Effective Planning Retreat Best Practices

For business leaders who go on an annual planning retreat or "off-site", here's an article from the Harvard Business Review about "Off-Sites that Work"

Some key considerations:

• Of all the meetings top executives go to in a year, none is more important than the strategy off-site, where the most essential conversations for the future of the business occur. Yet it is the rare management team that can say its strategy off-site truly changed the way the business is run.
• At best, participants do some vague direction setting and work on team-building skills; at worst, they write off the retreat as a waste of time and resources. It needn’t be like that.

Here's a a set of best practices that businesses can use to make the most of this planning retreat process:

• Essentially, the problem with most strategy off-sites is that they’re insufficiently structured. People think that if you schedule a meeting, invite top leaders (and perhaps an outside expert), and block off units of time to discuss big subjects, the rest will take care of itself. In reality, formlessness leads to aimlessness.

• Oddly enough, only rigorously designed meetings give rise to truly candid strategy discussions. That rigor starts before the meeting, when the scope of the matters discussed must be limited, the participant list drawn up accordingly, the relevant materials (and only those) sent out and absorbed, and a detailed agenda established.

• During the meeting, the pace and quality of the conversation can be managed through attention to politics and by using carefully tailored frameworks, decision points, and group exercises.

• After the meeting, an action plan ensures clear accountability and follow-through."

BOTTOMLINE: "If you and your executive team spend four days a year rafting down rivers together, you’ll eventually get good at rafting down rivers.

Spend four days a year having well-designed strategy conversations together, and you will transform your annual off-site from a meaningless junket into a genuine turning point for your business."

Strategic Planning Retreat? Don't Skip This Year's!

This Year's Management Off Site: Necessary or Negligent?

That's the title of a new article from Harvard Business Publishing, which offers up the pros and cons of scheduling the "annual planning retreat" during times of economic uncertainty.

The pros?

• Hunkering down is not a strategy.
• Management alignment is critical and at risk.
• Creativity is more important than ever.
• Pure ROI

The cons?

• Managers are talking more than ever now.
• It wouldn't be prudent to spend money on a hotel, food and facilitator.
• It sends a bad message to those still on-site.

BOTTOMLINE: The authors suggest the following:

"I would not advocate postponing or skipping your strategic planning session. Strategy is as important if not more important than ever. They are meaningful events. Successful off sites build employee loyalty and camaraderie. When I think back on my positive business experiences, they cluster around positive team interactions happening during off site sessions. Also, much greater work happens when employees are unencumbered by both in-the-business and personal obligations."

Execution of Strategy Requires Change

The successful execution of strategy ultimately requires a change in the behavior of employees.

New research conducted over the last two decades has produced a more accurate view of human behavior change resulting from an integration of psychology (the study of the human mind and human behavior) and neuroscience (the study of the anatomy and physiology of the brain).

An article titled “The Neuroscience of Leadership“, from Strategy+Business provides an interesting discussion on organisational change, some of the interesting points raised in the article are:

Some key points from the research:

• Change Is Pain: Organizational change is unexpectedly difficult because it provokes sensations of physiological discomfort. Trying to change any hardwired habit requires a lot of effort, in the form of attention. This often leads to a feeling that many people find uncomfortable. So they do what they can to avoid change.
• Behaviorism doesn’t work: Change efforts based on incentive and threat (the carrot and the stick) rarely succeed in the long run. Present the right incentives, and the desired change will naturally occur…… Yet there is plenty of evidence from both clinical research and workplace observation that change efforts based on typical incentives and threats (the carrot and the stick) rarely succeed in the long run.
• Humanism is overrated: In practice, the conventional empathic approach of connection and persuasion doesn’t sufficiently engage people. This phenomenon provides a scientific basis for some of the practices of leadership coaching. Rather than lecturing and providing solutions, effective coaches ask pertinent questions and support their clients in working out solutions on their own…. People can detect the difference between authentic inquiry and an effort to persuade them.
• Focus is power: The act of paying attention creates chemical and physical changes in the brain.
• Expectation shapes reality: People’s preconceptions have a significant impact on what they perceive. How, then, would you go about facilitating change? The impact of mental maps suggests that one way to start is by cultivating moments of insight. Large-scale behavior change requires a large-scale change in mental maps.
• Attention density shapes identity: Repeated, purposeful, and focused attention can lead to long-lasting personal evolution. For insights to be useful, they need to be generated from within, not given to individuals as conclusions.
• Mindful Change in Practice. Start by leaving problem behaviors in the past; focus on identifying and creating new behaviors. Over time, these may shape the dominant pathways in the brain. This is achieved through a solution-focused questioning approach that facilitates self-insight, rather than through advice-giving.

BOTTOMLINE: "Perhaps you are thinking, “This all sounds too easy. Is the answer to all the challenges of change just to focus people on solutions instead of problems, let them come to their own answers, and keep them focused on their insights?” Apparently, that’s what the brain wants."

(Tip of the hat to George Amber at The Practice of Leadership)

2009 Is Half Over - How To Improve Your Strategic Planning Process

Hard to believe - but 2009 is now half over, which means it's time to assess how your organization faired so far.

The most important thing to do is step back and improve your strategic planning process.

Even top performing companies undertake a time-consuming strategic planning process that unfortunately leaves many executives frustrated with the results.

This sense of disappointment was captured in a recent McKinsey quarterly survey of nearly 800 top executives:

• Only 45 percent of the respondents said they were satisfied with the strategic-planning process
• Moreover, only 23 percent indicated that major strategic decisions were made during the process.

The operative question for organizational leadership is: "how can you make your strategic planning process more effective?"

Here are five ideas you can use to make make your strategic planning processes run better.

1. Start with the issues - conduct internal and external reviews and a SWOT analysis
2. Bring together the right people - involve the most relevant people in the organization, and consider involving external resources for new insights
3. Adapt planning cycles to the needs of the business - separate the strategic formulation process from the business planning process
4. Implement a strategic-performance-management system - that assigns accountability for results of initiatives and projects established to meet company goals.
5. Integrate human-resources systems into the strategic plan - include performance appraisal, 360 feedback surveys and incentive pay based on performance results

Linking Strategy And Execution - A Parallel Universe?

In their book "The Execution Premium: Linking Strategy to Operations for Competitive Advantage" (Harvard Business School Press), Harvard professors Dr. Robert S. Kaplan and Dr. David P. Norton (creators of the balanced scorecard) offer their lastest insights concerning the "rules" of successful strategy execution.

• The failure to balance the tensions between strategy and operations is pervasive.
• Breakdowns in a company’s management system, not managers’ lack of ability or effort, are what cause a company’s underperformance.
• By management system, they're referring to the integrated set of processes and tools that a company uses to develop its strategy, translate it into operational actions, and monitor and improve the effectiveness of both.
• By creating a closed-loop management system, companies can avoid such shortfalls.

Interestingly, Kaplan and Norton's description of such a closed-loop management system closely parallels the detailed steps of the Six Disciplines Methodology, (which are revealed in the award-winning business improvement book "Six Disciplines for Excellence," as indicated below:

• The loop comprises five stages, beginning with strategy development, which involves applying tools, processes, and concepts such as mission, vision, and value statements; SWOT analysis; shareholder value management; competitive positioning; and core competencies to formulate a strategy statement. (Discipline I)
• That statement is then translated into specific objectives and initiatives, using other tools and processes, including strategy maps and balanced scorecards. (Disciplines II and III)
• Strategy implementation, in turn, links strategy to operations with a third set of tools and processes, including quality and process management, reengineering, process dashboards, rolling forecasts, activity-based costing, resource capacity planning, and dynamic budgeting. (Discipline IV)
• As implementation progresses, managers continually review internal operational data and external data on competitors and the business environment. Finally, managers periodically assess the strategy, updating it when they learn that the assumptions underlying it are obsolete or faulty. (Discipline VI)

BOTTOMLINE: While Kaplan and Norton's observations and recommendations specifically target much larger enterprises, Six Disciplines is the first complete strategy execution coaching program that is optimized for small and midsized businesses.

The Power of External Accountability Coaching

Let’s consider what accountability is, and how we can build an organizational culture that encourages it.

Be definition, accountability is being answerable or responsible for something. Accountability opens the door to ownership – not necessarily financial ownership -- but certainly emotional ownership, where someone acknowledges they’re responsible for some aspect of the organization.

Accountability is not something you “make” people do. It has to be chosen, accepted or agreed upon by people within your organization. People must “buy into” being accountable and responsible. For many, this is a new, unfamiliar, and sometimes, uncomfortable way to work. Most importantly: individual purpose and meaning comes from accepting responsibility and learning to be accountable.

To learn to be accountable means coming to grips with an element of discipline. Accountability is the opposite of permissiveness. Holding people accountable is really about the distribution of power and choice. When people have more choice, they are more responsible. When they become more responsible, they can have more freedom. When they are more accountable, they understand their purpose and role within the organization and are committed to making things happen.

BOTTOMLINE: How can your organization become more accountable for its actions? Consider an external accountability coach, such as those who are certified to coach the Six Disciplines strategy execution program. Building organizational accountability requires not only a systematic method based on proven best-practices; it also requires technologies that make the framework practical to use and implement on a daily, weekly, monthly quarterly and annual basis. In addition, it takes an external accountability coach to hold you and your organization accountable and to help these cultural changes to “stick” – and to make the changes last. Find out more about how the Six Disciplines program works here.

Simplicity of Strategy Leads To Action

Authors Dan and Chip Heath (Made To Stick) offer a FastCompany article titled "Analysis of Paralysis," in which they assert:

"If your strategy doesn't help employees act, it's not a strategy. You don't need to embrace simplicity just so your people can comprehend your message. The point of simplicity is more fundamental: Simplicity allows people to act."

Their observation?

Decision paralysis is the culprit. Every business must choose among attractive options: growing revenue versus maximizing profitability, quality versus speed to market. Too many choices leads to confusion, overload, paralysis. Too many choices debilitates an organization.

The solution?

BOTTOMLINE: Simplicity. A simple strategy can resolve decision paralysis. Or at least, it needs to be expressed and communicated simply. The simpler, the better, so that all employees can understand and embrace the strategy. Start with your organization's mission and vision. Then move on to your shared values and strategic position. Without simplicity, your employees will not understand the strategy well enough to align their daily activities toward executing it.

The Impact of Business Coaching

The International Coach Federation recently surveyed 210 coaching clients for demographic data and feedback /opinions about the value and use of business coaching. The survey was conducted by Amy Watson, Principal, PROfusion Public Relations, with survey design assistance by Jackie Rieves Watson, Ph.D., professor of Management and Statistics, Amber University.

Some of the more interesting survey findings:

Main role of the business coach:

• 84.8 % sounding board
• 78.1% motivator
• 56.7% friend
• 50.5% mentor
• 46.7% business consultant
• 41% teacher

Typical issues encountered during coaching:

• 84.5 % time management
• 74.3% career guidance
• 73.8% business advice
• 58.6% relationship / family issues
• 51.9% physical / wellness issues
• 45.2% personal issues
• 39.5% goal-setting
• 38.1% financial guidance
• 11% creativity

Outcomes attributed to coaching:

• 67.6% higher level of self-awareness
• 62.4% smarter goal-setting
• 60.5% more balanced life
• 57.1% lower stress levels
• 52.9% self-discovery
• 52.4% more self-confidence
• 43.3% improvement in quality of life
• 39.5% enhanced communication skills
• 35.7% project completion
• 33.8% health or fitness improvement
• 33.3% better relationship with staff
• 33.3% better family relationships
• 31.9% increased energy
• 31.9% more fun
• 25.7% more income
• 25.7% stopped a bad habit
• 24.3% change in career
• 22.9% more free time

(Hat tip to Laseter Business Coaching)

Management Consulting Firms Are Attracted to Six Disciplines

Find out why four more professional service firms offering management consulting services (in just the past three months!) have added the Six Disciplines strategy execution program to their service offerings.

Register for the next worldwide webcast, conducted by veteran CEO, strategy execution expert, and best-selling author, Gary Harpst.

During the webcast, you'll get answers to the following questions:

• How can you can add a new, complimentary business practice - while increasing the value of your existing consulting services?
• How you can offer additional services to your existing clients - without a huge investment?
• What can you do to offer a new service - that will attract new clients?
• How can you substantially increase the market value of your consulting practice?

If you're ready to discover the missing revenue stream in your management consulting practice, invest an hour of your time and investigate the unique strategy execution coaching practice called Six Disciplines.

Register for the webcast here.

CEO Fatigue and What You Can Do About It

“Well, Doc how bad is it?” asked Bob Bizibee, ABC Company’s CEO. “I’ve seen this before with other CEOs like you,” said Dr. Foster. “It starts out as a small rash, but before you know it, you’re not sleeping at night, you’re kicking the dog, and you’re yelling at your neighbors for looking at your grass.” “Hey I‘ve been busy, and the grass isn’t more than two feet tall,” screams Bob. “Bob,” said Dr. Foster, “I’m afraid you have NPNR - No Plan, No Results.” “Yep, Doc, that’s it – you nailed it,” said Bob.

Do you have NPNR? Do these symptoms fit you?”

• Crazy-busy – yet, you don’t exactly know where your time actually goes
• Overwhelmed - by the day-to-day tasks of running your company – but, you’re not spending enough time on building your organization
• Frustrated - by unfinished projects and the lack of consistent results
• Drained - by the energy it takes to make all the decisions – and want to delegate more
• Disappointed - that your team doesn’t have the same passion for your vision
• Exhausted - because you’re working too much, and playing too little

If misery loves company, then you’re in “good” company. Many CEOs just like you are fatigued from the pressures of managing the business during these tough times.

How do you know you might be suffering from NPNR?

Take the following quiz (4=strongly agree, 3=agree, 2=disagree, 1=strongly disagree)

1. I don’t have time to work on what’s really important.
2. We have a strategy, but no clear plan for executing it.
3. We can’t seem to follow a consistent plan from year to year.
4. We have great planning meetings, but lose all momentum within days or weeks following them.
5. We have employees who waste a lot of time on non-essential activities.
6. We don’t have a good way to know if we’re improving, getting worse or staying the same.
7. We seem to know what to do, but we just don’t seem to get it done.
8. We seem to make the same mistakes over and over again.
9. We don’t have an easy or consistent way to do meaningful employee reviews.
10. We don’t have a clear plan for leadership succession.

(If you scored over 25, stop what you’re doing and seek out professional business coaching help.)

Let’s face it – being the CEO (or president, or owner, or whatever title/role you have) – is a lonely job. And yes, the challenges of being the CEO are enormous – but, there’s good news: there IS a systematic approach to handle these ongoing pressures.

What if I were to suggest that there was a way for you and your organization to:

• Get better (by “get better” – you can use whatever definition makes sense to you –revenue, profit, productivity, utilization, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction)
• More importantly – stay better
• And do all this - with less stress and more fun?

What does it take?

1. The ability to accept and embrace change. Face reality. If you’re willing to get out of your comfort zone, as the old saying goes: “If nothing changes, nothing changes.”
2. The ability to delegate. A big part of being a leader is to learn to trust your team. Be clear about your vision, provide direction and support, measure their progress - and let them do their job.
3. The ability to spend time ON your business. Creating a culture of ownership and accountability within your business and making sure that systems and processes are in place so you can spend more time working “ON” the business – not just “IN” the business. Set a realistic plan in place and live up to the plan

BOTTOMLINE: Execution is a systematic process of rigorously discussing what, how, and why, questioning, tenaciously following through, and ensuring accountability. In its most fundamental sense, execution is a systematic way of exposing reality and acting on it. Most companies and their leaders don’t face reality very well. That is the basic reason they can't execute. However, set a plan, communicate the plan, follow the plan and the business improves. (By the way, that rash will go away too....)

(Eric Kurjan is the President of Six Disciplines Northwest Ohio. Six Disciplines brings “big company” process improvement to organizations looking break beyond the status quo. For more information visit www.SixDisciplines.com/Toledo, or call 419-348-1897.)