Organizational Planning

Take Action After Your Customer Advisory Board Meetings

Thursday, October 6, 2011 by Karen Penney

Show Your Customers You Are Listening
One of the biggest keys to success with your Customer Advisory Boards (CABs) is to identify the actions and/or next steps your organization will take following the meeting.

Your customers devoted their time and talent, and spent a few days with you to engage in discussions to help you better understand "their world" - their challenges, their concerns, what is working and what is not working - and what the future may hold for both of you. In return, your ultimate responsibility is to respond with specific actions you will take based on their feedback. Taking action lets them know their time was well spent, you were listening, and you took their ideas and recommendations very seriously. Taking action will keep them coming back to participate in future CAB meetings.

Plan Ahead for Post-meeting Activities
Even before your CAB meeting takes place, you should schedule an organizational planning meeting a week or two after the CAB meeting. This prepares your stakeholders for providing their key takeaways and thoughts on how to move forward on member suggestions, ensuring better market alignment. As a team, determine one or two next steps the organization is willing and able to address. Ensure you have:

Support and buy-in from the team
A plan and structure for addressing the issue(s), with associated timing and milestones
Accountability from team members to make it happen

Typically within 30-45 days after the CAB meeting, you will want to communicate to the members with a meeting summary and details of your Action Plan. Send periodic updates on the progress you've made, showing how they have impacted the strategic direction of your organization. You'll benefit from improved customer relationships and achieve sustainable profitable growth as a result!

2011 is the Year to Master Execution of Your Company’s Strategy

Friday, December 3, 2010 by Kelly Jones

Remember the movie Miracle on 34^th Street? The little girl who doesn’t believe in Santa, but mutters “I believe…I believe” anyway? I’m reminded of that scene when I think about corporate strategy. Until the little girl sees the present she asked for, she is hopeful, but not a true believer. 34th

Employees and leaders are the same way. They want to believe in the strategic planning process. They know they are supposed to believe in the ultimate strategy, but it’s hard. Until they see what they’ve asked for, it’s all just a bunch of words and a lot of PowerPoint. And unfortunately, years of failing to take tangible actions leave companies with wishful thinkers.

Research shows most corporations fail to compete not because their strategy is good or bad, but because they are unable to execute their chosen strategy. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. There are countless numbers of books written by really smart people who tell us the importance of execution.

They are right. Execution is the game changer…if for no other reason than the culture of success created by following through on a plan and holding each other accountable for performance.

The NFL is a great example. In a league of salary caps and parity, where teams are separated by just seven points, some teams flourish and others struggle to win.

The difference is execution.

Without execution there is little chance of meaningful long-term success. But you can take steps now to change that. You can take steps to improve execution in 2011.

Where to start? You must first build trust—in the process, in your leadership, and in your organization to make decisions and take actions consistent with your strategy.

To build trust in the process, you need to ensure your strategy is tied to a real understanding of the market. Employees are savvy. They know the difference between an outside-in view and the kind that comes from “the ivory tower.” Regardless of how smart your employees think you are, or how much they respect you, at the end of the day they want validation.

The best way we have found validate or vet strategy with the market is through interactions with key customers. It could be as simple as a roundtable discussion of your S.W.O.T., or as sophisticated as a facilitated Advisory Council. Either way, you gain rich feedback validating your opportunities and constraints. You get a clear picture of the market and where it is headed. And, you strengthen your customer relationships in the process.

This feedback and market clarity is critical as you work to build the second level of trust—trust in your leadership. Think about what has happened to the employment contract over the past ten to twenty years. We’ve told employees they should be loyal to their companies, even when their companies are not. We want employees to be advocates for our brand, but we often fail to educate and support this effort.

To rebuild trust in leadership, your strategy must be relevant. Creating an outside-in strategy is a good first step. The second is to start a dialogue. The good news is both ends of the generational divide are actually united. Baby boomers and millennials both desire integrity and transparency in leadership. They wish to participate in—not be spoken “at” or “to”.

While some companies are testing social media and online communities, there is still a lot to be said for facilitated face-to-face engagements. We particularly like Root Learning’s strategy map process which is grounded in adult learning techniques. It helps employees understand and participate in the strategy process—the need to change, the alternatives considered and the path chosen.

By rebuilding trust in the process and in leadership, you have improved your chance of succeeding. Your journey, however, is far from complete. To build trust in the organization you must help the organization let go of the past (i.e. destructive behaviors), while at the same time celebrate successes and hold each other accountable for performance.

Performance management is a key component to connect organizational, functional and individual performance objectives to the roadmap and behaviors. The metrics for determining progress will need to be communicated frequently through town halls and internal communication vehicles.

We also suggest creating an internal board to monitor employee understanding of the strategy and provide feedback on how communications are perceived by different parts of the organization. By understanding how long to stay on message and when and how to adapt your messages, you’ll improve the capability of the organization to execute and you’ll greatly improve organizational trust.

Great execution is no miracle. By taking steps now to rebuild trust in your process, your leadership and your organization, you will create an organizational culture known for execution and success.

In Trying Times, Don’t Lose Focus on the Customer!!!

Sunday, August 22, 2010 by Rob Urbanowicz

I’m scared. I’m scared for what this recession is doing to corporate America. I’m scared that we’ve lost our innovative edge. Why? I’m seeing more and more organizations work harder with fewer people to produce results. 24X7 is becoming more the norm. Organizational planning is a precedent.

The question to ask: Are we focused on our customers and our growth opportunities, or are we getting bogged down on internal activities that don’t drive meaningful results.

A.G. Lafley, CEO at Proctor and Gamble made a keen observation of the impact internal focus rather than external focus can have on an organization. In a recent HBR article entitled “What only the CEO can do”, he says that shaping values and standards of your organization is one of the critical roles of the CEO. But his point is that you can’t focus your values and standards internally – rather, you must define and focus your values and standards externally - to your customers and gain market alignment through the voice of the customer.

Last week I went walking through the headquarters of a large B2B organization. I noticed many people busy working away at spreadsheets, e-mails, and editing documents. What I didn’t notice, were many conversations or webinars with customers. Was anyone focused on account expansion or customer loyalty?

Lafley noticed the same issue at P&G when he decided he needed to reshape the values of the company. Take for instance his approach to redefining one of the company’s core values – “trust”. P&G employees interpreted “trust” in a way that put employees’ needs ahead of consumers’ - the employees, could trust that P&G was a good place to work and lifetime employment. Very internally focused. Lafley changed the meaning of “trust” to mean that customers could trust the brand P&G. This shift meant the company had to focus on understanding and delivering the brand promise to customers. Since this and many other shifts to focus on the customer, P&G’s revenues have doubled.

Are your company values rooted in working with each other and delivering internally – or are they oriented toward how you and your organization focus on serving the customer? After all, what would your organization be without your customers?

Three Ways to Avoid the Dread in Strategic Planning

Tuesday, August 10, 2010 by Kelly Jones

If you are on a January-December fiscal calendar then you are entering the dreaded strategic planning cycle. Why is it dreaded? Usually it's because reams of data are poured over by strategic planners who create organizational thrusts and send them up the chain for review--only to be asked for a different slice or direction by senior leadership. I often hear organizations refer to the early stages of strategic planning as "analysis by paralysis." There is lots of great data, but no real compass to direct the analysis.

Where do you fit in this cycle? Are you the frustrated executive or the frustrated planner? Where is your presentation or binder from the past year? Please say it's not sitting on the shelf.

Materials on shelves are good for reference, not for day-to-day execution. The best strategic plans live within the organization.

They are created from the outside-in based on the voice of the customer
They are well understood by employees
They are integrated into your management systems

If I've piqued your interest, check back for more on these three steps.

Inside-Out or Outside-In?

Wednesday, August 4, 2010 by Kelly Jones

I just read an article by Chief Learning Officer that states "Alignment Starts From the Inside Out." The article is based on research of 1,500 chief learning and development executives who say their organizations will align more closely to organizational objectives this year.

The article describes how performance management, competency development and leadership need to align to organization priorities. I fully agree. Having worked in and with a number of dysfunctional organizations I concluded years ago that companies need an inside-out approach. I even started a consulting firm to help companies gain this alignment.

As my blog title suggests, I now question my initial conclusions. Based on discussions with executives it became clear they really didn't have an anchor point to use for the alignment journey. They agreed with my value proposition and asked for proposals on how to achieve alignment, but at the end of the day they had to admit their strategic plans weren't very strategic and their brand destination not well defined.

Of course this wasn't true of every company. It was true, though, of organizations that most needed my help and were struggling to transform themselves.

So what do well performing organizations do? They continually gain market insight and build relationships with users, influencers and decision makers who keep their organizations on the front end of change. In essence, they use an outside-in approach. I see it time and time again in my work here at the Geehan Group.

The Chief Learning Officer article references the use of customer sat metrics to create feedback loops and even states alignment shouldn't be based on internal HR processes--rather on what clients and employees want.

At the end of the day I'm pretty sure we're saying the same thing. You don't build a company and then find the market. You find the market and then build the company. Whether you call it inside-out or outside-in, what matters is alignment of resources to a market-based strategy.

What do you think?