Balanced Business Growth

Business Automation

Strategic Planning Framework – Part 3

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In Strategic Planning Framework  – Part 1 we discussed:

  • Strategic Plan – structure
  • Frameworks for Strategic Plans – 8 useful examples
  • SWOT Analysis in detail

In Strategic Planning Framework  – Part 2 we discussed:

  • Strategic Mapping
  • Balanced Scorecard

In this article, we are discussing Issues based Strategic Planning and Objective and Key Results

What is a Strategic Issue? A Strategic Issue is, first of all, an issue – an unresolved question needing a decision or waiting for some clarifying future event. 

Secondly, it is strategic and has a major impact on the course and direction of the business. It probably relates directly to one or more of the fundamental “Three Strategic Questions”:

  1. What are we going to sell?
  2. To whom are we going to sell it?
  3. How will we beat our competition?

Strategic Issues lie right at the heart of the business. Correspondingly, the process step dealing with Strategic Issues lies right at the heart of Strategic Planning.

Issues Based Strategic Planning has a process:

  1. External/internal assessment to identify Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT). We provide more detail on this process in Strategic Planning Framework – Part 1
  2. Strategic analysis to identify and prioritise major issues/goals
  3. Design major strategies (or programs) to address issues/goals
  4. Design/update vision, mission and values
  5. Establish action plans
  6. Record issues, goals, strategies/programs, mission and vision, and action plans
  7. Develop the yearly Operating Plan document (from year one of the strategic plan)
  8. Develop and authorise the Budget for year one 
  9. Conduct the organisation’s year-one operations (make it happen)
  10. Monitor/review/evaluate/update Strategic Plan document (continuous improvement)

Objective and Key Results

Objectives and key results (OKR, alternatively OKRs) is a goal-setting framework used by individuals, teams, and organizations to define measurable goals and track their outcomes. The development of OKR is generally attributed to Andrew Grove who introduced the approach to Intel during his tenure there.[when?] John Doerr published an OKR book which is called “Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs” in 2017.[1]  OKR

Define your goals and make a plan to measure the goals along the way. Setting OKRs propels your team to achieve more than you ever thought possible while continuously learning.

OKR – The process:

Preparation

Start by creating a collaboration document, like a Trello board. You can use the template we can provide, if you’d like, or create your own.

As a team, decide what period of time you’re setting OKRs for. Align that period to what fits in with your normal company cycles.

Share any information that will provide background information to help inform your OKRs with your team before the meeting. This could include broader company goals, project roadmaps, customer metrics, customer feedback, or previous quarters’ OKRs.

Set the Stage

Ask the team to remember the following before starting the meeting:

  • It’s important to think of the value we want to achieve for our customers, clients or people we serve.
  • The team should consider how to measure success towards achieving that value.

Choose Objectives

Pose the question:

 “Where can we bring the most value to our customers in the upcoming quarter?”

Have the team brainstorm objectives by adding them to the collaboration document. Group similar objectives together, then summarise your ideas into 1-3 objectives.

Set Key Results

For each Objective, decide on a few Key Results that, when reached, would confirm you’ve achieved the objective. Ensure the team is choosing metrics that demonstrate the results of the work the team has done.

Assign Owners

Assign each key result (KR) to an owner on the team. While the KR belongs to the whole team, the owner is responsible for tracking the team’s progress.

Review

Review your objectives and key results and ask whether they’re ambitious enough. Balance setting achievable goals with creating enough of a challenge to keep the team motivated.

Ensure the KRs can be scored periodically on a sliding scale from 0 to 10.

3 = We needed to do better

7 = We came very close

10 = We hit the mark. Harder objectives could be considered moving forward.

Future articles will cover the other aspects of your Strategic Framework:

  1. SWOT Analysis
  2. Strategy Mapping
  3. Issues based strategic planning
  4. Balanced Scorecard
  5. Objective and Key Results
  6. Porter’s five forces
  7. Gap Analysis
  8. PEST analysis

At https://balanced-business-growth.com/ we provide the expertise to work with you to build your Strategic Plan. Once the Strategic Plan is built we then assist you to deliver the identified benefits.  

Strategic Planning Framework – Part 2

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In Strategic Planning Framework  – Part 1 we discussed:

  • Strategic Plan – structure
  • Frameworks for Strategic Plans – 8 useful examples
  • SWOT Analysis in detail

In this article, we are discussing Strategic Map and Balanced Scorecard

What is a Strategy Map?

A strategy map is a diagram that is used to document the primary strategic goals being pursued by an organisation or management team. It is an element of the documentation associated with the Balanced Scorecard, and in particular, is characteristic of the second generation of Balanced Scorecard designs that first appeared during the mid-1990s. The first diagrams of this type appeared in the early 1990s, and the idea of using this type of diagram to help document Balanced Scorecard was discussed in a paper by Drs. Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton in 1996.[1]  Strategy map – Wikipedia

How to Create a Strategic Map

Step 1. Define Mission, Vision, Values

That’s the direction to the drawn for your organisation. When you face uncertainty, these three will help you to make the best decisions.

Step 2. Define Four Perspectives

Finance, Customers, Internal, Innovations. You can confirm by testing that your organisation needs exactly these four. 

Step 3. Strategic Priorities

This is where you become focused.  Strategic priorities are the top-level goals; for example, these are improving product or service provided, serving clients better, improving the efficiency of operations.   

Step 4. Define Business Goals

Business Goals needs to be a cause-and-effect connection between the goals. 

Step 5. Describe Rationale

The rationale is a set of reasons why you decided to pick this specific goal. Thinking about what outcomes you wish to achieve and that will determine the rationale. 

Step 6. Define Leading and Lagging Metrics

Your business goal becomes much clearer when you define the metrics that are the leading indicators and the lagging indicators.  Firstly the lagging indicators – that is the measure of the result you want ie increased revenue.  The leading indicators are the measure of what you need to do to achieve the results you want, ie call new prospects.   

Step 7. Define Initiatives

Initiatives are the high-level action plans that collectively that explain how the strategy will be executed.

Step 8. Cascade

There should only be one top-level strategy of the organisation.  However, business units need to focus on different parts of that strategy. Create local versions of the strategy maps with more specific goals and indicators for the business. Each business unit needs to build its local version.  

Balanced Scorecard

What is a Balanced Scorecard?  

A balanced scorecard is a strategy performance management tool – a well-structured report, that can be used by managers to keep track of the execution of activities by the staff within their control and to monitor the consequences arising from these actions.[1]  Balanced scorecard – Wikipedia

How to Build a Balanced Scorecard

The four perspectives of a Balanced Scorecard

Financial

The financial perspective in a balanced scorecard is potentially the most traditional of the four. You’ll want to look at return on investment, growth, fixed costs, profit, and so on.

Learning and Growth Perspective

This area examines the company’s health in terms of training employees on rapidly changing technologies, mentoring employees in a way that helps them grow and contribute, and employing the latest tools and systems to foster innovation. Responds to change is important, for example: how long it takes a team to develop a new product and bring it to market.

Business Process Perspective

It’s also important to examine a company’s internal processes to look for areas ripe for improvement by removing inefficiencies and identifying error-prone activities. Would it help the company’s strategic goal if some processes were faster or cost less?

Customer Perspective

You will want to examine your company’s activities from your customers’ or stakeholders’ perspectives. How do your customers view your activities? What are the reviews and feedback? Do you have an objective measure of customer satisfaction from surveys or other sources? 

Build Your Balanced Scorecard

Balanced scorecards are easiest to create using a template (we can provide a template if you wish).  Start with a space for all four perspectives and just add what specifically applies to your organisation.

  • Add your vision. The company’s main vision belongs in the centre of a balanced scorecard. Whichever part of your company you look at, you should always keep this goal or vision in mind.
  • Add perspectives. To create a traditional balanced scorecard, place the four perspectives in a ring around the central vision.
  • Add objectives and measures. Within each perspective define specific objectives, measures, targets, and initiatives.
  • Connect each piece. Link each perspective to the others using arrows to indicate that they’re all interconnected when it comes to achieving the company’s vision.
  • Share and communicate. Use the balanced scorecard to demonstrate how different initiatives and short-term actions are contributing to the long-term strategic objectives of the company.

A Balanced Scorecard is a valuable tool that needs to be up to date and shared with all involved parties.  

Future articles will cover the other aspects of your Strategic Framework:

  1. SWOT Analysis
  2. Strategy Mapping
  3. Issues based strategic planning
  4. Balanced Scorecard
  5. Objective and Key Results
  6. Porter’s five forces
  7. Gap Analysis
  8. PEST analysis

At https://balanced-business-growth.com/ we provide the expertise to work with you to build your Strategic Plan. Once the Strategic Plan is built we then assist you to deliver the identified benefits.  

Time Management – Make Work Fun

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Work is fun when it is part of our mission, our quest. Work, however, loses some of its sheen when it becomes part of the routine with little long-term value. Residual income opportunities have the ability, however, to provide lasting financial security and keep work fun!

It took me many years to understand the teaching of my parents that “work is fun.” It was a teaching that went well beyond my childhood imaginings in both concept, and reality.

As I pursued a career, I had a mission and accomplishing this mission became the quest. A game of persistence, tenacity and ultimate achievement. There were certainly hard times but these were blended with a mixture of fun times and moments of exhilaration as the mission was accomplished.

What comes next though?

Is life a constant pursuit of one mission, only to achieve another mission? This mindset can wear the soul down and limit your ability to really “smell the flowers” and soak up the sunrays. So, with our careers achieved… many settle into “the routine.” A time where the adrenalin rush subsides and a relative constancy in life is achieved.

However, inflation keeps climbing… kids come, dinners are more expensive, yearning to travel creeps in and the weekly income remains constant. Then… our belief system tells us that the company owes us more for doing the same thing. A feeling of being trapped settles in and the fun disappears.

The problem though is not in the career that we chose, not in the company that provides our income… but the subdued reality that we get paid for what we do today, and tomorrow we will get paid for what we do then. If we want to pause, take a breather, take an extended vacation, our income stops. We feel trapped, there is no fun.

A few individuals have, however, found a way to perform a task today… work hard and do it well… and continue to be paid for this very same task tomorrow, next week, the following month and the coming year(s). These people are all around you and in this type of work environment… you can really have some fun. After all, isn’t it nice to be on the beach, or relaxing in your own backyard knowing that you are still reaping the fruits of your past labour?

Actors, musicians, insurance agents, landlords and business owners are just a few of these individuals. Now, the income these individuals earn in the beginning is usually a modest sum but as they persevere in their chosen field the earnings climb AND these earnings compound on what is already being earned from past work. At some point in time, they have Multiple Streams of Income (MSIs) that will outshine any standard routine job these individuals have had as their Primary Source of Income (PSI). This is when they may choose to remain in their current job… because they have financial freedom (and security), they like what they do and get satisfaction from their chosen tasks.

Some, however, opt to take a year-long sabbatical and think of new ventures, some pursue the next challenge with greater vigour and others find ways to help others; after all, Abraham Lincoln once said…

“you cannot help the poor by becoming one yourself.”


If you are looking for financial freedom, you should contemplate supplementing your PSI with one, or more, MSIs. MSI opportunities are many and most can be generated from the comfort of your own home on a part-time basis. Do a search on the Internet for passive income, residual income or home business opportunities and become a small business owner.

With the right system, the right dedication and a sincere passion for building financial security… you can become independently wealthy. This combination of identifying proven systems and putting a residual wealth-building formula in place means that you are working for yourself today, but you too will soon start to see your labour bear fruit more, and more, as time goes by. My parents were right… work is fun!

Learn, Adapt & Change

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Are you waiting for business to get back to normal?
How long are you prepared to wait?
What will happen if business never gets back to normal?

If any of these questions are the question(s) you are asking yourself then the future of your business is not in your hands.

Maybe you may need to start addressing the market you serve as it is, rather than how you hope it will be.

If you wish to address the market as it is you will have to make changes. You must navigate the financial and operational challenges of coronavirus while rapidly addressing the needs of your people, customers and suppliers. You need to set a Wildly Important Goal.

You need to rapidly turn your attention to the immediate future, a period of unpredictable and possibly muted economic recovery with new competitive threats and opportunities, and quite possibly a decade of never returning to the historic version of what was normal. We will be entering a new era defined by fast-changing shifts in cultural norms, societal values and behaviours, such as increased demand for responsible business practices and renewed brand purpose.

Are you ready?

If you are ready, we can help.

Are you ready to learn, adapt and change?

We will help by sharing our 5 shortcuts to growth. If you apply our shortcuts you can expect to learn, adapt and grow.

The 5 Shortcuts

Shortcut Number 1 – Become the Leader Who Thinks Differently

The world is more complex and volatile today than at any other time in our history.
The tools of our modern existence are getting faster, cheaper, and smaller at an exponential rate, transforming every aspect of society, from business to culture and from the public sphere to our most private moments.
The old methods no longer cut through.
The people who succeed will be the ones who learn to think differently.
Shortcut Number ONE is “Be the LEADER who thinks differently.”

Shortcut Number 2 – Achieving your Wildly Important Goals

Almost every business leader says the thing that causes the most trouble is execution.
They have clarity of the objective.
Their Team lacks:
Clarity – They do not know what the goal is.
Commitment – They are not committed to the goal.
Collaboration – They do not know what to do to achieve the goal.
Accountability – And they aren’t being held accountable.
The enemy of Execution is not the Wildly Important Goal, it is the day job, the Whitewater. The Whitewater is the energy that is required just to keep the operation, your business, going on a day-to-day basis.
This makes it so hard to undertake anything new.
You need to be able to differentiate between the Whitewater of business-as-usual and the strategic goals.

Shortcut Number 3 – Act on the Lead Measures

This shortcut is about providing great energy to the activities that drive your lead measures. The objective is the lag measure, and that is the Wildly Important Goal. The lead measures drive the lag measures by leverage.
The lag measure tells you if you have achieved your goal.
The lead measure tells you if you are likely to achieve your goal.
Long-term objectives, as described in business plans, do not adapt to changing conditions or circumstances.
Lead measures are measures of short-term activities. Activities that are designed to be enacted in the coming week. These activities are responsive to changing conditions and circumstances. They become a just in time process to focus on the activities required to achieve your Wildly Important Goal.
Lead measures are predictive. If a lead measure is undertaken, the lag measure will be impacted. The lead measure is influenceable, the team can make a lead measure happen.
Understanding lead measures will be one of the most important learnings that you take from this article.

Shortcut Number 4 – Keep a compelling scoreboard

We will cover how to involve the team in creating a compelling scoreboard. Different scoreboard designs drive different behaviours. Having the team involved in the design results in their commitment to making the Wildly Important Goal succeed.
Choose a theme
Choose a theme for your scoreboard that clearly displays the measures you are tracking.
The objective is to communicate we are going X to Y by when.
Theme examples are:
Trendlines
Speedometer
Traffic lights
Design the scoreboard
Once you’ve selected your theme, and type of scoreboard you want, the team should design the scoreboard with the following questions in mind:
Is it simple?
Can the team see it easily?
Does it contain both lead and lag measures?
Can we see at a glance if we’re winning?
Build the scoreboard
Keep it updated
The design of the scoreboard should make it easy to update at least weekly. If the scoreboard is hard to update you will be tempted to put it off when the whitewater strikes – and your wildly important goal will disappear in the noise and confusion.

Shortcut Number 5 – The Rhythm of Accountability

Shortcut number 5 asks teams to meet frequently and regularly, in Wildly Important Goal sessions, at which each team member makes personal commitments to drive the lead measures.
What is the session?
What is a wildly important goal session?
It has one purpose – to refocus the team on the wildly important goal despite the daily Whitewater.
It takes place Weekly, it has a fixed agenda, as per the following:
Account: Report on last week’s commitments.
Each team member reports on The Commitments to move the lead measures that he or she made the prior week.
Review the scoreboard: Learn from successes and failures. The team assesses whether their commitments are moving the lead measure and whether the lead measure is moving the lag measure.
They discuss what they’ve learned about what works, and what doesn’t, and how to adapt.
Clear the Path
Plan: Clear the path and make new commitments.
Based on this assessment, each member of the team makes commitments for the coming week that will raise the lead measures to the required level of performance.
Because the members create the commitments themselves, and because they are publicly accountable for them to each other, they go away determined to follow through – it becomes personally important.

Shortcut number 5 keeps your team in the game every week, as the members connect their personal contributions to the most important priorities of the organisation. With this outcome, you have not only the awareness that they are winning on a key goal, but your team has become a winning team.
Which is the ultimate return on the investment that you made in this Wildly Important Goal.

Are you ready to Learn, Adapt & Change?

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