Strategic Planning Best Practice 2 – Prioritize the Mission
Ideally, an organization’s mission statement would convey a singular purpose. However, mission statements often enumerated several purposes, such as creating shareholder value, contributing to the community, and offering workforce prosperity. When this occurs, organizations struggle to serve multiple masters.
Prioritizing the mission establishes the relative importance of an organization’s multiple purposes; focusing decisions and driving actions toward achievement of the organization’s primary purpose while allowing progress to be made on objectives of lesser importance. The amount of emphasis given to each purpose should make their relative importance obvious to all members of the organization. Additionally, decision-making should demonstratively reflect and reinforce the mission priorities such that a proportionate amount of managerial attention and organizational resources are applied to the achievement of each purpose.
About the Author
Nathan Ives 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.
Strategic Planning Best Practice 1 – Make the Mission Measurable
An organization’s mission statement defines its purpose, its reason for being. These statements, however, tend to be broad and somewhat vague; making it difficult to identify the specific products, services, initiatives, and people that will most directly enable the organization to achieve its purpose.
Making the mission measurable provides the added clarity needed to focus decisions and drive actions toward achievement of the organization’s purpose. The mission is translated into a time-bound measure of performance rather than a specific goal. The value of competing alternatives can then be evaluated against the measure; offering executives and managers a mission contribution basis for the selection and pursuit of specific business opportunities.
About the Author
Nathan Ives 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.
Horizontally Shared
Well-constructed performance measurement systems provide a means of comparison between various products, services, and business units by ensuring relevant measures are horizontally shared across the organization.
Horizontally shared performance measures, having consistent units of measure that are uniformly and precisely interpretable, enable comparison between products and services, divisions, departments, work groups, and individuals. Possessing these qualities and being cascaded from the organization’s mission, the contribution of each monitored item to the bottom line becomes evident. This arms executives and managers with the critical information needed to make decisions relative to existing and new products as well as individuals.
Additional Information
Additional information regarding the horizontal sharing of organizational performance measures can be found in the StrategyDriven whitepaper series Organizational Performance Measures and the StrategyDriven Podcast Horizontally Shared Organizational Performance Measures.
About the Author
Nathan Ives 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.
Enterprise Performance Measurement
We can work with you to assess and improve your performance measurement system; yielding metrics and reports that are operationally relevant, organizationally consistent, and economically implemented. The resulting system helps improve managerial decision-making, organizational alignment, and individual accountability. Learn more about how we can support your implementation and upgrade efforts or contact us for a personal consultation.
Vertical Cascading
Performance measurement systems should be anchored on the single measure of organizational success (defined by the organization’s mission) and vertically cascaded down through the organization Each successive measurement tier becomes more specific than its predecessor with the lowest tier describing individual contributor behaviors and resulting outcomes.
A vertically cascaded performance measurement system drives alignment to the organization’s mission. The well-constructed system clearly communicates and routinely reinforces performance and behavioral expectations to every member of the organization. Individuals assume responsibility for the measures which their actions and decisions effect Over time, the measures reveal the impact of each individual’s performance at their level of the organization. As these measures are rolled-up, the individual’s contributions, both positive and negative, to higher tiered goals and ultimately the success of the company becomes evident.
Additional Information
Additional information regarding the vertical cascading of organizational performance measures can be found in the StrategyDriven whitepaper series Organizational Performance Measures and the several StrategyDriven Podcasts on vertically cascaded organizational performance measures:
- Vertically Cascading Organizational Performance Measures, part 1 of 3
- Vertically Cascading Organizational Performance Measures, part 2 of 3
- Vertically Cascading Organizational Performance Measures, part 3 of 3
About the Author
Nathan Ives 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.
Enterprise Performance Measurement
We can work with you to assess and improve your performance measurement system; yielding metrics and reports that are operationally relevant, organizationally consistent, and economically implemented. The resulting system helps improve managerial decision-making, organizational alignment, and individual accountability. Learn more about how we can support your implementation and upgrade efforts or contact us for a personal consultation.
StrategyDriven Strategic Planning Forum
A company’s true value is largely determined by its long-term performance potential as shaped by management’s decisions made today. These decisions guide the translation of the company’s mission, its purpose for existing, into the products and services it provides and hopefully the market wants.
Strategic planning is an iterative, ongoing process consisting of:
- Analysis: assessment of the internal and external factors effecting the organization’s ability to achieve its mission
- Alternative Development: detailed assessment of the costs, benefits, and risks associated with strategic alternatives including both major, ongoing and newly proposed activities
- Alternative Selection: identification of the current portfolio components and proposed activities that will be pursued and the time frame for execution
- Resource Projections: aggregation of the personnel, financial, physical, and technological needs including an assessment of the ability to acquire these resources within the needed time frame
- Plan Development: final validation of the organization’s mission and compilation and approval of its long-range and annual business plans
Execution of these iterative processes takes place throughout the year with a frequency dictated by the pace of market change.
Focus of the Strategic Planning Forum
This forum will focus on the principles, best practices, and warning flags associated with the leading practices of companies that successfully execute strategic planning processes to define objectives, drive alignment, and enhance performance. The following articles, podcasts, documents, and resources cover those topics critical to an exceptional strategic planning program.
Articles
Principles
- Why Do Organizations Need Strategic Planning [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
- How Much Should Organizations Spend on Business Planning? [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
Best Practices
- Best Practice – Make the Mission Measurable [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
- Best Practice – Prioritize the Mission [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
- Best Practice – Strategic Discipline [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
- Best Practice – Ongoing Planning and Execution [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
- Best Practice – Defined Program [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
- Best Practice – Focus on Strength [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
- Best Practice – Shared Accountability [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
- Best Practice – Results First, Actions Second [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
- Best Practice – Avoid Using Jargon [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
- Best Practice – Future Focus [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
- Best Practice – One Priority List [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
- Best Practice – Planning for the Best and the Worst [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
- Best Practice – The Use of Calendars [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
- Best Practice – Never Be Satisfied [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
Warning Flags
- Warning Flag – Business Unit Versus Goal-Based Planning [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
- Warning Flag – Near-Term Focus [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
StrategyDriven Expert Contributor Articles
- Is Strategic Planning Still Relevant? by David Axson
- Strategy – Understanding the Art of War by Shoulders of Giants
- Lessons from Scrabble: How to Win the Strategic Game by Shelli Stinson
- The “Vision Thing”: How to Find It, Frame It, and Live It by Roxanne Emmerich
- Capitalism at the Crossroads – Mapping the Terrain by Stuart L. Hart
- Capitalism at the Crossroads – Beyond Greening by Stuart L. Hart
- Capitalism at the Crossroads – Becoming Indigenous by Stuart L. Hart
- MacroScope: Big Picture Perspective Takes Your Business Further by Hank Moore
- Ideas are the Easy Part by Pete Maulik
- Develop A Process For Continuing Business Model Innovation by Donald Mitchell
StrategyDriven Podcasts
StrategyDriven Podcast
- Introduction to Strategic Planning
- Making the Mission Measurable
- Prioritize the Mission, part 1 of 2
- Prioritize the Mission, part 2 of 2
StrategyDriven Podcast – Video Edition
StrategyDriven Podcast – Special Edition
- An Interview with John Leonetti, author of Exiting Your Business, Protecting Your Wealth, part 1 of 2
- An Interview with John Leonetti, author of Exiting Your Business, Protecting Your Wealth, part 2 of 2
- An Interview with Steve Steinhilber, author of Strategic Alliances
- An Interview with Ken Blanchard, author of Leading at a Higher Level
- An Interview with Nilofer Merchant, author of The New How
- An Interview with Robert Kolb, author of Corporate Boards
- An Interview with Robert Morison, author of Analytics at Work
- An Interview with Robert Simons, author of Seven Strategy Questions
Documents
Whitepapers
- Analysis [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
Models
- Business Process Relationships [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
- Strategic Pyramid [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
- Strategic Organizational Alignment [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
Resources
Books
- Essentials of Strategic Management by J. David Hunger and Thomas L. Wheelen
- Good to Great by Jim Collins
- The Accountable Organization by John Marchica