Strategic Management Consulting since 1984
Clarifying Visions, Simplifying Strategies, Creating Solid ProďŹ t Growth‌
• Strategic Planning • Change Management • Systems Thinking
In today’s dynamic and confusing global environment, the need for leaders at all levels to become and remain strategic thinkers on a daily basis is a necessity for successful implementation of change and long term business growth. Businesses large and small are finding it necessary to compete globally. Technology has brought information to everyone’s desktop. Decision-making needs to be driven down to the lowest possible levels of the organization so staff can respond flexibly and with agility to customer demands and competitive threats, and still effectively support the firm’s broader strategies. It is not enough to build a Strategic Plan or have a longterm vision or, conversely, to just give up and muddle through the complexities around us and hope for success. A disciplined way to think, to plan, to act, and to rethink and re-plan all over again on a daily basis, is needed to grow your business. And to grow your career as a leader as well. Planning and Change are the primary jobs of leaders today. Small business entrepreneurs need to stop focusing 100% of their time on the tactical work and concentrate on the future they are trying to create. Strategic Thinking is the best way to do this. Strategic Thinking is a broader and more innovative way of thinking on a daily basis about the overall goals of your job, your team, and your organization. It is oriented towards the long term, with a focus on all the factors, both internal and external, that may affect your business in the future as well as the relationships between them. Strategic thinking is a simple, yet structured, way to organize your thoughts about all the complexity in your world today. It is a serious discipline, yet the simplicity to do it well is within the reach of all executives, managers, and professionals. • Strategy is about clarifying the direction and vision for your organization, along with its Goals or Key Success Measures. • Strategy is also about identifying relationships and developing Core Strategies to drive the whole organization towards its vision. • Strategy is about identifying leverage points for creating and managing organizational change on a daily basis.
BENEFITS OF A SIMPLE, BUT RIGOROUS STRATEGIC PLANNING SYSTEM • Clearer communication within the business • Better collaboration among employees and between departments • More proactive thinking • Clarity of purpose for all employees • Greater success in anticipating and adapting to change • Higher value for your customers • Increased sales and profits – better ROI
The World Is Flat Thomas L. Friedman New York Times Columnist “Cheap, ubiquitous telecommunications have finally obliterated all impediments to international competition, and the dawning ’flat world’ is a jungle pitting ’lions‘ and ‘gazelles,‘ where ‘economic stability is not going to be a feature’ and ‘the weak will fall farther behind.’ Rugged, adaptable entrepreneurs, by contrast, will be empowered. Friedman agrees with the transnational business executives, who are his main sources, that these developments are desirable and unstoppable, and that American workers should be preparing to ‘create value through leadership‘ and ‘sell personality’ – Publishers Weekly Problems that are created by our current level of thinking can’t be solved by that same level of thinking. – Albert Einstein So…if we generally use analytical thinking, we now need real Systems Thinking to resolve our issues. – Stephen G. Haines, founder, Haines Centre for Strategic Management
CHANGE IS CONSTANT AND INEVITABLE A recent study of 550 Human Resource managers by Monster (Summer 2007) states: “The next 20 years will witness a dramatic change in the U.S. workforce. The Baby Boomer generation, 72 million strong, will reach retirement age and have the opportunity to leave the workforce. Successive generations of workers are proportionally smaller, leaving a potential gap in the number of workers available versus the number of workers needed to maintain the expansion of the U.S. economy. The ability to effectively manage worker knowledge is becoming a critical core competency in an era when knowledge is the primary resource for delivering organizational value. The chasm that exists between a firms’ most valuable asset, knowledge, and the lack of formal management of this asset, represents key opportunities for organizations to gain a competitive edge.” The world is moving at such a fast pace today that companies can’t afford to do business the way they’ve always done it. Our firm’s research on change is clear. As translators and interpreters of Best Practices in strategic management and change, we’ve identified some of the top 10 reasons why organizational change fails. • Underestimating the system’s complexity. • Management’s change knowledge or skills are missing. • Lack of accountability throughout the organization. • Management resistance due to time pressure. • Change structures are missing. • Lack of participative management skills. • Fatal assumptions are made…that it's easy and normal. • Lack of senior management modeling. • Poor cross-functional teamwork and turf battles. • Lack of follow-through and reinforcement. With an anticipated shortage of workers in the next 10-20 years, it is ever more critical that companies start acting today to get the current generation trained and focused on helping the company achieve its future vision. When organizations help their employees achieve their personal and professional dreams, they get numerous positive results that affect the bottom line: • Dramatically reduced turnover (employee turnover costs a company 150% of each person’s salary, and can be as high as 250% for sales and managerial positions (1) • A reduction in unauthorized absenteeism (in 2005 the average per-employee cost was $660(2); today it’s likely much higher) • Increased loyalty to the company • A new culture of empowerment and possibility • A motivated staff where everyone is part of the sales force talking to friends, relatives, customers and prospects
WHAT’S YOUR VISION OF THE FUTURE? Creating a vision for your future is the most difficult, and powerful, work you can do to create a successful business. As an entrepreneur, you need to ensure that the vision or aspiration you have for your company supports the personal vision you have for your life. A holistic approach, using Systems Thinking, ensures you’ve covered all the bases to create a roadmap to guide your progress. In a Systems Thinking Approach®, your vision and the strategic actions you need to take will unfold by answering the following five key Systems Thinking questions: a. Where do you want to be? b. How will you know when you get there? c. Where are you today? d. How will you get there? e. What will or might be changing in your future external world that could alter your dreams? Sources: (1) William G. Bliss, President of Bliss & Associates Inc., Cost of Employee Turnover, www.isquare.com/turnover.cfm (2) 2005 Unscheduled Absence Survey by CCH, Inc., a Wolters Kluver Company
CASE STUDIES PALOMAR TECHNOLOGIES is a leading manufacturer of automated packaging and assembly equipment of integrated circuits. Without a simple strategic planning process the company was finding it challenging to readily adapt to change. Additionally, they were facing stiffer competition, higher manufacturing costs, and slumping sales. Through an initial day of facilitated planning, the executive team prioritized their critical issues, reducing them from 42 to five, identified potential opportunities and threats to success, and jointly developed a common vision all could support. The team has adopted our simple decision-making framework, and meets monthly to address these critical issues while focusing on their day-today activities. Sales and morale have improved, and the company is on target to achieve its stated goals. We continue to work with the executive team to implement a long term strategic management program. FOUNDATION FOR THE CHILDREN OF THE CALIFORNIAS was stalled in their fundraising. We developed a business plan to build the first and only dedicated pediatric facility in Tijuana, Mexico. This plan gave clarity to their vision and purpose to their staff and donors, resulting in increasing their assets through fundraising from approximately $150,000 to $2.5 million within 12 months.
SUNDT CONSTRUCTION was experiencing a nearly devastating decline in revenues when they became a Haines Centre client. They adopted the Systems Thinking process, developed a strategic plan, and transformed the company from a conglomeration of several merged and locally owned construction companies, to a unified, single entity that has become one of the largest general contractors in the U.S. With everyone focused on a common vision established in 2000, they exceeded their 10-year financial goal in seven years ($1 billion in revenue and $100 million in net worth) and are on target to achieve their new goal, revised in 2007, of $180 million in net worth by 2010, their 120th anniversary.
TESTIMONIALS Metroparks of the Toledo Area are three-time recipients of the Ohio Partnership for Excellence gold level award, the state-level Baldrige program. We are the first and only park district within the State of Ohio to be recognized as such. Our strategic planning process was recognized as an example of excellence within our first two applications. Between the second and third applications, our Business Services Supervisor attended a Haines Centre training on systems thinking taught in part by Jeri Denniston. Following that, the Haines Centre conducted an audit of our strategic planning process. Between both the training and the audit, our strategic planning process was redefined as the system that all other work processes stemmed from. Further, our short-term and annual plans were brought into
direct alignment with our Strategic Plan. Within our third OPE application, our scoring band improved. And, not only was our strategic planning system cited as a best practice, but so was our leadership and human resources management practices, key components in accomplishing any strategic plan. We have currently just completed our first CAPRA (Commission for Accreditation of Parks and Recreation Agencies) audit as well. While we have yet to hear if we’ll receive accreditation, the examining team has again cited our strategic planning system as a sound business practice.
The Systems Thinking concept was introduced to the leadership team at our company by Eric and Jeri Denniston (Haines Centre). Although deceptively simple in concept, the rigor it introduces to the planning process is both powerful and clarifying. The template is adaptable to both short-range and long-range planning and has become the guide for strategic and project planning in our company. BRUCE W. HUENERS President Palomar Technologies
LARA FRANKENBERG Business Services Supervisor
• Strategic Planning
Metroparks of the Toledo Area
• Systems Thinking
• Change Management
14080 Paseo Cevera San Diego, CA 92129-2710 Tel: 858.357.9600 Fax: 858.357.8676 www.hainescentre-sandiego.com www.hainescentre-esp.com