Dear Readers,

Strategic planning ought to take into account virtually everything relating to your organization and your market, which is why the task is daunting. It's less daunting, however, when you examine the underlying elements piece by piece:

Vision: Where are you going and when do you expect to get there? Your organization's vision should be clear, measurable, and tangible. Like landing a man on the moon, everyone ought to know when it's achieved.

Mission Statement: Why do you exist, what do you value, and how do you behave? A mission statement should not waver much over time. It's both a moral compass and rallying call, which is why it must be both accurate and memorable.

Organizational Strategy: How do you plan on realizing your vision? In Discipline of Market Leaders, Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema reveal three generic strategies to help you accomplish this task: customer intimacy, product leadership, and operational excellence.

Objectives: What are your year-end targets? Think of objectives as key performance indicators. They may be measured daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually, but they must be measurable. If you're in the market for a process that weighs both strategic non-financial performance measures and traditional financial metrics, try The Balance Scorecard, created by Drs. Robert Kaplan (Harvard Business School) and David Norton.

Operational Strategy: How are we going to accomplish our objectives? If you take the Balance Scorecard approach, you will develop strategies to address Financial Performance, Customer Performance, Effective Processes, and Learning & Growth.

Actions: Are the action items equally distributed over the course of the entire year? Actions are the boulders that need to be moved in order to achieve the organization's objectives via the operational strategies. Many organizations make the mistake of trying to get all major actions done at once and, as a result, fall woefully behind in the first quarter.

Context: Strategic planning works best when it's matched with the organization's culture and the market environment. Perfect Biz Match is an analytic assessment tool that helps you see your organization in such a light. In addition to identifying four Market Archetypes (Kingdom, Battleground, Jungle, Frontier), Perfect Biz Match reveals four corresponding Organization Archetypes (Ruler, Warrior, Hunter, Pioneer). When you understand your position in relation to these two sets of archetypes, you can make better strategic decisions.

Scorecard: Once the strategic plan is finalized, provide a simple monthly scorecard (or a more elaborate online performance measurement system), so that you and others can track progress on the yearly objectives and actions, and act accordingly.

Gary

Book Review: Design Matters: LOGOS 01: An Essential Primer for Today's Competitive Market by Capsule
Submitted by: John LeTourneau

Whether your focus is marketing or leading high performance teams, you will likely find Design Matters: Logos relevant and instructive. By the time you get to the gallery of logos at the end, you will better understand how a logo reinforces the promise made by your brand. You will also be attuned to ways in which you communicate visually to your customers.

The book contains five sections: Planning, Creating, Implementing, Case Studies, and Gallery. In each section, there are a number of two-page subsections, with plenty of visual examples to illustrate specific points. In "fundamentals of planning," the authors affirm the adage that plays out in many companies: "Fail to plan and you're planning to fail." It's a truism that extends, of course, to more than just design. In my experience, the process becomes the outcome, and the impact of planning impacts the "P" in the P&L.

Design Matters: Logos is the brainchild of Capsule, a Minneapolis firm that specializes in brand strategy and identity design services. Meet one of the authors, Aaron Keller, at the next CO2 Partners Minneapolis Leadership Series event: Eat The Book: Impact of Brand Design in Today's Competitive Market. Tuesday, August 24, 2010

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