New Service Announcement – The Advisor’s Corner

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To further expand on our ongoing strategic planning and tactical business execution conversation, StrategyDriven Contributors are proud to announce the launch of a new service, The Advisor’s Corner. This service provides all guests to the StrategyDriven website an opportunity to ask direct questions of our experienced business professionals. Questions and answers will then be posted in The Advisor’s Corner category for all site visitors to view. Additionally, StrategyDriven members will have the opportunity to share their insights and experience by way of comments and feedback to these postings.

Questions can be submitted to The Advisor’s Corner by email at TheAdvisorsCorner@StrategyDriven.com or by using the ‘Email The Advisor’s Corner’ link located on the right sidebar on the StrategyDriven website. If desired, questions may be submitted anonymously to maintain confidentiality.

StrategyDriven contributors greatly appreciate the continued patronage of our website and hope this new offering is of benefit to all our site’s visitors.

Recommended Resource – Managing the Nonprofit Organization

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Managing the Nonprofit Organization
by Peter F. Drucker

About the Reference

Managing the Nonprofit Organization by Peter F. Drucker addresses the unique management challenges associated with nonprofit organizations. In this book, Dr. Drucker explains the differences between managing for-profit and nonprofit organizations in the areas of mission, leadership, resources, marketing, and goals.

Benefits of Using this Reference

Nonprofit organization management can be truly challenging in the areas of strategic planning and tactical business execution because of the lack of a profit driver. In our experience, nonprofits that don’t effectively replace the profit driver with another equally strong motivator risk diminished performance and organizational value.

StrategyDriven contributors like Managing the Nonprofit Organization because it illustrates a method for creating a compelling mission, setting goals to that mission, and gaining and maintaining employee/volunteer commitment to the achievement of the mission goals. We believe that while essential to the management of nonprofit organizations, many of the principles Dr. Drucker describes in Managing the Nonprofit Organization would greatly benefit for-profit companies as well.

Many of the best practice recommendations found on the StrategyDriven website compliment the principles described in Managing the Nonprofit Organization; making this book a StrategyDriven recommended read.

StrategyDriven Decision-Making Best Practice Article

Decision-Making Best Practice 1 – There Can Be Only One

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StrategyDriven Decision Making Best Practice | decision makerEffective decision-making provides the organization with a unified direction aimed at achieving a primary objective and possibly one or more secondary objectives. Regardless of the decision’s complexity or its immediacy, the probability of achieving a successful outcome is directly related to the organization’s ability to execute the decision in a deliberate and focused manner. It is for this reason that decisions and direction for their execution should come from one individual.[wcm_restrict plans=”49219, 25542, 25653″]

Decision-making by committees or groups tends to increase the risk of failure. Perception and interpretation of circumstances varies from person-to-person. These variations result in differences between how we as individuals deal with particular circumstances and execute directives. When making decisions as a group, these variations often result in compromises, diluting the organization’s response and increasing the risk of missing stated goals. Likewise, direction coming from multiple sources may defuse the organization’s efforts or worst; result in confusion and conflict, thereby increasing the risk of an undesired outcome. Finally, shared decision accountability results in no accountability at all; frequently degrading to finger pointing or credit grabbing depending on the outcomes achieved.

Decision-making led by a single, accountable individual affords an organization several advantages:

  • concentrated, unified effort derived through the elimination of variation associated with multiple individuals interpreting circumstances and directions
  • centralized command and control that mobilizes needed personnel, material, and financial resources thereby preventing a stalled response
  • effective oversight of actions taken in response to the opportunity or problem; maintaining a clear picture of the integrated impact of the decision’s execution, enabling timely execution adjustments as conditions change, and ensuring the organization’s broader interests are met

Not every leader exhibits personal traits and possesses the positional power needed to be a decision’s single point of accountability. When assigning the roll of decision-maker, the following conditions should be considered:

  1. Does the individual possess the decision-making ability commensurate with the complexity and risk associated with this issue?
  2. Does the individual possess the positional, personal, and intellectual power needed to both authorize the resource expenditures and direct the actions needed to make and execute the decision?
  3. Is the individual organizationally positioned such that he/she can look down at the problem and see the entire, integrated nature of the issue?

There are some organizations and circumstances requiring decision-making by committee. While the There Can Be Only One best practice does not apply in these instances, these organizations or circumstances do not benefit from strong centralized decision-making and tend to be slower to change and slower to achieving results. In these cases, the less rapid response time should be factored into the decision-making time frame to help improve the chances for success.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember plans=”49219, 25542, 25653″]

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About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

The Advisor’s Corner – Guaranteed Future?

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Question:

Can a good strategy define a company’s future?

StrategyDriven Response:

Strategic certainty does not exist. Organizations should, however, leverage a good strategy to establish the vision toward which executives and managers focus employee efforts. Vision combined with excellent execution that reinforces desired behaviors generates a high degree of organizational alignment and accountability that in turn propels the organization toward a more focused and committed, if somewhat uncertain, destiny.

The StrategyDriven website was created to provide members of our community with insights to the processes and actions that can be taken to create the shared vision, focus, and commitment needed to improve organizational alignment and accountability for the achievement of superior results.

StrategyDriven Contributors look forward to answering your strategic planning and tactical business execution questions. Please email your questions to TheAdvisorsCorner@StrategyDriven.com.

The Advisor’s Corner Introduction

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The Advisor’s Corner expands on the strategic planning and tactical business execution dialogue between StrategyDriven contributors and our websites visitors. Postings in this category reflect questions asked by StrategyDriven members and guests and the advice provided by one or more of our highly experienced business professionals. Additionally, StrategyDriven members are provided the opportunity to share their insights and experiences by way of comments and feedback to the individual postings.

All visitors to the StrategyDriven website are encouraged to submit their questions to The Advisor’s Corner by email at TheAdvisorsCorner@StrategyDriven.com or by using the ‘Email The Advisor’s Corner’ link located on the right sidebar on the StrategyDriven website. If desired, questions may be submitted anonymously to maintain confidentiality.