Principle 2: Focus on Achieving Goals (Item 10)

Clear direction allows organizational alignment and a focus on achievement of goals.

Alternatively: Mutually agreed plans translate organizational direction into action.

Why this question is important

You should now be doing your strategic work better than you did three years ago. You should have learned from the decisions you have made and the mistakes that you made. You should be better at finding out what is happening around you, setting targets, enabling and involving people and measuring your success.

Which stage have you reached

Organizations appear to move through several stages in their planning.

• Stage 1 is dominated by considerable discussion about the difference between a mission and a vision
• Stage 2 focuses on the differences between objectives and strategies
• Stage 3 involves discussion about what are real KPIs and what are not, what are measurements and what are indicators
• Stage 4 has argument about Key Result Areas and Key Success Factors
• Stage 5 includes the future, risk assessment and stakeholders in planning
• Stage 6 has scenario planning with targets and milestone tracking

The debate in each stage can become very heated and acrimonious. We think that organizations have to go through the different stages as part of an important learning process. However, recognize the discussion for what it is and that the stages exist. If you are in stage 1, trying to think through the difference between an objective and a strategy, you are a long way from coming to grips with scenario planning.

A culture of change

As we discussed previously, people everywhere automatically push back when pushed into something they do not believe in. This is one of the reasons why meaningful involvement by people who will be effected by any change is important. However, there are other factors as well. Because of personality types and cultural differences, different people respond differently to a proposed change.

Many people respond very well to crisis management. "We have this incredibly difficult thing facing us people! If we do not solve it we will all die or lose our jobs!" Targets are achieved by trial and error. Trying one thing after another or all at once until something finally works. What can be described as a "ready, fire, aim" approach. An approach where chaos is good and crises are fantastic.

On the other hand, many other people hate chaos and crises and tend to hide when these occur. They need guidelines – a map — to help them work through periods of change and uncertainty. They need structure, reinforcement of past successes, emphasis of who we are and why we are good at it, constant checking on progress against the plan or map and lots of coaching. This is shown below. When structure is provided for change, these people can thrive on it (top right). When it is not provided, you get various types of dysfunctional behavior.

In Japan, a target is reached through meticulous planning - incremental continuous improvement and breakthroughs.

The management literature suggests that you need a combination of these three approaches for various situations. In some instances, you need to let the panic and chaos of the crisis determine the behavior. When you can, provide guidelines and maps. Sometimes, meticulous planning will be needed.

Scenario planning

Scenario planning is very useful for preparing for uncertain futures. No one can see the exact future. Nevertheless, you can speculate about what various futures might look like. These futures are called `scenarios'. In companies that use this method, the scenarios enter the daily language of the employees. For example, people work towards "scenario five".

Hindsight

You also need a retrospective view that lets you look back at what you have been doing and say "hey, all those things we did were about x. We clearly need to be doing x. So let us add it to our strategic plan and make sure we do it very, very well". For example "that new computer system we bought last year really reduced our cycle time and reduce errors, which please our customers and appears to be giving us a competitive advantage". Could become the `strategy' — "invest in technology to reduce cycle time and reduce errors". In the hectic business world, what in hindsight looks like truly insightful strategic work often developed just like this. When you look back, you can see that you have been following a type of strategy.