What is essential, is individual performance possibility plans for each person involved in executing strategy.
Strategy - a definition
I looked up my trusted dictionary for a definition of strategy only to find references to war! War is an old paradigm and therefore has little to offer us that is of any real value, except perhaps to shed light on why strategies fail, such as:
- People breaking rules of engagement
- Not having rules of engagement
- Being unprepared for the unexpected
- Not knowing what we need to know
Most of the many books I have read about strategy are about manoeuvring for opportunities or out-manoeuvering competitors, in short, being clever. The most powerful strategies I see are those that are more about us being wise than they are about us being clever.
Strategy is the simplest, most effective and efficient, good for people and planet way to move from where we are, to where we want to be.
Taking, in the words of Robert Fritz ‘the path of least resistance'. Tactics are the essential actions we must take to execute our strategy.
Strategy is not a plan, in the sense it is not the information, the intuition or the insight we have, rather is what we will do to capitalise on these. Any company's strategy can be detailed on one or two sheets of A4 paper!
Plans are the detail of how we will execute strategy and are best contained in individual performance possibility plans for each person involved in executing the strategy.
Performance possibility plans
Employees aligned with the purpose and principles of an organisation, who are empowered to decide their own goals and the strategies to achieve them, set bigger goals than executive teams!
The following is my template for individual performance possibility plans.
When completed, it is usually no more than two sides of an A4 sheet of paper:
| Personal possibility (goals) |
|
| Current performance |
|
| Key strategies to move to possibility |
|
| Key SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, trackable) actions to execute the strategies |
|
| Business possibility (goals) |
|
| Current performance |
|
| Key strategies to move to possibility |
|
| Key SMART actions |
|
The secret here is that both personal and business goals have equal status.
Once employees understand and appreciate that their work is critical to achieving their personal goals, and that you, their employer, are genuinely interested in seeing them achieve their personal goals, they will work much harder to help you achieve the goals of your business.
This sounds like common sense.
It is.
At the moment however it is an uncommon practice. In the majority of organisations, I have observed goal, strategic, or business planning is heavily weighted in favour of the business, and personal goals are limited to learning and development actions - if they rate a mention at all.
Zig Ziglar was right on the money when he said "Help other people get what they want, and you will get what you want".
Read the article "Simplifying Strategy And Execution: All Stakeholders Are Important"
Read the article "Simplifying Strategy And Execution: Aligning Possibility, Purpose And Principles"
Read the article "Simplifying Strategy And Execution: Strategic Intuition Precedes Strategic Thinking"
Read the article "Simplifying Strategy And Execution: Turning Strategic Thinking Into Strategic Insight"
Read the article "Simplifying Strategy And Execution: Transparency Is Essential"
Buy Ian Berry's Audio Seminar CD from the Resource Centre:
What Real Leaders Do And Fake Ones Don't