Integrative Strategic Planning

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Brianne Porter
5 years ago
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1 Offering Brief Integrative Strategic Planning A Balanced Approach to Defining Organizational Direction Presented by Compass Consulting Edina, Minnesota

2 An Overview of Integrative Strategic Planning (ISP) Organizations are complex, multi-dimensional entities. It follows that strategic planning for organizations is a complex, multi-dimensional task. And designing and facilitating a strategic planning process that meets the needs of today s management planning teams is a complex, multi-dimensional activity. All of the above statements are the reason that many planning processes are frustrating, and their outcomes often unsatisfactory. Such results offer incentive for creating a planning framework that would de-complexify this task the specifications for which could include such phrases as synthesizing its essentials, minimizing its abstractions, curing its limitations, expediting its flow... all designed to ensure the utility of its outcome. These specifications guided the creation of the ISP model and process during a year-long research project in the early 1990s, which evolved into a program thesis written in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a master s degree. It fuses insights from career experience, extensive study in the fields of business administration and organization development, and subsequent successful application in a wide variety of consulting engagements. Its three grounding principles are: Ÿ The central focus of any enterprise must be on serving the needs of its customer, and thus consistent explicit emphasis on the customer is the central focus throughout the design and facilitation of the ISP process. Ÿ All organizations have technical, economic and social aspects and thus equal explicit attention is paid to each of these aspects during the ISP process to ensure a useful, actionable outcome. Ÿ Any planning initiative anticipates, implies, or mandates some kind(s) of change and thus explicit rationales and methodologies for managing organizational change are factored into the ISP process. Following is a description of the graphic diagrams that guide the ISP process. 1

3 ISP Graphic Diagram #1: View / Focus / Context The Overall Framework Every organization is a complex adaptive system, comprised of interdependent internal resources and competencies, all collectively focused on creating products and services for its customer, who exists in an accessible marketplace that is part of an external context or landscape. For planning purposes, it is useful to gain discrete perspectives on two arbitrarily separated dimensions (i.e., relative to types of resources and competencies), each having characteristics worthy of separate analytical analysis; and on an additional dimension relating to methodology for activating initiatives. Ÿ The operational dimension focuses on the provision and coordination of economic resources and technical means and processes by which products and services are designed and produced for customers, modulated by quantitative measurement of activities and financial measurement of results. Ÿ The organizational dimension focuses on the effective interactive engagement of individuals and groups of people with varying competencies accomplishing assigned tasks. Ÿ The change dimension focuses on how new human resources/competencies must be optimally applied in achieving desired new goals and outcomes. The landscape is also populated by other interrelated constituencies (internal or external clusters or entities with which an organization must maintain dynamic sustaining relationships)... and influenced by the structural conditions of the macro environment (over which little immediate control is possible). 2

4 Integrative Strategic Planning A Systems View A Customer Focus An Internal/External Context Operational Perspective Organizational Perspective Customer Change Methodology Constituencies Customers Employees Owners Suppliers Community Environment Political Economic Social Legal Technological Copyright 2011 Compass Consulting. All rights reserved. 3

5 ISP Graphic Diagram #2: A Comprehensive Process The Working Components This exploded version of the ISP Framework diagram effectively represents a picture of a strategic plan, identifying a first level of detail* in the elements (divided sections) of each of the now-separated operational, organizational and change dimension circles. The ISP process seeks to remedy the deficiency of many conventional approaches to planning, which place primary emphasis on the objective, quantitative, functional elements arrayed in the operational perspective circle...but neglect the critical importance of being explicitly planful about the social (human) side of things, represented by elements in both the organizational perspective and change methodology circles. The words in the centers of the dimension circles identify the distinctly different modes of activating the elements of each respective dimension i.e., one manages functions, leads people, and implements change.** The balance that makes a plan actionable, and much more likely to accomplish its intended purpose, is achieved by spending equal time in each of the dimensions, thus integrating new perspectives and methodologies into a single cohesive piece of work. * A next level of detail describes specific content of each section element. ** A next level of detail describes activities that differentiate these distinctions. 4

6 Integrative Strategic Planning A Comprehensive Process Production Structures Engineering Management Marketing Customer Purpose Leadership Relationships Administration Rewards Finance Systems Removing Constraints Guiding Transitions Implementation Providing Support Creating Conditions Sustaining Momentum Constituencies Environment Copyright 2011 Compass Consulting. All rights reserved. 5

7 ISP Graphic Diagram #3: A Cohesive Outcome The Final Result New collective insights and decisions...conceived within the Framework (Diagram #1), and focused by the Working Components (Diagram #2)...are symbolically integrated as discrete subplans into a single strategic document that defines organizational direction and guides plan activation. Outcomes for participants: The process is designed to enable people to get their minds around the whole system planning task i.e., to literally see and come to better understand the variety of dynamical relationships that exist among all aspects of their enterprise. Planning groups become grounded in a common frame of reference that minimizes abstractions, ambiguities and conceptual gaps often experienced in conventional planning activities. Confidence is derived through adapting its generic design to a planning group s own needs, regarding their organization s particular configuration and current circumstances. Overall, total immersion in the ISP process fosters team development and organizational learning, leading to consensus, conviction and commitment to the purpose and focus of their firm. 6

9 ISP Graphic Diagram #4: Plan Initiation The Starting Point The starting point, to inform everything that follows in the ISP process, is a field formed by a linkage between two core elements, one from each dimension: Marketing (where the theory of the business is articulated) is the lead element that directly connects the operational (functional) dimension to the customer; Purpose [a composite of vision, mission, and values] (where the intention of the business is articulated) is the lead element that directly connects the organizational (human) dimension to the customer. Planning considerations of all other elements of the model derive their substantive focus from cross-informed conclusions arrived at in the strategic dialogue facilitated within this linked field. 8

11 Notes on facilitation of the process: After forming a client diagnosis and design committee to adapt the generic ISP framework (as or if appropriate) to a client firm s particular context and current priorities, the process is launched with activities sequentially staged along three parallel tracks: a plan-creation track (the designated planning group produces a tangible, suitable document); a teaming track (optimal mini-opportunities for developing interpersonal awareness and skills, which arise in groups that are intensely involved in figuring out their future together, are intentionally captured); and an org-input track (selected sub-groups from the larger organization are brought in to inform the planning process, and be informed by it). As the process unfolds, pertinent expert readings are introduced at key points to enlighten and sharpen participants planning task focus. And progress judgments (related to task, time and budget expectations) are made when a plan section is sufficiently complete to move to a next phase, and as the entire process reaches its conclusion. 10

12 Every organization has only two problems: external adaptation and internal integration. A plan is a working hypothesis projecting the continuing simultaneous reconciliation of these two problems, as a firm dynamically adapts its way forward. 11

13 WILLIAM L. HANNON, Principal Bill Hannon established his organizational strategy and change consulting practice in Minneapolis in the mid-1980s, following over two decades of experience in sales, marketing and general management positions in the paper and chemical industries, with a large publicly held corporation and two smaller privately owned companies. He also has been active in professional management training and university-level business teaching. His consulting has included a variety of planning and organization development work, on both project and continuing retainer bases. When appropriate, client objectives are pursued through his Integrative Strategic Planning process, in which he engages the firm in a strategic dialogue leading to a comprehensive whole system plan with balanced operational, organizational and change components. A specialized focus of Bill s work is Marketing Planning, a core element of strategy formulation. Services range from guiding plan initiation and synthesis, through sales management system and sales program development and implementation. His clients are manufacturers, distributors and service companies, in industrial, commercial, medical and professional service fields. Bill is also the creator of The Business System Lab, a customized in-company action learning initiative for operating-level teams that is uniquely designed to rapidly elevate their collective competence in strategy implementation. Outcomes for participants are an actionable understanding of how core business functions and people fit and work together as a system to create value for customers and profit for the company. And, he offers facilitated Serial C-Work sessions (based upon distinctions between three fundamental types of organizational work) to meet the need of leadership and management groups to periodically convene with an intentional focus on inquiry and reflection around the broader and deeper matters that join them in a common purpose. Mr. Hannon s educational credentials include the following academic degrees: Bachelor of Arts, Carleton College, Northfield, MN; Master of Business Administration, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, MN; and Master of Science in Organization Development, Pepperdine University, Culver City, CA. 12