Below is an example of leveraging your core competencies to take advantage of new opportunities.

A tale of e-biz survivors

Students at MIT's Sloan School pick e-winners By Lisa Vaas, eWEEK May 7, 2001 12:00 AM ET

Revenge is sweet. A year ago, Old Economy stalwarts like $100.7 billion Enron Corp. were ridiculed for their slow pace in moving to embrace e-business. Today, those same companies are being showered with accolades and awards. Most recently, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management's eBusiness Awards last month named Enron–the No. 1 buyer and seller of natural gas and the top wholesale power marketer in the United States–eBusiness of the Year. That's right, gas and electricity. It didn't seem very "e" at the height of the Internet hype, but it sure does now. "Some in the past have been looked down upon for lack of speed in moving into the dot-com space," said Gary Mi, MIT Sloan M.B.A., 2001, and co-executive producer of the awards, in Cambridge, Mass. "Now the bubble has burst, and the true winners are about to stand up," The coveted, student-run eBusiness Awards were founded in 1999 to recognize and reward successful innovation in e-business. This year's jury was composed of experts from industry, academia and the press. An open call for nominations went out in December and resulted in 612 online nominations. (For a full list of winners, go to www.mitawards.org.) So what is it about an Old Economy behemoth such as Enron that got it through the Internet economy shakeout without crashing and burning? Smart use of domain expertise plus technological savvy. The company knew how to buy and sell energy products well before the Internet came along, and it had the technology muscle to translate that expertise to e-business. Smart leveraging of business infrastructure is another weapon that Sloan School e-winners share. One example of knowing how to plug bricks into clicks is Tokyo-based Business Transformation award winner Seven-Eleven Japan Co. Ltd. Seven-Eleven, the largest convenience store chain in Japan, in June introduced 7dream.com, an e-commerce portal that allows consumers to order and pay for products over the Internet and have them delivered to brick-and-mortar stores. Soon, customers will even be able to log on to the portal wirelessly via a cell phone to order books and arrange pickup at their corner convenience store–and with all the Seven-Elevens dotting the Japanese landscape, it's easy to see how much money that will save customers in shipping charges. Amazon.com, eat your heart out. Enron's another one that knows how to deliver the goods. "We know how to deliver products…to customers every day," said Greg Piper, chief operating officer of Enron Networks, in Houston, the unit that handles worldwide technology infrastructure, applications, e-commerce, and midoffice and back-office logistics and settlements. "We just wanted to make sure we could do that in an easier fashion. We didn't get bothered either way by [Internet hype]." Enron spun off the Networks unit about a year ago–admittedly, pretty far into the e-business Gold Rush. In 1999, it launched Enron Online, an online portal that displays real-time prices and products to dealers of 30 products, including natural gas, electricity, paper, pulp and fiber-optic bandwidth capacity. Yes, bandwidth. Enron barters it just as if it were a pile of pulp. It's that ability to build on domain expertise that has allowed Enron to rise to the top of the e-biz heap, Piper said. "There are a lot of technology companies that don't have a lot of domain expertise," he said. "Then there's a lot of people with significant domain expertise who don't understand how they can leverage technology to do what they want to do. We're a leader in both." It helped that Enron didn't try to reinvent the wheel. Instead, the company bought off-the-shelf products and wrote proprietary code to piece it all together. One example is its use of Tibco Software Inc. messaging software to link various platforms behind its Enron Online site. The platforms include an Oracle Corp. database and–here's the proprietary part–Enron's DealBench, an online collaborative Web platform that enables clients to share documents and Webcasts and to manage deal information, all running off Sun Microsystems Inc. servers. But nobody's saying the economy hasn't been tough on even these e-business survivors. That's evidenced by slumping stock prices and layoff announcements at eBusiness of the Year finalists Cisco Systems Inc. and Walmart.com. Both have recently announced layoff plans. But layoffs can actually testify to an enterprise's tenacious grip on its e-business strategy, said Walmart.com Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Business Development Greg Penner. "The layoffs weren't an indication we're less committed to the business," said Penner, in Brisbane, Calif. "They were made in marketing, places like that. We still have over 50 jobs open in engineering and creative site design. We're just as committed to building our e-commerce business as we were 12 months ago." Besides, as Ed Macri, awards co-executive producer, in Cambridge, said, the awards don't predict success. "We don't have a crystal ball," Macri said. And, after all, it's not surprising that survivors bear scars.

(Regarding an article from Forbes.com. See the complete article below.)

Nearly everyone who has a cell phone has at least heard of Nokia, which makes about $19 billion a year manufacturing and selling the little gadgets.

What is less well known about this company, however, is that it also makes about $500 million a year on what seems to be a completely different set of products: Internet infrastructure devices, specifically those that make Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) work. A VPN is a secure way for two companies (or two people) to do business with each other privately, using Internet connections.

So what's a cell phone company doing making VPN equipment? It turns out that one problem cell phones have is security. And it's not just the problem of eavesdropping on private conversations. As cell phones acquire Internet connectivity, people will have the ability to do financial transactions on them; buying and selling stocks, checking account balances, transferring money, and even making purchases. But they won't make those transactions if they cannot be assured of security and privacy. Rather than waiting for some other company to tackle the internet security issue, Nokia decided to take the lead itself. By so doing, it opens the pathway to a new generation of cell phones with enhanced capabilities - which its customers will then buy by the tens of millions.

It all comes down to understanding your core competencies and the essential customer needs your company fills. Nokia understood that its cell phone customers don't want cell phones, they want to communicate, and they want to do so securely, no matter where they happen to be. Nokia's core competency is not just making cell phones, it is meeting customer's mobile communications needs, starting before customers realize they need them.

That's strategy at work!

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Communications

Nokia Builds Its Other Business

Lisa DiCarlo, Forbes.com,

05.09.01, 1:00 PM ET LAS VEGAS - The first thing that comes to most people's minds when they hear the name Nokia is, of course, cell phones. But behind the scenes, the Finnish phonemaker is quickly building an Internet division that is already on track for half a billion dollars in sales this year. Nokia's (nyse: NOK - news - people) three-year old Internet Communications division was conceived by Chairman Jorma Ollila, who dispatched his number two, Pekka Ala-Pietila to Silicon Valley to start the group. The purpose was to build scalable back-end products that would enable the third generation of wireless communications, dubbed 3G. That same year, Nokia bought Ipsilon Networks, a maker of Internet routers and switches. It later ported firewall security software from its partner, CheckPoint Software Technologies (nasdaq: CHKP - news - people), to run on the hardware. It also bundled in virus protection software from McAfee Associates and intrusion protection technology from Internet Security Systems (nasdaq: ISSX - news - people). Nokia made another strategic acquisition with Network Alchemy, which makes high-end virtual private networks. VPNs are a cheaper, more secure way for businesses or individuals to communicate or do business over the Web. In fact, the Internet Communications group accounts for eight of the 14 overall acquisitions Nokia has made since 1997. Nokia sells appliances loaded up with all this software to service providers, Web hosting companies and large enterprise customers. Yesterday it said Exodus Communications (nasdaq: EXDS - news - people), already a customer of the firewall product, would buy the full lineup of Nokia VPNs. What does all of this have to do with Nokia's core competency? According to Vice President Joe Gottlieb, the company is providing some of the tools for wireless Internet connectivity and transactions. Secure, reliable, fast access may finally give customers a compelling reason to buy new cell phones, which made up two-thirds of Nokia's $28 billion in sales last year. In the meantime, the Internet Communications group will continue providing critical components that operate in the shadows of the Internet. "No doubt about it we're one of the best-kept secrets," says Gottlieb.

Have Organizations Abandoned Strategy?

(Excerpt from an interview with Harvard Professor, Michael Porter in a Fast Company magazine article, March 2001)

    "Many companies have abandoned strategy almost completely. Executives won't say that, of course. They say, 'we have a strategy.' But typically, their 'strategy' is to produce the highest-quality products at the lowest cost or to consolidate their industry. They're just trying to improve on best practices. That's not a strategy."

    "Strategy has suffered [recently] for three reasons. First, in the 1970s and 1980s people tried strategy, and they had problems with it. It was difficult. It seemed an artificial exercise. Second, and at the same time, the ascendance of Japan really riveted attention on implementation. People argued that strategy wasn't what was really important — you just had to produce a higher-quality product than your rival, at a lower cost, and then improve that product relentlessly. "The third reason was the emergence of the notion that in a world of change, you really shouldn't have a strategy. There was a real drumbeat that business was about change and speed and being dynamic and reinventing yourself, that things were moving so fast, you couldn't afford to pause. If you had a strategy, it was rigid and inflexible. And it was outdated by the time you produced it."

    "The irony, of course, is that when we look at the companies that we agree are successful, we also agree that they all clearly do have strategies. Look at Dell, or Intel, or Wal-Mart. We all agree that change is faster now than it was 10 or 15 years ago. Does that mean you shouldn't have a direction? Well, probably not."

    "There's a fundamental distinction between strategy and operational effectiveness. Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs' it's about deliberately choosing to be different. Operational effectiveness is about things that you really shouldn't have to make choices on; it's about what's good for everybody and about what every business should be doing. … Strategy is about choices: you can't be all things to all people."

    "The essence of strategy is that you must set limits on what you're trying to accomplish. The company without a strategy is willing to try anything. If all you're trying to do is essentially the same thing as your rivals, then it's unlikely you'll be very successful. It's incredibly arrogant for a company to believe that it can deliver the same sort of product that its rivals do and actually do better for very long. That's especially true today, when the flow of information and capital is incredibly fast. It's extremely dangerous to bet on the incompetence of your competitors — and that's what you're doing when you're competing [only] on operational effectiveness. … If everyone's trying to get to the same place, then, almost inevitably, that causes customers to choose [only] on price."

    "Consider the Internet. Whether you're on the Net or not, your profitability is still determined by the structure of your industry. If there are no barriers to entry [into your type of business], if customers have all the power, and if rivalry is based on price, then the Net doesn't matter — you won't be very profitable."

    "Sound strategy starts with having the right goal. And I argue that the only goal that can support a sound strategy is superior profitability. If you don't start with that goal and seek it pretty directly, you will quickly be led to actions that will undermine strategy. If you goal is anything but profitability — if it's to be big, or to grow fast, or to become a technology leader — you'll hit problems."

    "Finally, strategy must have continuity. It can't be constantly reinvented. Strategy is about the basic value you're trying to deliver to customers, and about which customers you're trying to serve."

In a continuous improvement culture, we must recognize our location in the Three Phase Business Cycle

The philosophy of a Continuous Improvement Culture demands operational accountability for reinvention of the future at every level of the company. This includes responsibility by everyone to improve processes, systems, products, and services. This is a journey that never ends. As people in the organization continue the improvement process, they must recognize the location of the organization in the Three Phase Business Cycle. This understanding is critical to Business Planning and the success of the executive team's strategic management process.

The organization, as well as its products and services, goes through a continual metamorphosis; evolving, adjusting, reinventing, contorting, reshaping, trying to reach its current shape and its current stride. The Organization's Three Phase Business Cycle uses the terms Stabilization, Growth and Re-inventing to explain how it evolves.

Organization's Three Phase Time-Cycle

Stabilization -Phase One: This is the building block for an organization's future success. It requires investing in a Business Plan that communicates tactical 'do it' tasks for everyone to see how they relate to the future and the mission of the organization. The executive team must arm and enfranchise the organization with vital resources: people, finances, raw materials, technology and operational processes. Walking through the Business Plan is a methodology of insuring an implementation plan that works. This process requires an alignment with a bigger strategic picture or map that involves development of a Mission, Vision, and Values Statement.

'Not walking before you should run' is the cardinal concept of the Stabilization Phase. An additional principle is the 60/40 Flex Principle. The hypothesis is that by choosing 60% of organization's business high profit basis to pay for costs to break even, that we create a stable base for letting the other 40% of the business flex creatively. This is key to feeling comfortable about Phase 1 success. When standard processes and measures create a livable profit margin for 60% of existing products and services and stabilize the sales building machine from satisfied customers, then salespeople can flex aggressively on new business proposals and dream with customers about new ideas with no challenge to the financial stability of the organization.

Another benefit of stabilization patience is Self-Funding. By building a profitable base of business first, an organization may develop the capability to cash flow the future (Growth Phase) internally, rather than needing to seek outside financing. Self-discipline is absolutely required in this 'reality phase', as the pieces of a gigantic puzzle gel together. We find ourselves wanting to 'run parallel' with the future Growth Phase, seeking to 'try it' before we have the fundamentals required to be 'ready'. It's hard to wait, confusing, nervous, and can if we go to Growth too fast, we can 'tip over the boat' in a heavy storm. On this well built bedrock platform, Phase One is complete and the Growth Phase can begin.

Growth- PhaseTwo Recognizing that the timing is right for expansion and growth to begin, is a day of celebration. We burst out of the Stabilization Phase to meet the challenges and opportunities of the Growth Phase using the 60/40 Principle.

During the Growth Phase, the operational planning is tested, verified and retested. New ideas are floated and dreams are tested. Idea shakedowns require mini re-invention cycles of experimentation, failure and success. As we build on successes, we get our second wind and the cash flow, and profits soar above break even to build another level of exciting growth. The organization has found its stride.

As the market forces mature barriers to growth occur; the competition stands in our way, the cost of doing business increases, the financial picture loses its profit luster, and a new Business Cycle must be born. A Continuous Improvement Culture demands a new beginning, an embryo of new ideas, to evolve with next products or services. Demand for these new items must be verified through market research.

Phase Two has ended. What is often forgotten is that a new Stabilization Cycle starts the next Growth Cycle of a new product or service.

Re-invention- Phase Three: Recognizing this Third Phase and its positioning is a great talent. Re-Ivention actually reoccurs at multiple times all through the Business Cycle of the organization, as well as during the process of making changes in individual products and services.

In a Continuous Improvement Culture, Re-Invention is used in every test of a 'new anything.' It is the 'vital sign' of a 'pick-me-up' phase of a languishing product or service. It is at the beginning of the re-invention phase of the future of everything that is 'stuck.'

Knowing when the whole organization, not just a product or service, needs to be Re-Ivented is the calling of the 'visionaries' in the organization. Recognizing the critical timing for a new Business Cycle calls for a new Stabilization Growth Plan. Re-Invention starts the process by offering a vision to jump-sart the new cycle.

Marriott Consulting Solutions

Marriott Consulting provides the full range of planning services that help organizations 'get real' about what Business Cycle Phase they are in. Our Senior Consultants are seasoned executives who have 'been-there-done-that.' They are creative visionaries who understand and recognize the 'cycle effect.' They are skilled at helping create the vision, mission, strategy, business plan and budget needed to work through any of the Organization's Three Phase Business Cycle.

Our Planning Virtual-Srategy Games use our exciting custom software program to test your planning assumptions against your own history and your competition. They predict the best/worst internal and external influences, including international economy, market shifts, changing technology, distribution channels, and issues like geography, pricing flux, new financing, mergers, etc. Simulate your organization's strengths and weaknesses before you go out and try some heavy re-invention proposal that could blow up the organization.

Comments I am interested in your reactions to these ideas about business cycles and how they effect the planning function of organizations. Please let me know how your feel. I not only want to share my business ideas with you, but also give you a glimpse of what Marriott Consulting does for its clients. Let me know how you react to our customer offerings? Your feedback is helpful.

You can participate in my weekly radio show, 'Thinking with Russ Marriott' by calling us with questions for our weekly guests. Make contact with us on the web on Wednesdays between 7 am and 8 am (Phoenix, Arizona time) through our website at www.marriottconsulting.com to receive our radio show through streaming audio.

Long Term Organizational Life Is Determined By Our Ability To Dynamically MEASURE Stakeholder Response and Then CHANGE

The ability to identify unknown forces in the market place and respond quickly to needed changes is a power of untold value in today's uncertain world.

We need to keep our 'hand on the pulse' to control our future. Feedback systems give us at least a fighting chance to 'read the magical tea leaves' and crystal ball. Exciting new communication technology makes feedback systems quicker and easier. Our fickle market place requires faster and faster turn around time of feedback data to respond to changing customer needs.

The long life and hoped for immortality of an organization can be predicted by its ability to read the mind of its Stakeholders (customers, employees, managers, investors, community, suppliers). Feedback Measurement Systems that analyze changing Stakeholder attitudes are a powerful investment in organizational longevity.

Forecasting Stakeholder's changing need patterns; the wish to change; the demand to change; controls investment in the corporate supply line. Inventories of products and services flex and foment as new, better, cheaper, and more exciting offerings enter the world market. Do we know when to change and what to change to?

How good are we at guessing? Our success formula depends on it. Measuring and then acting on changes gleaned from the feedback we receive from our stakeholders creates a Re-invention Plan for future successes. Comparing new ideas and feedback regularly allows to compare the needs of the future with our historical performance. We learn gradually from validations of our accountability standards of measurement. Confidence grows as we learn how to flex with changing needs while respecting our historical performance records.

Stakeholder Feedback Measurement Systems are corporate Listening Posts. They yield data that must be interpreted correctly to have ultimate value. Continuous Feedback systems increase reliability, provide continuity of data and reduce the risk of not reading the future correctly when market shifts occur.

Marriott Consulting Solutions

The customer, employee, manager, supplier, investor, community all have an opinion that needs monitoring. We provide custom feedback systems to evaluate how you are doing with your unique Stragegy Plan. If you're going to 'walk on the edge', then you need to know how close you are to it. Whether it's a supplier survey, a customer focus group, an investor telemarketing sample, an employee/manager questionnaire or a community open meeting, Marriott Consulting delivers quality Quick Response Stakeholder Feedback Systems

Comments

I am interested in your reactions to these ideas about stakeholder feedback being a needed quick response to help assure an organization's longevity. Please let me know how your feel.

I not only share my business ideas with you, but also give you a glimpse of what Marriott Consulting does for its clients. How do you react to our customer offering? Your feedback is important to me. Let me know.

You can participate in my weekly radio show by asking questions to each week's guest. Make contact on the web on Wednesdays between 7 am and 8 am Phoenix, Arizona time through our website www.marriottconsulting.com to receive streaming audio.

It seems really logical to say that visioning comes from seeing.

I have a different hypothesis: visioning starts with listening, not seeing. Then after we have listened to the voices within us and outside us, we can see the future.

Seldom do we just look into the sky and see a vision. It takes more work than that. Seeing the future does seem to have a process related to it. It takes listening to others to start the process, to help us see and image in our minds eye something that maybe doesn't exist (a vision of the future). After we have listened the picturing process is much easier and clearer to us. It is also more targeted and has more opportunity for synergy with other ideas.

Starting the process we first: listen to the voices within us and then listen to outside voices.

Listening to Voices Within Us

Visioning comes from listening to the natural voices within us, and the outside voices that matter, like customers who we must satisfy in order to stay in business.

When we search deep down inside ourselves and reach for new ideas and new feelings and new concepts about the world around us and the not so real world of the future, we don't use our eyes to see with. We use our feelings to listen with.

Listening to our feelings is learning to use our GUT. We sometimes call it a GUT CHECK. These are real gut inputs start to feel like they come from a source within us. However, I find they are from an external power greater than us. This power shares light and knowledge based on our desire and the lack of interference, peace and balance in our lives. It is a strange reality that this sharing is free.

Listening to Outside Voices

There are voices all around us. This is the Information Age. Tuning-in and tuning-out are important talents in our time. Tuning-in to voices that really matter is a matter of preference and style.

As a businessman, I tune into the voices of my customers. They matter to me. They determine whether I will be in business or not next week. I must stay in touch with customers, provide excellent customer service and satisfy their needs.

I have chosen to do this by getting feedback through customer service surveys. I choose an independent company to do this, just like I do for my customers.

At Marriott Consulting, I devised a process where we offer our customers an unusual service. We provide a turnkey Stakeholder Survey Service. THIS IS THE LISTENING THAT STARTS VISIONING (see the 'Simple Planning Cycle' Story). By asking key visioning, mission, strategy, planning, and goal questions of our stakeholders, they start to feel the future direction and strategy of the organization. Executives of the organization can forecast read/listen to the responses and have a CURRENT VIEW of whether their alignment with stakeholder (employees, managers, customers, suppliers, community, investors) needs and expectations. This is a unique opportunity to see your organization through someone else's eyes.

These outside voices tell a story, provide ideas, generate opportunities for synergy and challenge the status quo in your organization.

Comments

I am interested in your reactions to these ideas about visioning coming from listening not seeing. Please let me know how your feel. Your feedback is important to me.

You can participate in my weekly radio show by asking questions to each week's guest. Make contact on the web on Wednesdays between 7 am and 8 am Phoenix, Arizona time through our website www.marriottconsulting.com to receive streaming audio.

Marriott Consulting's

Strategy Planning

Thinking Tool Box

This material was developed to give a very high level viewpoint to explain the power of planning and the thinking that goes into planning processes. I use these concepts on my Radio Talk Show in Phoenix (KNFX AM 1100 Wednesday Mornings 7 to 8 am- see www.marriottconsulting.com for streaming audio connection) to empower listeners and professionals who use planning to leverage their daily life.

COMMENTS I am interested in your comments to these views. Lots of big words and little application to some I'm sure. Some may see some reality here. What do you think? This is my business, so it's always fun to banter about my own field of work. You bloggers and surfers may not even relate or feel this space is worth a second of your time. I will read and respond to your comments if you have the time for me. Thanks For Thinking with Russ Marriott

• Thinking beyond tactical survival skills, using Strategy Thinking^TM to provide strategically focused, high-productivity results from successful teamwork.
• Thinking beyond historical successes, using Visionary Thinking^TM to create exciting ideas, plan exactly where the organization will go and seizing the moment to aggressively bringing the future into the present.
• Thinking beyond a static plan and budget, using Flex Thinking^TM to plan alternative maps and routes so there are opportunity options already in place when the operational climate changes and alignment resolves.
• Thinking beyond traditional downward communication, using Bi-Directional Thinking^TM to learn from others in the organization, and to make sure that all stakeholders understand where they are going, how they will get there, and what their roles are in making it happen. 
• Thinking beyond the inaction of some leaders, using Decisioning Thinking^TM to make decisions quickly and conclusively, based on informed, thorough feedback from the executive team and stakeholders. 
• Thinking beyond the chaos of misalignment problems, using Organized Thinking^TM to build day-to-day planning processes that create workforce synergy, align the budget, the culture and the mission of the organization. 
• Thinking beyond unrealistic projects and ideas, using Implementation Thinking^TM to tell the difference between a wish list and a real-world goal, to sort out current problems to solve and future opportunities to grow. Setting measurable standards and key performance indicators to provide accountability in a culture of Partnershipping^TM.

Walking on The Edge

    To 'Seize the Moment' Our Visionaries Must Be 'Walking on the Edge'

    'Walking on the edge' of your business is an experiment in reinventing the future of your organization. It means empowering a group of visionaries within your organization. They are paid to take time off during their regular job to stare out over the edge of current industry frontiers in technology, human resources, finance, etc. They are given permission to dream, to read, to study, to look, TO FIND answers to the 'gut feelings' that speak to their inner creative self. These creatives have at their fingertips, the current VISION and MISSION of the organization. It speaks to their feelings. They test it against the unraveling drama that evolves before them, as they watch the industry make daily, weekly, monthly adjustments in the marketplace of life. These special visionaries are expected to see through the daily chaos, 'the forest for the trees.' They are the ones gifted with the ability to see the company vision coming true. They also see trends evolving that speak to them, because their eyes see through the chaos, a fuzzy picture that gradually becomes clear. They correlate an analysis of evolving new events that calibrate the timeline of a hoped for vision, or the forecast of a bust. Visionaries can see the future coming at them and put together the pieces. Executive decisions can then be more easily made. It enables them to 'seize the moment' that has been hoped for and is coming to pass before us. Or, they can ring the alarm, recognizing problems, accepting failure, so losses can be cut and the next venture into the future can begin. Visionaries are the early starters of an idea that captures a frenzied, expectant market of equally dream filled buyers, who have money to pay to have their dreams fulfilled. Today we must be early to the market, to foresee breakthrough opportunities. Visioning increases that potential for the organization. It puts dreams and plans on paper so we can, together, share a vision of the future. Solutions Marriott Consulting has an innovative program to develop a MISSION and VISION within your organization. We build it from the top of the executive organization, and verify it by the stakeholders at the bottom. A long term Visionaries' Program can be implemented to be an executive resource for reinventing the future or your organization. Comments I encourage your comments. I am interested in your feelings about the subject of visioning in the real world of business. It is not a popular topic in the business world. I feel it is underrated as a value planning piece in the puzzle of finding one's future or the future of an organization. Let me know what you think. I will communicate back to you as well. Thanks. I look forward to hearing from you. Russ Marriott "Thinking with Russ Marriott"

THE NEED FOR VISIONARIES AND VISIONARY PLANNING STATEMENTS

VERSION 2 (The old version has been destroyed)

Planning includes the construction of budgets, strategic plans, business plans and statements of vision, mission and values. The tedious process of historical chronology is given to the accountants, the financial department finds the investment funds to support the approved vision of the board of directors, the operations groups create products and services with profoundly efficient processes to meet the needs of customers, marketing and sales communicate the value proposition to the customer in hopes of a sale, human resources (HR) fills jobs with talented people and sometimes almost human computers to run the organization with a high level of competency, research and development (R&D) plays in futures with its dreams of inventions and processes currently unknown, the executive office provides the outside world with vivid communications on the growth and excitement under its wing as the keepers of the vision and the focused strategy of the organization and its legal, risk, and administrative powers, information technology (IT) digitally stores translates to everyone the communications of the organization, reporting and other telecommunications and database interactive relationships that are needed internally and externally.

With all this talk, few of these planning facts ever are communicated to the rank and file people (employees and management) in the organization and the other stakeholders (customers, investors, suppliers, community).

My thesis is that anyone who is accountable for the successful implementation of the vision of the organization should have a responsibility to participate in the development of the "Strategy Plan" that focuses the powers of the organization on its mission.

Accountability is part of acknowledging an individual's job description, pay for work completed, the work culture you participate in and the opportunity for an individual to receive self-actualization for work well done. The measuring stick for accountability is based on the goals and key performance indicators (KPI's) that measure success and hopefully contribute to fulfillment of the job.

The gut-wrenching, heart-stopping segment of planning that propels an organization along its destined path is visioning the future. If this visionary planning is a critical resource to an organization, it must have a reservoir of talent to draw upon. Where is it? Is visioning and its talent base quantifiable? Who are these people? Are they all currently designated executive leaders with 'the gift of visioning?' Who should contribute to the organization's vision? Are there resources that are unclaimed, unfound, unsolicited, unused, and maybe mismanaged?

How do employees participate in planning? Perhaps an invitation to employees in the organization to participate in the planning process is a first step. A letter from the CEO offering the time (1hour) to complete a planning survey to provide grass-roots feedback about the future of the organization that would be part of a grass roots effort to get stakeholder feedback. Supervisors, managers and executives read and listen to the feedback to provide key ideas to bring to the brainstorming table for decision-making.

Who must find the visionaries? This is the mission of the supervisors, managers and executives who are listening to the feedback. They choose visionaries as they read the clarity of employee's vision of the future. They evaluate their ability to think strategically, instead of the daily tactical get-it-done thinking that we learn in school that is perpetuated by the job description concept in organizations. They look for those who think-out-of -the-box. They open their minds to new thinking that is strategy thinking. How is this done? Trying does it, that's all. There is no precedence for it in American organizations today. If you know one, tell me. I'm very interested in knowing a few case studies.

Who are the visionaries you are looking for? They are walking on the edge of your industries state of the art. This in itself is an art. Not may dare to tread there, or take the risk of trying new things, or painting a new landscape, or experimenting with an idea that is not proven. Who will dare to vision? Those inductive thinkers that don't fill their minds with deductive clutter, who can see the end from the beginning and can see an outline of the parts within, are the candidates for visionary.

Marshalling the visionary planners is delegating them responsibility for visioning the future. A visionary would be chosen for every key department in the organization to assure coverage of all critical functions, competencies and talents. The process would continue by the supervisor, manager or executive delegating to the visionary the responsibility to develop a summary of the Visionary Planning Statements of all employees into a Visionary Planning Response Report. The leaders and the visionaries then meet to brainstorm ideas for the future.

The leaders keep their administrative control over the future and the visionaries are allowed an out-of-the-box opportunity to expand, challenge and even suggest change to the existing strategy thinking of the organization. An atmosphere of brainstorming, facilitated by an outside innovator, allows freedom of thought. By definition, brainstorming is unfiltered ideas with synergistic potential. This unleashes realistic, unrealistic and impossible paths to the future.

The current proposition that I make is that every organization must have multiple paths in their plan, ones that are on the core straight growth path to the future and those that are not aligned currently, but could be the next Yahoo or Microsoft if the market takes a turn in the right direction. All of a sudden an out of alignment path is the new organization of the future.

THE GOAL IS TO BRING THE FUTURE INTO THE PRESENT. Can you do it? Can you see the future of the organization 5 years, 10 years, or more into the future? What a challenge, when most organization re-invent themselves every few months to a year. Why not, when the future is so uncertain and the race is to the products and services that customers are willing to say have value and that they will purchase or consume.

Who can see pieces of the future in their department, add it to the coordinated vision of the organizations future and then go find out how to put together the giant puzzle works so that each piece of the future is purchased, brought into the organizational fold and nurtured so that it grows at an enormous speed that eventually brings a majority of the pieces into a commercializable reality. This process wins, buys, and owns the future before others can capture it. It brings enormous rewards of capture. The booty is bounteous when you have a proprietary control on something customers value and you alone have it: "bringing the future into the present".

The biggest obstacle to these propositions is that power is centered at the top of most organizations. The vision is centered in the CEO or one of several designated power persons. The talent may or may not be there. Sharing visioning is sharing power. That's hard for the person who has waited their entire career to get the power of their predecessor. The greatest power of all is to learn where the talent is and learn how to use it to benefit the stakeholders. That is the real benefit equation. Everyone is a winner when the talent floats to the top and is listened to and is given a chance to be used. Even if it is thrown away or discarded in the end, the opportunity for strategy thinking enables and ennobles an organizations greatness.

Where this proposition has been used in American organizations is where a VISION TEAM is formed and delegated the responsibility of brainstorming the future for the executive team. This is a great and successful concept. Let's find some more examples of visioning greatness in America that I can chronicle in my new book on Visioning the Future in Organizations.