty of good information to get your strategy session rolling.

You may also be interested in:

• Steps for Successful Customer Research and Environmental Scans Watch a recorded video of Part 2 of the latest...
• Keep the Customer in the Strategy It is a fact that although a majority of executives...

To write your positioning statement, follow these steps:

1. Select the target customer group you want to focus on.
2. Develop a list of needs your customer group has that you intend to meet (if not already included in your customer profile).
3. List your product or service’s benefits that uniquely meet these needs.
4. Use the lists of customer needs and product or service benefits to finish this sentence: “When this customer group thinks of my product or service, I want them to think…”
5. Evaluate your positioning statement to make sure that it’s simple, clear, and consistent.
6. Get the word out to everyone by consistently communicating your positioning message in everything your company does for this customer group.

Don’t forget: The customer does the real positioning by paying attention and deciding to buy your product or service. What you do have control over is assessing what positions exist in the customer’s mind and then determine which of those positions you have the best chance of occupying and defending based on your own strengths.

You may also be interested in:

• How to write a positioning statement The purpose of writing a positioning statement is to ensure...
• Be a Purple Cow It is important to have a good understanding of where...
• Mission Statement Mission statement – this is your core purpose, the underlying...