1. Key points from the Organizational Profile that are relevant to their Strategic Planning system. Examine both Strategy Development and Strategy Implementation.
2. Looking at the section on Strategic Planning, discuss how the organization has addressed the Strategic Planning criterion with respect to the issues we have looked at, i.e., sustainability and the triple bottom line, the organization as a system, learning systems etc.
Learning Criterion #1
How is your strategy developed
This item calls for basic information on the planning process and for information on all the key influences, risks, challenges, and other requirements that might affect the organization’s future opportunities. It includes directions taking a long-term view as appropriate and possible from the perspectives of the organization and their industry or marketplace. This approach is intended to provide a thorough and realistic context for the development of a customer and market-focused strategy to guide ongoing decision making, resource allocation, and overall management.
Strategy Development is intended to cover all types of businesses, for-profit and nonprofit organizations, competitive situations, strategic issues, planning approaches, and plans. The requirements explicitly call for a future-oriented basis for action, but do not imply the need for formal planning departments, specific planning cycles, or a specified way of visualizing the future. Even if the organization is seeking to create an entirely new business, it is still necessary to set and to test the objectives that define and guide critical actions and performance.
Strategy Development emphasizes competitive leadership, which usually depends on revenue growth and operational effectiveness. Competitive leadership requires a view of the future that includes not only the markets or segments in which your organization competes, but also how it competes. How it competes presents many options and requires that an organization understands their own, as well as their competitors’, strengths and weaknesses. Although no specific time horizons are included, the thrust of this Item is sustained competitive leadership.
An increasingly important part of strategic planning is projecting the future competitive and collaborative environment. Such projections help to detect and reduce competitive threats, to shorten reaction time, and to identify opportunities. Depending on the size and type of organization, future core competencies, maturity of markets, pace of change, and competitive parameters (such as price, costs, or the innovation rate), organizations might use a variety of modeling, scenarios, or other techniques and judgments to anticipate the competitive and collaborative environment.
Learning criterion #2
How is your strategy deployed
This criterion asks how the action plans are developed and deployed to your workforce, key suppliers, and partners. Accomplishment of action plans requires resources and performance measures, as well as the alignment of the plans of your work units, suppliers, and partners. Of central importance is how the organization achieves alignment and consistency, for example, via work systems, work processes, and key measurements. Also, alignment and consistency are intended to provide a basis for setting and communicating priorities for ongoing improvement activities — part of the daily work of all work units. In addition, performance measures are critical for tracking performance.
Many types of analyses can be performed to ensure financial resources are available to support accomplishment of the action plans, while meeting existing obligations. For current operations, these efforts might include the analysis of cash flows, net income statements, and current liabilities versus current assets. For investments to accomplish action plans, the efforts might include analysis of discounted cash flows, return on investment (ROI), or return on invested capital (ROIC). The specific types of analyses will vary from organization to organization. These analyses should help the organization assess the financial viability of their current operations and the potential viability of and risks associated with your action plan initiatives.
Action plans should include human resource or workforce plans that are aligned with and support your overall strategy.
Examples of possible human resource plan elements are:
• a redesign of the work organization and jobs to increase workforce empowerment and decision making
• initiatives to promote greater labor-management cooperation, such as union partnerships
• consideration of the impacts of outsourcing on the organization’s current workforce and initiatives
• initiatives to prepare for future workforce capability and capacity needs
• initiatives to foster knowledge sharing and organizational learning
• modification of your compensation and recognition systems to recognize team, organizational, stock market, customer, or other performance attributes; or
• education and training initiatives, such as developmental programs for future leaders, partnerships with universities to help ensure the availability of an educated and skilled workforce, and the establishment of training programs on new technologies important to the future success of your workforce and your organization.
Projections and comparisons in this criterion are intended to improve the organization’s ability to understand and track dynamic, competitive performance factors. Projected performance might include changes resulting from new business ventures, entry into new markets, the introduction of new technologies, product innovations, or other strategic thrusts. Through this tracking process, the organization should be better prepared to take into account its rate of improvement and change relative to that of competitors or comparable organizations and relative to its own targets or stretch goals. Such tracking serves as a key diagnostic tool for management.
Use PRO-TEC and Baldrige documents previously uploaded.