The topics of focus from the June 23, 2010 Strategy Huddle were:

1. Strategy Stat: What Matters Most to Strategy Execution
2. Topic/Question: Creating Useful Measures for Execution
3. Topic/Question: Case Study: Creating Strategic Alignment in a Loosely Organized Company
4. Topic/Question: Case Study: How to Change your Business Model

Business Model Canvas

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The topics of focus from the June 23, 2010 Strategy Huddle were:

1. Strategy Stat: What Matters Most to Strategy Execution
2. Topic/Question: Creating Useful Measures for Execution
3. Topic/Question: Case Study: Creating Strategic Alignment in a Loosely Organized Company
4. Topic/Question: Case Study: How to Change your Business Model

Business Model Canvas

Download Presentation Here

You may also be interested in:

• Creating Useful Measures for Execution What does success look like? With these quick tips you’ll...
• Strategy Huddle – June 23rd, 2010 Watch a recorded video of the latest Strategy Huddle and...
• Does Your Business Model Need Change? Does your business model need change? Use the consulting exercise...

No one strategic model fits all organizations, but the planning process includes certain basic elements that all churches can use to explore their vision, goals, and next steps of an effective strategic plan.

Start your Plan

Try a 10-day free trial of our online strategic planning system that makes creating and executing a plan amazingly simple.

• Take a tour
• Quickly develop a plan managed online
• Increase efficiency and effectiveness.
• Send auto email alerts reminding your team of their goals.
• Reduce administrative time managing plan details.

Why do a strategic plan?

Strategic planning is a process that helps focus on aligning the unique gifts an resources that God has given your organization to take advantage of your opportunities. Scripture says, “Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity” (Ephesians 5:15–16). As you do the planning, let God do the directing.

For the Christian, this is not simply projection-based planning but the realization that through prayer and obedience you can be a catalyst to help bring about a future that is in alignment with God’s will. Through prayer, the framework for a plan can be established. We do the planning, but God does the directing.

What is strategic planning?

Simply put, a strategic plan is the formalized road map that describes how your organization executes the chosen strategy. A plan spells out where an organization is going over the next year or more and how it is going to get there. A strategic plan is a management tool that serves the purpose of helping an organization do a better job, and it improves organizations because a plan focuses the energy, resources, and time of everyone in the organization in the same direction.

Strategic planning does not have to be mysterious, complicated, or time-consuming. In fact, it should be quick, simple, and easily executed. Additionally, strategic planning is not just something you cross off your list of “to-dos”—you must create a culture of strategic thinking, so your strategic planning does not become an annual retreat but, instead, a part of daily decision making.

A good strategic plan achieves the following:

• Reflects the values of the organization.
• Clearly defines what is most important for achieving success.
• Assists everyone in daily decision making.
• Gets everyone on the same page focused and pulling in the same direction.
• Creates a culture of strategic thinking and a part of daily decision making.

What are the elements of a strategic plan?

There are several different components or pieces in a strategic plan. The typical questions people have relating to the elements are the following:

• What is the difference between mission and vision?
• Which comes first–objectives or goals?
• How do they work together?

This is probably the most widely debated part of strategic planning. Every person you ask will provide a different answer. Ignore the semantics and focus on establishing a framework. What matters is having a combination of long-term and short-term markers to keep your church moving in the right direction.

Think of the elements of a typical strategic plan in the hierarchy as outlined in Figure 1:

• Mission–To define the organization’s purpose. Why do we exist?
• Values–To clarify what you stand for and believe in.
• SWOT–To assess the particular strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that are strategically important to your church. (SWOT is a filtering tool to assess where you are now.)
• Advantage–To define what you do best. What do you do best?
• Vision–To explain where you are headed. Where do we want to be in five years?
• Organization-wide strategy–How will you get to your vision? What is the route you will take?
• Objectives–To connect your mission to your vision. What are the long-term, 3-year out strategic priorities you need to perform in order to achieve your vision?
• Goals–To set goals that convert the strategic objectives into specific performance targets. What are the one-year goals you are trying to achieve to support your objectives?
• Action–To set specific action plans that lead to implementing your goals. What the 30, 60, 90 days actions?
• Scorecard–To measure and manage your strategic plan. What are the key performance measured you can track in order to monitor if you are achieving your goals?

How do the elements fit together?

Because it is easy to confuse how all the elements of a plan come together and where they go, the visual Strategy Map in Figure 2 is a simple, yet clear way of looking at the whole plan. By placing all the elements of the plan into three areas, you can clearly see how the pieces fit together. Each area has certain components of the plan. The three areas are:

• Where are we now?
• Where are we going?
• How will we get there?

Where are we now?

As you think about where your organization is now, you want to look at your foundational elements (mission and values) to make sure there has not been a change. More than likely, you will not revise these two areas very often. Then you want to look at your current strategic position, which is where you look at what is happening internally and externally to determine how you need to shift and change. Here are your foundational elements:

Mission

Mission defines your purpose—the purpose for which you were founded and why you exist. A mission statement states what the church organization intends to accomplish and the needs it is endeavoring to serve. It also serves as a guide for day-to-day operations and as the foundation for future decision-making.

To create a mission statement you need to understand how God has uniquely gifted your church with core strengths, abilities, and gifts. You need to embrace your church’s uniqueness and develop plans around it. With this in mind, your mission statement will be one that expresses God’s call on your church—focusing on who you are and what you do.

To write a mission ask the following questions:

• Why do we exist?
• What is God’s purpose for our church?
• How can we, with limited resources, really make a difference?

Examples:

• To gather to worship and become empowered to serve.
• To be an oasis of faith at a busy crossroad.
• To help our community experience Jesus in a real and relevant way.
• To build an overcoming church out of broken lives through the power of Jesus.
• To exalt the Lord, equip the believer, evangelize the world, and expand the Kingdom.
• To present authentic Christianity to our families, community, country and world.

Values

Values are enduring, passionate, and distinctive core beliefs. They are guiding principles that never change. Values are why we do what we do and what we stand for. They are beliefs that guide the conduct, activities, and goals of the organization. Values are deeply held convictions, priorities, and underlying assumptions which influence our attitudes and behaviors. They have intrinsic value and importance to those inside the organization. Your core values are part of your strategic foundation.

A church’s values can dominate the kind of strategic direction it considers or rejects. When values and beliefs are deeply ingrained and widely shared by pastors, board and staff, they become a way of life within the church and they mold church strategy.

To write values ask the following questions:

• What are the core values and beliefs of our organization?
• What values and beliefs guide our daily interactions?
• What is our church really committed

Examples:

• Family–We believe there is nothing more important than strong united families.
• Excellence–We believe excellence honors God and inspires greatness.
• Equipping–We believe in equipping the saints for ministry and life by helping them to operate in their spiritual gifts.
• Prayer–We believe in the power of prayer, and that makes a critical difference in all we attempt to achieve. We are to be a house of prayer for all nations.
• Authenticity–Through authentic living, biblical authority, worship, prayer, and spirit.
• Committed Community–Through intimacy within the community, servant leadership, genuine relationships, and beauty in diversity.

SWOT (Strategic Position)

The SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) is a tool to help match internal organizational strengths with external opportunities to meet the needs of your constituents and community best. Think of the SWOT as a filtering tool to assess your current strategic position. A good understanding of your strengths and weaknesses, your opportunities, and the external threats is essential to the assessment.

The SWOT is only as good as the information it contains. Gathering information from your constituents and stakeholders about the effectiveness of your programs, services, and church is essential for the SWOT to identify key issues. The purpose of a SWOT is to help produce a good fit between your church’s internal resources and capabilities and your external environment.

When you plan you will need to set goals to build on your church’s strengths, shore up the weaknesses, capitalize on the opportunities, and recognize the threats.

Assess your strengths and weaknesses by answering these questions: what do we do well, and where could we improve?

Assess your opportunities and threats by asking what opportunities should we take advantage of and are there any emerging trends that might affect our organization?

Unique Advantage

Just what is a unique advantage? It is simply the answer to “what does your church do best?” Your unique advantage is what your church does or potentially could do better than similar organizations. The result of a well-developed and executed strategic plan is to develop a unique advantage. It is what you do best that draws constituents/stakeholders to use your programs and services instead of similar organizations. Successful churches deliberately make choices to be unique and different in activities that they are really, really good at doing and they focus all of their energy in these areas.

Your unique advantages are the foundation, the cornerstone of your strategic plan. Throughout the planning process you will need to evaluate every part of your plan to determine whether it supports or detracts from this.

To identify your unique advantages ask the following questions:

• What does your church do best?
• What can your organization potentially do better than any other organization?
• What unique skills, resources, gifts and capabilities has God placed in your church?

Examples:

• We are young-minded, progressive and culturally relevant messengers of the Gospel of Christ.
• We have a prime location.
• We have Bible-based preaching.
• We are a church of small home groups.
• We have an extensive care ministry.
• We have a strong youth ministry.

Where are we going?

The elements of the question, “Where are we going?” help you answer other questions, such as, What will my church look like in the future? Where are we headed? What is the future I want to create for my church? The following elements help you define the future for your church:

Vision

A vision is a picture of what your church’s future makeup will be and where the organization is headed. Vision provides a clear mental picture, by faith, of what your church will look like in five to ten years from now. Forming a strategic vision should provide long-term direction, delineate the organizational activities to be pursued, the capabilities it plans to develop, and infuse the church with a sense of purposeful action. It serves as a unifying focal point for everyone in the organization like a North Star. It delineates the future focus and where the church is going.

A Godly vision is based on God’s will for the church. It is a picture of seeking the needs of other people and meeting those needs. It is vitally connected to the heart of God and His perspective. A vision which is inspired by God is God-sized and will require the power of God to fulfill. A Godly vision makes your heart surge, carries you to heights you never dreamed possible, and causes exponential growth. You are empowered and motivated by it. It seizes hold of you and orders your thoughts and actions. Scripture says, “Record the vision and inscribe it on tablets, that the one who reads it may run.” (Habakkuk 2:2)

To write a vision, pray and seek God’s wisdom by asking the following questions:

• What will our church look like ten years from now?
• Where is God directing our church?
• What is God’s vision for our church?

Examples:

• To be an interdenominational, cell-based, multi-congregational church of believers in our community who practice authentic Christian community.
• To be a place where people searching to know God are welcomed and taught Biblical principles and relevant Christian community.
• To develop a loving and caring Christian community effecting a global impact for Christ through its local, regional, and international outreach.
• To be the premier seeker-driven, community church in the state.
• To become a premier multi-cultural, soul winning, disciple-making church in the are, renowned worldwide for our commitment to missions and our passion for excellence, service, and team work.

How will we get there?

Knowing how you will reach your vision is the meat of your strategic plan, but it is also the most time consuming. The reason it takes so much time to develop is because there are a number of routes from your current position to your vision. Picking the right one determines how quickly or slowly you get to your final destination. The parts of your plan that lay out your roadmap are as follows:

Strategic Objectives/Priorities

Strategic objectives are long-term, continuous strategic areas that get you moving from your mission to achieving your vision. Objectives explain how you will get there. In other words, objectives are long-term (3–5 years) general areas that state how your organization will get from its mission (where you are now) to its vision (where you are going).

Objectives are also called strategic priorities, initiatives, and cornerstones. It is helpful to think of objectives as broad general area. Objectives state the broad direction; goals then operationalize that direction. They are the continuous strategic activities necessary to achieve your vision. They define what your organization is intending to accomplish both programmatically and organizationally. Objectives work towards converting your mission into actions that will accomplish your vision and help sustain your unique advantage.

To write objectives ask these questions:

• What are the key activities that you need to perform in order to achieve your vision?
• What areas do we need to focus on over the next 3-5 years to accomplish our vision?

Examples:

• To impact strategically more lives each year.
• To manage our church on a fiscally sound operating basis.
• Expand programs/services to existing congregation.
• To serve more people in the community through new programs and services.
• To improve internal process continually to realize efficiencies.
• To improve internal communications.
• To develop the leadership abilities and potential of our staff.

Strategy

Strategy establishes a way to match your church’s strengths with opportunities so that your church comes to mind when people have a need. A strategy is like an umbrella. It is a general statement(s) that guides and covers a set of activities. You can develop one strategy for your church or guiding statement for each year. Strategy answers the question “how.” It explains how you will travel to your final destination.

Consider listing the top one to two strategies or long-term activities your church needs to pursue in order to achieve its vision by asking how will we achieve our vision and how can we best match our strengths in a way that provides value and is perceived by our constituents?

Examples:

• Overall–Number of lives changed
• 1st year–Birth of the church
• 2nd year–Leadership development
• 3rd year–Growth
• 4th year–Discipleship
• 5th year–Community outreach
• 6th year–International outreach

Goals convert your strategic objectives into specific performance targets. Effective SMART goals clearly state what you want to accomplish, when you want to accomplish it, how you are going to do it, and who is going to be responsible. Each goal should be specific and measurable. With short-term goals, the organization converts the mission, vision, and long-term objectives into performance targets. Realistic goals ought to serve as a tool for stretching an organization to reach its full potential.

It is important for the church to view goals as motivational targets, and exciting, measurable milestones for the future. Think about achieving them in a 12–18 month time frame. Write goals to build your unique advantage. Additionally, use your SWOT analysis to write goals. Match your strengths with opportunities, shore up your weaknesses and guard against threats.

Goals can be difficult to set because they should be faith-stretching without being presumptuous.

Goals ought to serve as a tool for stretching a church to reach its full potential. This means setting them high enough to be challenging to energize the organization and its strategy. Prayerfully seek God’s guidance in setting faith goals. Let God give you things He wants you to do. Hold your plans before the Lord.

The following is an explanation of the criteria for SMART goals:

• Specific–Goals must answer the questions: How much? What kind of performance is to be accomplished?
• Measurable–Goals must be stated in measurable or quantifiable terms: Can we measure this goal? How will we know if we achieved this goal?
• Aggressive yet Achievable–Is the goal aggressive yet achievable? Goals must provide a stretch that inspires people to aim higher. Set goals you know you can realistically achieve.
• Relevant/Realistic–Is the goal relevant to achieving the objective? Goals must maintain consistency and focus.
• Time Specific–Is the goal time specific? Goals must answer the question, “by when is it to be accomplished?”

Write goals by asking these questions:

• What are the 1- to 3-year goals we are trying to achieve to support our strategic objective?
• What are your specific, measurable, and realistic targets of accomplishment?

Action Items

Action items are plans that set specific actions that lead to implementing your goals. Action items are basically a “To-Do List” for each goal. It involves listing out the concrete steps that you need to accomplish in order to achieve your goals. An action plan explains who is going to do what, by when, and in what order for the church to reach its goals. The design and implementation of the action planning depend on the nature and needs of the organization.

get buy-in from your stakeholders is to ensure implementation of action items, it is important to assign responsibilities and deadlines. A great method to assign each goal to a board member, staff, or volunteer. Ask him/her to write the action plan and be responsible for making sure each task is accomplished. Another method is to identify all the actions that need to occur in the next ninety days. You can continue this same process every ninety-day increment until the goal is achieved.

To write action items ask, “What are we going to do in the next 90, 60, 30 days to work towards this goal?”

Scorecard

To help monitor your strategic plan, one of the best tools around is the Balanced Scorecard developed by Kaplan and Norton from Harvard. The scorecard is to be used as both a measurement and management tool to assist in fulfilling an organization’s vision. With it, you can actively track progress towards your goals.

For each goal put a measurement and target on a scorecard (in Excel). With the scorecard, you can actively track your progress on a monthly basis. To begin using the scorecard, select the “Top Five” key goals that you want to measure that will have the most impact in moving your church forward.

To develop a scorecard ask, “what are the key performance measures you can track in order to monitor if you are achieving your goals?”

Execution

Implementation is the most difficult part of the planning process: it is actually achieving the goals set out in the plan while remaining alert and flexible to new opportunities as they unfold. The overall aim is integrating the strategic planning with daily, weekly, and monthly routines. It is good to remember that a plan that is well-implemented brings Godly success to the church.

An administrator devoted to the successful implementation of the plan is key. The plan needs to be supported with people, money, time, systems, and, above all, communication. Communicate the plan to everyone in your organization. Hold a monthly or quarterly strategy meeting to report on the progress toward achieving the goals. Take corrective actions as needed. Above all, remember that implementing the plan requires continued daily prayer for direction accompanied by obedient action in response to what God reveals.

Conclusion

A strategic plan is a living, dynamic document. It drives your church and must be integrated into every fiber of your organization, so all staff is helping to move the church in the same direction. All the best missions and strategies in the world are a waste of time if they are not implemented. To be truly successful, the plan cannot gather dust on the bookshelf. You know what “shelf” we are talking about.

Strategic planning is about keeping the plan active so that it does not gather that proverbial dust. Know what your end result looks like and where your milestones should be. Plan your near-term actions and evaluate your progress each quarter. Are you where you thought you would be if you had been on target? Or, if you are off target, how far are you off? The course correction to put you back on track becomes your next action plan. When your church has a clear plan and acts according to the plan, you are going to go from where you are to where you want to go, therefore, ensuring your success!

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When establishing strategic objectives that span 3 to 5 years, a series of supportive goals and actions typically cascade through the structure of the organization.  At its core, the selected metrics for these goals and actions should drive the strategic objective.  The underlying metrics must align to ensure the success of the long-term goal.

No single metric can provide a clear direction. From a process perspective, the use of multiple metrics can serve as drivers that aggregate toward the fulfillment the strategic objective.  These tips should help focus your metric selection:

1. Select metrics that drive performance, not just measure history.

The propensity to measure the past through financial gains, losses and revenue for example, does not help give insight on the processes that so vitally impact organizational success.  Transformation that is typically inherent in strategic objectives is often dependent on improving intangibles like service, customer loyalty and morale.   Gauging these requires an understanding of the conditions that need to exist in order to select effective metrics.

2. Include metrics that consider the “lead and lag” relationships.

Internally, this may mean projecting the value of employee training for reaching a new level of efficiency or priming the organization for innovation.  Externally, this may mean staying responsive to market conditions or other relationships that may impact your value chain.  A true competitive edge requires attention to the “lead and lag” indicators of your organization’s environment, so you might as well include these as metrics that can be reviewed regularly in your strategic execution schedule.

3. Opt for metrics that reinforce the best in your employees.

All organizations have employees that offer skill and talent.  How effectively does your organization tap into the collective strength within?  Recognizing the ways in which employees are finding inspiration or assigning meaning to their jobs is key in understanding what needs to be nurtured.  Create an environment in which employees can be motivated by inspiration and meaning, and you’ll have a solid foundation to take your organization to another level of strategic achievement.  Needing some inspiration around this topic? Check out a new TED talk (available above) about “Measuring What Counts” for some ideas.

These are just a few considerations, but should be a good start when determining metrics for your strategic plan.  Creating conditions for success means measuring performance and processes from a holistic perspective, which is what a great strategic plan should demand.

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MANY ASPECTS of an envisioned future can be influenced or changed by decisions and actions you make today. For the church, this is not simply projection-based planning but the realization that through prayer and obedience you can be a catalyst to help bring about a future that is in alignment with God’s will. Through prayer, the framework for plan is established. Implementing strategy requires continued daily prayer for direction accompanied by obedient action in response to what God reveals.

Start your Plan

Try a 10-day free trial of our online strategic planning system that makes creating and executing a plan amazingly simple.

• Take a tour
• Quickly develop a plan managed online
• Increase efficiency and effectiveness.
• Send auto email alerts reminding your team of their goals.
• Reduce administrative time managing plan details.

One of the questions many churches wrestle with is, “Should a church try to plan future direction?” James 4:14 (NASB) says, “Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.” So why plan? The next verse goes on to say, “Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” The real issue is not whether we should plan; it is whether we will put God’s will first in our planning, always deferring to His wisdom and sovereignty.

Our attitude when we plan should result in this kind of prayer: “God, we want Your will above everything else. We’re not just asking You to bless whatever plan we devise—we want Your wisdom. We want to move by Your direction and in Your timing. Please guide our thoughts and keep our hearts tuned to Yours.”

God designed us with the ability and need to plan. From the moment He placed Adam in the Garden “to work it and take care of it” (Genesis 2:15), planning became essential. If anything, it is even more important after the Fall:

“Be very careful, then, how you live— not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:15–8).

These verses warn us not to be foolish, just doing what comes naturally with no organizational strategy. That results in weakness and missed opportunities to live for God in an evil environment. Planning is a necessity, helping us to be aware and make the most of the opportunities God provides. The key is to make plans by seeking God and asking for His discernment.

A Scriptural Basis for Planning

There are many reasons why it is scriptural to plan. Consider these reasons and supporting scriptures:

God’s Word Teaches That We Should Plan

“The plans of the diligent lead to profit” (Proverbs 21:5). “Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and your plans will succeed” (Proverbs 16:3).

Planning Helps To Enable God’s Best For Us

God wants only the best for his children. When we make Him the center of our planning, we free Him to give us His best. “May he give you the desire of your heart and make all your plans succeed” (Psalm 20:4).

Planning Means Anticipating Costs and Consequences

“The wisdom of the prudent is to give thought to their ways” (Proverbs 14:8). Prudent churches know where they are going. Planning helps them get there. Every mistake revealed on a planning sheet saves the cost, pain, and waste of the same mistake in real life.

A wise person calculates the hard and hidden costs. Luke 14:28–33 presents two parables that underscore the importance of counting the cost. The first is about building a tower: “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it?” (Luke 14:28). Jesus relates both stories to the cost of being His disciple, emphasizing the price to be paid and the necessity of counting the cost beforehand.

Planning Produces Favor

When God gives us understanding, we gain favor with man. “Good understanding wins favor” (Proverbs 13:15). People will see that we know where we are going and how to get there, that we know the costs as well as the consequences. Being diligent assumes planning, and those plans lead to plenty. “The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty” (Proverbs 21:5).

Planning Helps Us to Heed the Warnings in Scripture

The Scriptures warn us: “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth” (Proverbs 27:1). “Pride only breeds quarrels, but wisdom is found in those who take advice” (Proverbs 13:10). Pride, as used here, means relying solely on our own opinion and not seeking God’s wisdom or the counsel of others. This is human nature—the fallen nature that is in deadly rebellion to God’s purposes.

A good planning process keeps us humble and constantly returns us to God for His perspective. While planning, we continually ask, “Lord, what is your direction in this area?”

Planning Can Keep Us From Disaster

Planning can keep us from doing what might seem right but would end up in disaster. We usually intend to do the right thing but we often fail to think through the whole process. After the disaster, our postmortem evaluation reveals that we did not consider unintended consequences: “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death” (Proverbs 14:12).

We need to be prudent, carefully considering our steps; “A simple man believes anything, but a prudent man gives thought to his steps” (Proverbs 14:15).

How We Should Approach Planning

Scripture teaches us the planning process. Consider these guidelines:

Plan By Seeking God’s Wisdom

We begin the planning process by seeking what God wants us to accomplish. He reveals His desires through Scripture, inspired thoughts in our minds, and the counsel of others. He may also use dreams, visions, and prophecy.

The key is to meet with God, get our directions from Him, and then be obedient. There is no substitute for serious study of God’s Word. The same is true for unhurried time in which we not only speak our concerns but also listen. Look at the importance God places on wisdom:

“Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12).

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Howard Olsen, co-founder of M3 Planning

Howard Olsen, co-founder of M3 Planning, (the company that developed MyStrategicPlan) is a lead market researcher and strategist for our consulting services arm. With a Ph.D. in international business and marketing, as well as an MBA and a CPA, Howard provides our clients insight on effective interpretation and use of data.  He shares his insights regarding measurement below.

Q:  What are some key aspects to consider when assigning measurement to strategic goals and actions?

A:  Traditional approaches to measurement have been financially-based, which recant history instead of reflecting something holistic about an organization. Measurements can be predictive to some degree and determining if any industry comparisons exist is an important step to developing metrics, making companies more competitive,  as well as aiming for internal improvements. 

A great resource for this kind of data is www.kpilibrary.com.  When determining any metric, make sure it is one you can stay with for a period of time for benchmarking purposes.

Q:  What are some common pitfalls that seem to prevent companies from translating measurement into action?

A:  Many times, companies do not take stock of what kind of data can be easily collected.  A thorough understanding of measurements currently being collected in any organization is a proper place to start.  This helps to ensure that any additional data system that develops will correspond and correlate metrics that make sense.   Interpretation of the data that develops must be consistent throughout the organization, with a clear understanding of how the data reflects existing (or non-existent) processes.

Q:  What is your recommendation to companies that can’t seem to find the right metric to measure?

Start your Plan

Try a 10-day free trial of our online strategic planning system that makes creating and executing a plan amazingly simple.

• Take a tour
• Quickly develop a plan managed online
• Increase efficiency and effectiveness.
• Send auto email alerts reminding your team of their goals.
• Reduce administrative time managing plan details.

A:  Convene a group of employees that will be clearly impacted by what is to be measured.  Many times they will be able to provide additional insight.  You can also establish a proxy that will measure accomplishments or track the momentum related to accomplishments that collectively signify success of a related goal.   In addition, a proxy represents what may be needed but currently is not available or not readily available.

Just as you cannot fly an airplane with only one instrument, much is the same for organizations.  Multiple metrics/indicators drive holistic performance.  Base your organization’s performance with measurements that meaningfully capture customer relationships, processes and internal organizational growth as well as the financial picture.  This is a great way to structure strategic approaches and set up key performance indicators.

“In God we trust, all others bring data.” – W. Edwards Deming

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Prudent treatment of a SWOT in the planning process has the power to convert weaknesses into strengths and threats into opportunities during execution. In fact, this is exactly what your plan’s measurements should be communicating.

To keep your plan agile, consider weaving in SWOT-oriented updates to keep your plan agile. Sources of this type of data could come from:

• your customer feedback program,
• your HR department,
• or from competitor updates to name a few.

You will need to have methods identified that will help you effectively tap into your environment. When considering sources of this data, make sure that you are receiving a balanced diet of information: mine for strengths as intensely as weaknesses; opportunities as intensely as threats.

When determining your strategic plan implementation, make these updates part of your executive agenda template. Consistent approaches for collecting this feedback over time will aggregate into the type of information that you can rely and strategically act upon. By staying on top of what is occurring in your environment, and determining how that may affect strategy execution, you will be keeping your plan relevant.

Another important by-product of this exercise is that you will be increasing your capacity to react upon external trends or events when warranted. To adapt to any externality effectively requires a base of knowledge primed to absorb the details. In a rapidly changing environment, this equates to the development of a competitive advantage.

Finally, by continually adding outside feedback into your SWOT, it will make the next update of your strategic plan that much more effective. Your organization will have a more fundamental understanding of what strengths, weaknesses, opportunities or threats really looks like from an organizational frame of reference rather than an individual perspective.

Strategy Check: Is your SWOT up-to-date?

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I would not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum. - Frances Willard

To this order, educating your team about the strategic planning process itself can create an understanding of how the process culminates into a final plan (i.e. how a SWOT is used for determining potential areas of priority, which are then developed into strategic themes). A simple flow chart may be all that is needed to make sure everyone knows the general development route your strategic plan will take.

In the development and execution of the plan, there will be dialogue. To optimize these exchanges and keep them constructive, the entire team needs to recognize the balance needed between informing, recommending and deciding in order to have a true collective outcome. In the delivery of this dialogue, we can’t stress enough the importance of language symmetry. For example, are your organization milestones considered “objectives” or “goals”? Do these terms change at different stratums, for say a department or an individual? There is no right or wrong answer; the point is that whatever resonates best with your organization should be identified and incorporated. Language must name the key features of your strategy landscape with rigorous consistency so that any adaptations toward a common direction can be achieved without confusion. After you are finished ironing out any contentions of what a strategic plan is or is not, just remember it is your job as a driver of strategy to continually develop those common nodes of understanding (process, roles, communication) as they relate to the strategic execution cycle that your organization should have in place. Commit to a shared language standard, and find ways to incorporate repetition into the sharing of ideas and concepts. Make it ritualistic throughout your strategic development and execution cycles. Remember, it takes courage and discipline to practice an art that is never fully mastered.

STRATEGY CHECK: Does everyone in your strategy voyage understand the flight plan?

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Let’s start by reiterating the key difference between communities and teams, according to the article’s authors (Richard McDermott and Douglas Archibald) are: 1) The incorporation of the long-view. 2) Require peer collaboration and collective responsibility. 3) Intentional network expansion. 4) Stewardship of unique knowledge that can be pooled for group use.

Related, we see value in creating some time to have your team communicate something about their work experience background or even social background that might apply to your organization’s challenges today. Engage with other leaders in your company to talk about perspective of a similar big solution they engineered, or the learning of the last failure in a related realm. If your competitive position allows for it, source external sources within your profession that might provide some common insight. (Ie. Separate city engineers sharing information.)

The point is to extrapolate and pool the intellect you have access to, and even expand your collaboration reach into new networks wherever possible. Steer your network to serve the larger good. Then, get your organization’s leadership to formally recognize its existence and value, while being sure to create a protocol in which leadership enjoys updates from your community’s findings. This is how the great insights can formally make their way back into organizational processes, perhaps even creating better quality decisions than most individual experts acting alone can make.

Finally, a few preconditions to make sure your community’s mass collaboration is the best it can be: 1) Diversify: Make sure you source a varied group of folks, that of different age, race, education track. 2) Decentralize: People with general and specific knowledge can contribute. 3) Effective Aggregation: Create shared manners in which information is gathered and how it feeds into the “collective mind”. 4) Ensure Independence: Take the stress out of this shared situation, and eliminate the pressure to confirm. Not only should you ensure independence, you should use your community as a way to celebrate it through sharing!

Strategy Check: Individual intellects, like departments, can experience the silo-effect: Remember to tap into the unique perspectives all around you.

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Starting at the team member level, key staff should update the weekly actions they are responsible for.  Department leaders should then organize a monthly meeting with all key staff to review department-owned goals and performance metrics. This is also the time to brainstorm, discuss and take action on tactical or operational issues that might be clogging progress.

At the department level, a collective meeting each month is required for the senior management team to report on department-owned goals and performance measurements, with an emphasis on what your organization’s key performance indicators are telling you.  This is where goal status and realized performance have an opportunity to be analyzed and learned from. As a result, recognition for achievements and cooperation can be deemed appropriate or the need for corrective actions can come to light.  

Then gather your entire leadership team for an intensive review of the top, pre-defined strategic issues quarterly. These two questions will help you determine the context of the issue:  1) Is the issue a technical problem in implementing the operational structure?  (i.e. Are the reports not working out? Is the scheduling not conducive to department workflows?)   2) Are there problems with incentive alignment or the culture? (And if so, how can you best address the expectations for change to be managed?)

For any of these meetings, be it at the team member review or the senior management session, you should standardize the preparation needed and the report structure. For many organizations, this represents a significant time drain if not appropriately planned.  Nip this in the bud and come up with a format that clearly communicates goal/action, and performance measurement.  Focus on the tasks at hand, clearly and effectively, and you’ll find yourself moving toward the broad improvement themes contained within your Strategic Plan.

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