Starts with an intelligently designed strategy
Strategic vision should excite team members about where you are going AND it should begin to engage them on the ‘how’ to get there. Today’s competitive environment demands that organizations take disciplined action. But, disciplined action is not possible without disciplined thought specifically, strategic choice. Choice about what you will and will NOT do. Strategy expert Michael Porter states the essence of strategy is deciding what “not to do”.
The Six Disciplines® Program challenges your strategy team to think about difficult but critical questions and most importantly agree on answers to these questions. Questions such as:
This vision statement alone is not enough to help team members understand how they fit in and what they should do. Next, the leadership team will paint a more complete vision by exploring the following questions:
What will be your growth strategy in pursuit of this vision? What products/services? What markets? What channels of distribution? What geographic targets?
What are the critical values to be delivered to your customers and how will they be measured?
What are the critical internal processes required to deliver this value to customers? How will the effectiveness of these processes be measured?
What kind of team members will you need? How will you develop them? Compensate and reward them? How will you engage them?
The strategic visioning process is ready to move to the next discipline when your vision statement is supported by a more detailed articulation of measure targets as to how your organization will look in 10 years. These targets will clarify where growth will come from and what the key capabilities of your organization will look like. This strategic vision has enough detail for team members to get a better understanding of what the vision statement means and thereby relate to your company’s vision. This company vision is an outline that will change over time, but it serves the purpose of engaging team members in figuring out how it needs to adjust as they pursue it.
The benchmark usually takes 10-14 elapsed days to complete. The price ranges from $2500 to $5000 depending on size and complexity of the organization.
At the conclusion of the first discipline the leadership team in agreement in terms of the following:
Defines long-term purpose and character of the organization
Defines broad markets and requirements of targeted segments
Defines strengths and weaknesses of competitors relative to market requirements
Clear statement of where the organization will excel, how it will be measured and a date specific target to aim for
Strategic investment themes, growth strategy targets, customer value add targets, critical process targets and people development targets
We gather the strategy leadership team together in an offsite, uninterruptable setting.
Prior to this meeting a strategic agenda with critical items to address in the strategic planning cycle has been prepared.
The coach leads the strategy team through a series of penetrating questions and exercises to uncover different perspectives and usually arrive at a shared viewpoint.
Goals, projects, ideas are captured in the 6D software and gradually structured into coherent plans and priorities.
All of these outcomes are designed to lay the foundation for Discipline II: Strategic Change Management
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With all of the pressures successful business leaders have today, none is more urgent or challenging than learning the ability to execute strategy. The thought-leading vision described by Gary Harpst in Six Disciplines® Execution Revolution sets a new course for how small and midsized businesses can finally confront the never-ending challenge of executing strategy.
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