Are you looking for ways to be more strategic?
We often work with organisations that have lost their focus on performance. This can occur for a variety of reasons. Rather than managing from a strategic perspective, managers continually fire-fight. Problems are solved with short-term solutions. There is little time to focus on strategic goals or positioning the business to be successful in the years ahead. Staff don’t create and use processes that embed the business model and business knowledge. People have become reactive as they manage issues as they occur.
Refocus and Realign
Would you like to move from a short-term perspective to a longer term view? From fire-fighting to poised management? Follow the example of successful organisations.
Be More Strategic – 14 Things Successful Organisations Do That You Can Too
1. Identify and segment your customers.
Define and document their wants and needs.
2. Design high quality services and products that meet current and future customer needs.
Talk to your customer to identify those products or services that excite them.
3. Manage good customer relationships to maintain high levels of satisfaction.
Collect feedback and act on it promptly. Stay in touch with your key customers and involve them in your planning and visioning.
4. Be strategic – establish a mission, direction and values; define key business drivers; develop leadership processes to guide the team or organisation.
Your mission, direction and values will focus your team or organisation. They will help strategic decision-making. They will be the backbone of internal systems and processes.
5. Develop goals and strategies based on a thorough internal and external analysis.
Use good tools such as the Balanced Scorecard and Strategy maps to make sure the five business areas are covered – Business/Financial, Operational, Supplier Performance, Customer Satisfaction, Employee Engagement and Satisfaction.
6. Identify key performance measures based on the goals and strategies
Balance the measures across the five business areas. The temptation is to create too many Financial and Operational measures. Ensure that the five areas has a similar number of measures that are meaningful and give insight into that area.
Have a mix of leading and lagging measures.
7. Review the performance of all key measures.
Review the measures monthly at the Business Review Meetings.
8. Align the organisation or your team around the Mission, Direction and Values.
The goals and strategies should contribute to the Mission, Direction and Values. The key performance measures should be directly connected to the goals and strategies. The processes should support your performance goals and measures. Your workforce management should be focused on a workforce capable of fulfilling the mission and meeting the goals. An aligned, performance focused organisation is a powerful organism.
9. Define, control and continuously improve key processes.
Measure the performance of your key processes to show where to focus your improvement efforts.
10. Work with Suppliers and Vendors to ensure consistently high quality goods and services.
Keep your relationships with your suppliers and other vendors strong. If they understand your goals and strategies you can work together to achieve successful outcomes.
11. Develop a knowledgeable, engaged, creative, and excited workforce.
Design your structure and jobs to promote high performance. Train, develop and motivate your talent. Understand them as people and teams. Use profiling tools to provide information to help your Talent decision-making and to grow and develop your staff. We recommend Harrison Assessments – download information from our Resources page.
12. Create succession plans and workforce plans.
Ensure that good workforce management is in place. Tools like Harrison Assessments Talent Solutions have excellent Succession Planning capabilities that engage the workforce in career planning and allow HR to select the best candidates to develop for key leadership positions.
13. Exhibit good corporate citizenship.
Perform well in areas of public health and safety, environment and ethics.
14. Demonstrate Results.
Demonstrate excellent trends and levels in all results areas.
Take care, balance life and love your work.
Ganga
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