Want to gain some leading-edge skills? Then come join me and other thought leaders in Pasadena February 22nd – 24th at The 2010 National Conference of The Association for Strategic Planning (ASP). I’ll be among a team of experts and top-rated strategists who will share their expertise. Join my deep dive presentation “Turn Strategy Into Results” on Monday afternoon to learn best practices in strategic planning and project execution.
A leading consulting company identified strategic planning as the number one required competency for corporate success. Whatever your mainstream profession, increasing your strategic management skills in these topsy-turvy times is a smart move.
Check out the brochure www.strategyplus.org for details. As my thank-you gift for the first ten readers who register as a result of this notice, I’ll give you a complimentary copy of Strategic Project Management Made Simple: A Practical Tools for Leaders and Teams. Just let me know after you sign up.
See you there!
Highlights of the Issue
- Guest Article - Do you have a personal strategic plan? In this month, a long-time colleague and planning legend, George Morrisey, makes the case for a personal strategic plan.
- Project of the Month – Here’s a LogFrame plan for Managing a Corporate Department in a manner that supports the overall organization, courtesy of Jim Whalen of DirecTV.
- Self-Mastery – Here’s how every manager can take a strategic view of your job by developing your own LogFrame.
- Book of the Month – This month, feature the absurd humor of Tom Robbins. Some of his stories may be short, contrary to the length of the laughter you may experience.
- Laugh Out Loud – Anytime is a good time for laughter. Enjoy some of my favorites from Jack Handey of Saturday Night Live Fame.
George Morrisey is a strategic planning legend as well as one of my former teaching colleagues at UCLA Extension’s Technical Management Program. This month, he makes the case for personal strategic planning. This excerpt is adapted from George’s book Creating Your Future: Personal Strategic Planning for Professionals [San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1992].
Why Me?
- Strategic planning for me? You've got to be kidding!
- Strategic planning -- that's for big corporations, isn't it? What's that got to do with me? I'm just a small fish in a big pond! What influence can I have?
- Survival is the name of the game for me! I'll worry about this year this year; I'll worry about next year next year; the year after doesn't exist!
Whether you are an independent professional in a one-person operation, a partner or staff member in a professional services firm or a professional operating within a large or small corporation, thoughts such as these may very well cross your mind when the subject of strategic planning for you personally is raised. Why should you put any effort into it? What's the payoff for you? How can this help you achieve some things that otherwise might have slipped by? My plan in this book is to share with you the benefits of applying the strategic planning process to you personally and to provide you with a methodology whereby you can make it work for you with significant payoff now and in the future.
First of all, let me offer one caveat. Never adopt any planning system. Rather, adapt whatever system is proposed that makes sense for you. Your knowledge, experience, personal style, temperament, and the circumstances in which you find yourself all will shape the way your personal planning system should be designed. Always keep in mind that plans are a means to an end, never an end in themselves. If you can keep your focus on where plans are leading you, without getting hung up on the mechanics of the process, you'll find that this approach will open up huge new vistas in terms of both present and future satisfaction in your life.
What Are Some of the Benefits of Personal Strategic Planning?
First of all, strategic planning helps provide a personal vision for the future. It is so easy to get wrapped up in the present that we lose sight of where the future might be leading us. If we intend to grow in any significant aspect of our lives, we need to periodically focus on what the future will look like. Depending on where you are in your career and your life, this future vision may be as little as two or three years out or could be as much as twenty or thirty years in the future. The ironic thing about focusing on a period in the future is that what you project for that time is probably not what's going to happen. Specific circumstances, opportunities, threats, and personal preferences may lead you in a distinctly different direction from what you established in your initial planning effort. That does not invalidate the planning process. By focusing on the future, we are able to determine when it is appropriate to change a course of direction.
Career direction is a strong concern for most professionals, particularly during the early stages of their careers. It is interesting to note that only a small fraction of professionals end up in the career for which they initially prepared. Our interests change; different opportunities present themselves; family obligations impact the direction in which we should be moving. By looking forward, we have a better chance of identifying some of the road blocks that may interfere with where we want to go and identify some of the options that may become available to us. Sometimes, by playing the "what if" game, it will open up new vistas that might not otherwise become apparent to us. While this will not necessarily prevent us from stumbling along the way, there is a greater likelihood that we will be able to respond more effectively to things that can significantly impact where we are going.
Creating and taking advantage of opportunities is generally much more productive if we keep our peripheral vision open. These "opportunities" are not limited to our profession. They can include such things as financial investments, real and personal property, family and friends, or anything that has a significant meaning in our lives. While there is always a risk in looking at opportunities, that risk tends to be reduced when we have anticipated it and planned how to deal with it.
As a counterpart to the risk involved in opportunity, strategic planning can also significantly enhance our personal and business security and safety. This includes, of course, financial security, health and well-being, family concerns, and any factors that might cause significant future trauma.
The subject of retirement can arouse a variety of different emotions, depending on where we are in our chronological and professional lives. For many professionals, total retirement may never be a reality. Many of us feel that, as long as we have our physical and mental faculties, we will continue to practice our professions indefinitely. The base and focus of our efforts may change, but we plan to continue practicing our professions to some degree as long as we are able. On the other hand, there are many professionals who look forward to retirement as an opportunity for a significant change in lifestyle that will create new experiences that their careers may have interfered with in the past. Regardless of your own perspective on retirement, when you come to the point where it is appropriate for you to back off from what you have been doing, it will be much more satisfying and fulfilling if it comes as a result of planned effort rather than the closing of a door.
The building and maintaining of a balanced life represents another significant benefit of personal strategic planning. Oftentimes, practicing professionals develop "tunnel vision" which keeps them narrowly focused on their business and careers. During certain periods of our lives, this may be justified. However, life is much more than getting ahead professionally or in business. We need to achieve a balance that includes family and friends, health and wellness, personal fulfillment that may not directly relate to our profession, financial planning, spiritual development, and service to others. Just as a chair will not function properly if one of its legs is longer or shorter than the other, neither will our lives function effectively without some sort of holistic balance. Giving significant attention to another important aspect of our lives does not necessarily detract from our professional focus. In fact, it is possible to achieve a true synergy wherein the "whole" person can be even more productive professionally as well as personally.
A final significant benefit is the opportunity to involve others in making our futures come alive. These could include our life partners, parents and siblings, children, professional colleagues, employers, and friends who have either a vested interest in our success or a genuine concern about our future well-being. Since there are very few things in our lives that we can accomplish without the help of others, it is much more meaningful to get them involved as early as possible in the planning process. Not only are they able to offer significant contributions that may help make our plans more effective, their active support in the pursuit of these efforts can go a long way toward assuring their achievement.
In Summary
Strategic planning has at least as much value for the individual professional as it does for an organization. It helps establish a personal vision for the future that encompasses both career direction and a balanced personal life. It is an exciting way of creating that future rather than allowing it to just happen.
You can contact George at GMorrisey@aol.com.
The greater our responsibilities and aspirations, the more we need to think, plan, and act strategically. Professionals of all types have found The Logical Framework a valuable tool for being strategic about their work and life.
This month’s LogFrame offers a useful template to map out a strategy for managing a corporate department. DirecTV Vice President, Jim Whalen runs three groups within the Signal Integrity Department. Check it out, them read the Self-Mastery section for guidelines on doing your own.
Strategic Design of Your Management Position
by Terry Schmidt
If you’ve attended one of my seminars, you know the power of strategic thinking and management approaches to solve organizational issues. You also know that I’m passionate about developing and sharing practical concepts which enable my clients to think, plan, and act more effectively.
My primary go-to tool is the Logical Framework, a simple yet powerful organizing approach that easily scales and flexes to meet multiple needs. My clients use this methodology in many ways—including refreshing strategy, developing annual operating plans, building cross-functional collaboration, launching task forces, or organizing projects into a program portfolio, etc.
What’s great is that these same concepts also apply to the single most critical project in your life portfolio: you, your career, and your future. This article explains how Logical Frameworks can be profitably applied to personal projects, professional development, and career planning.
While this process can benefit individual contributors, it is especially valuable those who manage others—group leaders, directors, department managers, and so forth. The clear logic enables you to demonstrate the specific value you bring in managing people and operations. Many of my corporate clients develop “a LogFrame” for their own job as part of a larger performance improvement effort employing this method.
You’ll get the most benefit from this article of you are somewhat familiar with The Logical Framework. If this topic is new to you, check out my website www.ManagementPro.com, where you’ll find free client examples and downloadable articles. Start with the 4-page article “Turn Strategy Into Action” at the following Special Reports link: http://www.managementpro.com/articles-resources/special-reports.php.
For deeper understanding, read my breakthrough book Strategic Project Management Made Simple: Practical Tools for Leaders and Teams (Wiley 2009). This book explains how I blended concepts from strategic planning and Project Management to create Strategic Project Management tools in you can readily apply in work and life.
Logical Framework Case Study: Managing a Corporate Department
James “Jim” Whalen, Vice President of DirecTV, manages a key corporate department with several teams. After his department developed operational plans covering their major functions and processes using LogFrames, Jim created a LogFrame for his own job which pulls together his responsibilities in a way that is both strategic and measureable. Jim kindly gave permission to share a modified version to help you get started. While proprietary details are excluded and the contents have been generalized, this example serves as a generic template which you can adapt to your own situations.
The LogFrame is an organizing structure in matrix form that is built around four simple yet critical strategic questions. Answers to these questions populate the 4x4 LogFrame grid with key information in a way that provides clarity and strategic insights into the organizational system you manage.
Here are these four strategic questions—with a slight twist to reflect a personal focus—followed by some guidelines for creating your own job-focused LogFrame:
- Question #1 – What am I trying to accomplish and why?
- Question #2 – How will I know I am successful?
- Question #3 – What other conditions must exist?
- Question #4 – How do I get there?
The remainder of the article explores each of these questions and illustrates the concepts with reference to Jim’s LogFrame. For best results, have a copy of his document handy as you read along.
Question 1: What am I trying to accomplish and why?
This stimulating question helps you think beyond general roles and responsibilities, to the specific Objectives which add value to your organization. Understanding both the What and the Why is crucial, especially when you manage others.
Putting it simply, managers are paid to accomplish results—or in strategic management language, Objectives. Since the word Objectives is vague, let’s recognize that Objectives can occur at various levels and add some definitions for various types of Objectives:
Goal = big picture organization intent
Purpose = why you are producing Outcomes; the change or benefit expected from delivering them all
Outcomes = specific results you can make happen
Inputs = necessary tasks to produce Outcomes
There is a logical If-Then relationship among these Objectives.
In my book, I describe The Implementation Equation™ as follows:
“If Inputs, then Outcomes; If Outcomes, then Purpose; If Purpose, then Goal.”
Start by listing your own Objectives and brainstorm to identify others from your major responsibility areas. (You may want to review your performance evaluation standards to ensure seminar management expectations are included.) Make sure each has an action verb—manage resources, develop new products, expand client base, serve customers, generate profits, to name a few.
Answering Question #1 generates a number of different Objectives. The LogFrame Objectives column connects Objectives using casual If-Then linkages that show how intermediate Objectives ripple up to support the Goal.
In Jim’s case, his overarching leadership Objective is to contribute to the achievement of his company’s Goals; his Purpose is that his department is effectively and strategically managed.
Take a look at Jim’s set of seven Outcomes. Outcomes are best stated and understood when described in completed past tense (-ed) language, e.g., resources managed. Some Objectives may become lower-level tasks or actions that contribute to these Outcomes (these will become the Input activities during Question #4). You want to be certain you have identified the right mix Outcomes to get you the results you desire and need. Aim for between three and eight—a reasonable and measurable number.
Note that Jim’s Outcome #1 ensures delivery of key objectives for which his teams are responsible to do the actual work. (Separate LogFrame were developed to guide each team in doing so.) But since any management job goes way beyond supervising work, this Outcome is just a start.
His job scope involves several other Outcomes: leadership inside and outside the company (Outcome #2); putting new business processes in place (Outcome #3); managing the budget (Outcome #4); ensuring that his department has the right skill set (Outcome #5); managing his own growth and development (Outcome #6); and rewarding study performance through an awards program (Outcomes #7).
Now let’s focus on you and answer Question #1 for your job. What are all of your objectives? What are your Key Outcomes? What is the higher level Objective which your set of Outcomes contributes to? Identify your primary Goal by ask what higher Objective your Purpose contributes to. Goal is usually a shared focus of multiple other players. As a manager, your Outcomes may look similar to Jims, although your Success Measures will be unique to your context.
Question 2: How will I know I am successful?
Knowing what success looks like by defining measureable indicators upfront both clarifies what the Objectives mean and increases the probability of achieving them. This question helps you to pin down each Objective in measurable terms, along with the means of Verification to track their status.
Choose appropriate measures that include quality, quantity, time, cost, and customer dimensions. In addition, identify the means of Verification for each—the Logical Framework has a column for them.
Question 3: What other conditions must exist?
Any job of significance involves uncertainty and outside factors that you usually can’t control. But these risk factors have a very real impact on your ability to deliver the results expected of you. . With the volatility and rapid change that constitutes the work world today, it is important to scan the environment within and outside of your organization and identify what’s emerging that could be a problem.
Jim’s key assumptions concern continuity in key management positions, staff desire to work together, support from others, and so on.
In your case, what are the critical internal and external factors that, if not managed/monitored properly, could undermine your success?
Be explicit about the implicit Assumptions floating around in your head. Writing them down enables you to examine and discuss with others how to minimize their risk elements.
Question 4: How do I get there?
Answer the last question will identify some of the major tasks needed to produce Outcomes. This is the action level but there is no need to capture all the details here, keep things general. Your daily/weekly work plan and schedule covers these.
Jim’s example shows the main Input activities that produce the Outcomes. On a weekly basis, he reviews these and turns them into specific actions to get done.
Summing Up
There is great value in being strategic about your job. The LogFrame offers a systems thinking perspective that demonstrate how what you do supports the strategic organizational Objectives. I suggest doing a draft LogFrame, then sit down you’re your management and peers to further clarify your responsibilities and align Objectives with those of the organization and other managers. The discussion can yield rich insights about how to improve your contribution by clearly demonstrating your value to the top and bottom line! That kind of thinking helps benefits not just the organization, but you as well.
I love creative and absurd humor. One of the whackiest and most creative authors I know is Tom Robbins, who makes the sentence his canvas and does van Gogh-type masterpiece word-smith. He’s written plenty of longer books like Jitterbug Perfume and Skinny Legs and All. However, I’ve chosen to highlight a slim collection of short stories and miscellany—perfect length for a two hour flight. Alert the people sitting next to you that chuckles may erupt from you at any moment... and offer to share the funniest ones.
Here’s an example of Robbins’ creative word play, even with the most mundane topics. The excerpt below is his response to having been asked to write about one of his favorite things. So, Robbins wrote the following ode to the Letter Z.
To pragmatists, the letter Z is nothing more than a phonetically symbolic glyph, a minor sign easily learned, readily assimilated, and occasionally deployed in the course of a literate life. To cynics, Z is just an S with a stick up its butt.
Well, true enough, any word worth repeating is greater than the sum of its part; and the particular world-part Z—angular, whereas S is curvaceous—can, from a certain perspective, appear anally wired (although Z is far too sophisticated to throw up its arms like Y and act as if it had just been goosed).
On those of us neither prosaic nor jaded, however, those whom the Fates have chosen to monitor such things, Z has had an impact above and beyond its signifying function. A presence in its own right, it’s the most distant and elusive of our twenty-six linguistic atoms; a mysterious, dark figure in an otherwise fairly innocuous lineup, and the sleekest little swimmer ever to take laps in a bowl of alphabet soup.
Scarcely a day has gone by when I’ve not stirred the alphabetical ant nest, yet every time I type or, pen the letter Z, I still felt a secret tingle, a tiny thrill. This is partially due to Z’s relative rarity; my dictionary devotes 99 pages to A words, 138 pages to P but only 5 pages to words beginning with Z. Then there’s Z’s exoticness, for, though it’s a component of the English language, it gives the impression of having zipped out of Africa or the ancient Near East of Nebuchadnezzar. Ultimately, perhaps, what is most fascinating about Z is its dual protection of subtle menace and aesthetic about Z’s are not verbal ants; they are bees Stylish bees, Killer bees. They buzz; they sting.
Z is a whip crack of a letter, a striking viper of a letter, an open jackknife ever ready to cut the cords of convention or peel the peach of lust.
A Z is slick, quick (it’s not accident that automaker call their fastest models Z cars), arcane, eccentric, and always faintly sinister—although it’s very elegance separates it from the brutish X, that character traditionally associated with all forms of extinction. If X wields a tire iron, Z packs a laser gun. Zap! If X is Mike Hammer, Z is James Bond. (For reason known only to the British, a Z 007 would pronounce its name “zed”.) If X mark the spot, Z avoids the spot, being too fluid, too cosmopolitan, to remain in one place.
In contrast to that prim, trim, self-absorbed supermodel, I, or to, O, the voluptuous, orgasmic, bighearted slut, if Z were a woman, she would be a femme fatale, the consonant we love to fear and fear to love.
The celebrities of the alphabet are M and Z, the letters for whom famous movies have been named. Of course, V had its novel, but as I can assure you from personal experience, in today’s culture, a novel lacks a movie’s sizzle, not to mention pizzazz. Is it not testimony to Z’s star power that it is invariably selected to come on last—and this despite the fact the F word gets all the press?
Take a letter? You bet. I’ll take Z. My favorite country, at least on paper, is Zanzibar; my favorite body of water, the Zuider Zee. ZZ Top is my favorite band, zymology my favorite branch of science (dealing, as it does, with the fermentation of beverages).
Had Zsa Zsa Gabor married Frank Zappa, she would have had the coolest name in the world—except, maybe, if ZaSu Pitts had wed Tristan Tzara. As for me, my given name, Thomas, is a modern, anglicized version of the old pre-biblical moniker Tammuz. Originally, Tammuz was a mythological hero who served the Goddess simultaneously as lover, husband, brother, and son. Give me my Z back, and there’s no telling where I might go from there.
Before I go anywhere, however, let me lift a zarf of zinfandel to the former ruling family of Russia. To the tzar, the tzarina, and all the little tzardines. And as for those who would complain that I’m taking this bizzness too far, I say: better a zedophile than a pedophile.
A few of my favorite absurd from Jack Handey of SNL fame.
I hope if dogs ever take over the world, and they chose a king, they don't just go by size, because I bet there are some Chihuahuas with some good ideas.
The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face.
Probably the earliest flyswatters were nothing more than some sort of striking surface attached to the end of a long stick.
If you ever teach a yodeling class, probably the hardest thing is to keep the students from just trying to yodel right off. You see, we build to that.
If you ever fall off the Sears Tower, just go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will try to catch you because, hey, free dummy.
When this girl at the art museum asked me whom I liked better, Monet or Manet, I said, "I like mayonnaise." She just stared at me, so I said it again, louder. Then she left. I guess she went to try to find some mayonnaise for me.
To me, it's a good idea to always carry two sacks of something when you walk around. That way, if anybody says, "Hey, can you give
me a hand?" You can say, "Sorry, got these sacks."
It makes me mad when I go to all the trouble of having Martha cook up about a hundred drumsticks, then the guy at the Marineland says, "You can't throw chicken to the dolphins. They eat fish." Sure they eat fish, if that's all you give them. Man, wise up.
I think they should continue the policy of not giving a Nobel Prize for paneling.
I think somebody should come up with a way to breed a very large shrimp. That way, you could ride him, then after you camped at night, you could eat him. How about it, science?
Here's a good trick: Get a job as a judge at the Olympics. Then, if some guy sets a world record, pretend that you didn't see it and go, "Okay, is everybody ready to start now?"