Your 2011 Strategies: Guiding Lights or Candles in the Wind?

“Strategy” is now considered a catch-all business term: Corporate, Operational, Acquisition, Growth, Brand, Supply Chain…a dozen or more adjectives may be used to describe a few of yours. Their development, planning and execution however often lead to piecemeal, conflicting activities by failing to meet three important criteria:

1. Relate to the company’s business model
2. Provide positive, measurable top and bottom line impact
3. Answer the question, “Where are we heading?”  

Your organization has no doubt spent plenty of resources and manpower to develop and implement its 2010 strategic plans. How are you as the leader measuring their effectiveness so far?

• Are they improving your organization’s performance?
• Are they changing the way decisions are made?
• Are they being judged successful, failures, or have some simply disappeared?
• Some of the facts and hurdles brought about by traditional planning methods include:
• Surprisingly few of those tasked to execute strategies that someone else developed understand them, feel committed or even connected to them.
• Their interpretation can be difficult, making successful execution almost impossible.
• The senior-most people in the organization usually decide which strategies are important. Decisions are sometimes based on best-guess, or limited information and data.
• Strategies intended to deliver the numbers are often just a set of activities with no meaningful financial impact--but continue nonetheless.
• Reviewing history to determine where the company came up short is often addressed by doubling efforts, adding or changing manpower, applying capital, designing new techniques or ramping-up various forms of support activity—but the underlying problems remain unidentified or unresolved.
• Strategies are often created in silos that burden other areas of the business. For example, expanding production capacity when there is a less-than-optimum sales process to fill it. Or acquiring a company but losing market share by failing to integrate properly. Or a plan that improves customer fill-rates results in quality problems from time pressures on the production team.  

It’s no wonder executives agree that the rate of successful strategic execution and impact on the financials is astonishingly low. While many sound effective in theory, they may not meet the criteria listed at the beginning of this article. Their translation and execution could be difficult. They may drive the wrong activity for growing revenue or profit, creating burden and transferring costs to other areas of the organization. Most importantly, they may not uncover the obstacles to progress that remain hidden in your business.

Blueberry Business Group facilitates a thorough, repeatable strategic planning process which leads to successful outcomes. A few features:

• Before strategies are set, we undertake two critical steps in identifying areas of the organization to apply focus. Forces that have either been supporting or hindering progress come to light.
• A problem or opportunity statement gives each strategy a purpose that does not waiver because it is defendable with data.
• They are evaluated and then ranked for their impact on organizational performance. We recommend 3 and no more than 5 at any given time, and they are not calendar-based.
• Customer requirements and business goals are linked to every strategy.
• Each strategy must be SMART: Significant, Motivating, Attainable, Relevant, Tangible.
• Natural balance must be maintained throughout the set of primary and supporting activities that define the flow of the business.
• Associated metrics monitor progress and are integrated into the company’s scorecard. Efforts that have no impact can be stopped; efforts that do can be optimized.  

Food industry executives are thinking about their organization’s strategic moves and risks that respond to hopeful but troubled market conditions in 2011. Blueberry will work with you to develop a sustainable process that can be used in all future planning sessions to achieve better organizational performance.