The Problem – Crafting a compelling strategy can be difficult.
It requires you to think about your organisation holistically, to predict a future far beyond your current issues horizon. It requires up to date knowledge of current and predicted trends in your market, sector and society as a whole. You need knowledge of your current organisations capabilities and known weak spots and some insights into your competitors abilities and likely future moves. These are not things that get thought about everyday.
The process is far from simple, it can look long, complex and daunting and leaders know that to do it well requires time to think, collaborate and reflect, time they know is always at a premium.
It is not surprising therefore that in the quest to simplify, many organisations reduce the strategic process into a ‘update last years powerpoint slides and fill in the financial spreadsheets’ process and then quickly move into the much more familiar territory of annual budget negotiations.
The Solution – At Sensei we apply Einstein’s credo to the strategic planning process.
We help our clients craft a strategy that is simple yet elegant; provides lot’s of opportunities for future growth; is parsimonious in nature, in that it lacks nothing essential and contains nothing extraneous; and is owned and created by the leadership team.
As human performance specialists we have developed a range of practical tools to engage and win the hearts and minds of the people who have to make the strategy work. Tools such as our leadership team Strategic Health Check; our Strategic Wargames and our approach to Visions, Missions and all that Jazz.
Our aim is to make crafting a winning strategy as easy as learning to ride a bike. Jump on and start pedaling, we will act as your support; keep looking up and forward not down; expect a few scrapes along the way so start small, think big, move fast and enjoy the challenge.
The result is a Strategic Journey Storyboard and a pragmatic Plan on a Page that can be used to engage all of your people in the journey that you are taking together.
After all crafting strategy is great work, it is one of the things that leaders do that sets them apart!