It is estimated that up to 80% of companies fail to implement their strategies. To what extent have you implemented yours?
To what extent do your strategies adequately address current SWOT issues and critical success factors?
How well defined and appropriate are your goals?
Do you have measures in place that provide you with an effective dashboard?

Overview

During the course of this 3 day – preferably residential – workshop, management teams examine their business or organisation’s current degree of strategic alignment, and then develop and learn to implement a more robust “philosophical framework” that focuses energies and resources on achieving the organisational vision.

The workshop also prepares teams for further steps in the Journey to Excellence program, such as the Strategic Planning or Organisational Assessment workshops.

Attendees should include an organisation’s entire management team – plus other key people such as informal leaders. More than one company management team can participate at the same time.

The workshop begins by having teams review, and refine

• their vision, mission and value statements
• their stakeholder analysis, and the integration of stakeholder needs, wants and expectations into the strategic framework
• critical success factors (CSFs) and
• key strategic (top level) goals.

Teams will then take a close look at existing strategies and plans to see if they are aligned with declared vision, mission and key strategic goals. Do they align? If not, what are the consequences?

Next, teams will complete PEST and SWOT analyses, and cross check the results with existing strategies, plans and goals. Are there gaps? Preliminary strategies to fill gaps will be considered. These strategies will need to be refined outside of the workshop, preferably in a dedicated strategic planning workshop.

This will lead into a discussion of measures: those currently in place, and those that would be appropriate. To what extent are measures aligned with goals?

Finally, teams will examine and refine the “cascade” through which they implement their strategies and plans, and check the extent to which their current structure supports it.

In the end, teams will have gained a set of tools with which they can implement a strong strategic framework and align their organisation’s actions with strategies and plans.

Mentoring

Beginning the Journey to Excellence must almost always correspond with a change of mindset in an organisation’s people. This is not easy, and experience shows that the professional mentoring of action plan teams greatly supports the implementation of improvement activities.

How to prepare

• Consider your own personal vision, mission and values
• Review and bring along your organisation’s formal vision, mission and values statements
• Bring along documentation on organisational plans, strategies, goals, measures, results achieved, stakeholder analysis
• Research and bring information about trends in your sector
• Research and bring information about predicted economic and political developments in countries in which you do business
• Know what your competition is up to!
• Inform yourself about technological developments that could impact your business / activities
• Bring along a pencil, sharpener and rubber
• Bring along business cards
• Dress comfortably

Case studies

Are you still asking yourself if it is really worth your time? Click here (pdf) and read what earlier workshop participants have to say about their experiences—in their own words.