Listening: A Strategy and Change Blog | Hosfeld & Associates

By Kathleen Hosfeld

One of the things that makes a significant difference in the quality of strategic planning is the extent to which the process is informed by objective information. Too often processes can become thinly veiled exercises that reinforce dominant opinion or intuition alone. While intuition is an important tool for planning, it needs to be fed by facts.

A good strategic discussion or planning process will look for facts to answer the following questions.

Who are our competitors or collaborators? What are they experiencing? These questions are answered by an environmental analysis or environmental scan.

Is our mission/vision still resonating internally and externally? What do our employees think? What do our customers or other key audiences think about our mission or vision? Is it still relevant? These questions are answered through dialogue and surveys about mission and vision.

What is happening in our industry? What is no longer happening? What’s starting to happen? How can these changes be measured? This information is explored through review of industry trends and benchmarks.

What do we want to do? How can we measure that? Setting measurable organizational performance outcomes creates a target that guides strategic discussions.

How well are we doing now? Evaluating current performance against target outcomes (above) gives the organization objective information about the gap between current and desired performance.

How do our most important audiences see our challenges and opportunities? Interviews, surveys and focus groups with stakeholder groups provide much needed perspective and often unexpected insights that can fuel the strategic planning process.

How do our conflicts, obstacles or challenges give us an opportunity for innovation? Many organizations see tensions or obstacles as either/or problems. The opportunity for strategic innovation comes from holding the tension between two opposing views until a third (and sometimes more) option appears.

A recent study of strategic planning among non-profit organizations suggests that high performing organizations are more than twice as likely to include the types of evidence-gathering described above. Whether you are a non-profit or for-profit, the degree to which your process uses objective information for decision-making and innovation will make a difference in the value you realize from strategy and execution.

See Related Article on Non-Profit Strategic Planning

By Kathleen Hosfeld

As challenging as it is to find time to create and implement strategic plans, new research reinforces that it’s one of the keys to organizational success. Consistent strategic planning and implementation monitoring practices make the difference between moderately and highly successful non-profit
organizations according to a study presented in 2013 at the annual meeting of the Association for Strategic Planning.

The University of Arkansas study surveyed close to 500 non-profits ranging in size from less than $1 million Annual Operating Expenses to greater than $5 million. Non-profits scored themselves on their success level (Low, Moderate, High) on the basis of their overall success and likelihood of success in the future.  What can you learn from their findings?

1. Don’t wait until there’s a crisis

According to the study, 60% self-described Low Success non-profits engage strategic planning reactively when there is either a significant risk or an opportunity, whereas 74% of High Success organizations engage in strategic planning as a matter of routine.

2. Research, metrics and mission/vision discussion key to effective planning

 High Success organizations are twice as likely to integrate evidence-based decision-making (through the use of research), metrics (performance outcomes, industry benchmarks) and mission/vision analysis into their processes. They are far more likely than their counterparts to engage stakeholders via interviews, focus groups or surveys.

3. Follow-through makes the difference

 It’s true in for-profit organizations as well:  Realization of strategic value comes through implementation. While 64% of Moderate Success non-profits had done either a somewhat successful or very successful job at implementation, 88% of High Success organizations had done “somewhat” or “very” successful implementation.

4. Regular progress evaluation and reporting against plan are associated with high success

High Success organizations were more than twice as likely as Medium Success organizations to engage in 1) progress updates in executive staff meetings, 2) annual review of mission/vision alignment with plan, and 3) periodic assessment and reporting. High Success organizations assess and report plan progress at least 3 to 4 times a year or more.

All organizations, small and large, struggle with aspects of strategic planning and implementation according to study. Time is a major consideration. 46% of the High Success organizations say lack of time is a challenge in the planning process; 33.8% say that staff is spread too thin to focus on plan implementation.  In what may seem counter-intuitive, the Higher Success organizations are more likely than Moderate Success organizations to report time constraints associated with both planning and implementation.

Medium Success organizations have different challenges that may also affect their overall success. They report a lack of high-level strategic thinking by leadership (37%) and higher resistance to making hard choices (35%) twice as frequently as High Success counterparts.

The study authors conclude that High Success non-profits have a “culture of planning” that involves a commitment and discipline for planning and implementation.  The evidence of the importance of planning to organizational success from this and other studies is so compelling that the authors recommend that funders emphasize these practices as a means to fulfilling mission.

What you should consider:

• Develop a planning culture that is committed and disciplined about periodic strategic planning and implementation
• Utilize research, metrics and mission/vision alignment tools as part of the planning
• Create an implementation process that involves regular progress reports to the executive level
• Communicate out progress at least quarterly if not more often to key constituents

The study report can be found here.

By Kathleen Hosfeld

At the heart of organizational meaning-making we find corporate vision and mission as definitions of the good or the change that we seek to create in the world. While this is absolutely essential to thriving organizations and engaging the passions of  stakeholders, this is not strategy.

Vision and mission are the “what.” Strategy is the “how.” Strategy is the distillation of opportunities and maneuvers that will make it possible to realize your vision and mission. In a recent article in Strategy + Business, Ken Favaro writes that many organizations mistake what he calls “The Corporate Five” for the “Strategic Five.” The Corporate Five are mission, vision, purpose, plan and goals. You can have all of those things and still be missing a strategy.

In order to develop strategy, a firm has to be able to answer what Favaro calls “The Strategic Five” :

1. What business or businesses should you be in?
2. How do you add value to your businesses?
3. Who are the target customers for your businesses?
4. What are your value propositions to those target customers?
5. What capabilities are essential to adding value to your businesses and differentiating their value
propositions?

Although most companies can articulate a vision (for instance, “to be the leading biotech company”), a mission (“to find and commercialize innovative drug therapies”), a purpose (“to improve patients’ lives”), a plan (“to develop molecule X, enter market Y, and partner with company Z”), or a goal (“to bring three innovative molecules to market by 2025”), few convincingly answer all five strategic questions, especially with one voice across their top teams and down their organizations.

They can’t answer those questions because often they haven’t asked them in a very long time, if at all.

Favaro says that companies that focus on the “Corporate Five” are mistaking execution for strategy. I’d counter that since there’s no strategy to start with there’s nothing to actually execute. The so-called “plan” is a checklist of technical to-dos, when in reality an adaptive challenge is at hand that requires new thinking. Strategy work is intrinsically adaptive change work.

Development of mission and vision and purpose are engaging exercises that tap the imagination of all stakeholders. If they are developed outside of a framework that addresses “The Strategic Five,” they are likely to lack substance and fail to achieve traction within the organization. An effective business transformation process will embed the Strategic Five into the entire process.

To read Favaro’s whole article go here.

Interested in finding your own answers to “The Strategic Five?” Read our article “Finding Time To Be Strategic.”

By Kathleen Hosfeld

The value of any competitive strategy is the extent to which it creates or deepens relationships with customers.  The faster you implement that strategy, the faster you see return on investment.  The way a team formulates the strategy can make all the difference between its seamless or tortured translation into new or more profitable relationships.  Integrating key market-focused questions into the strategy process will speed your strategy to market.

Take for example, Honda Corporation.  The firm has remained among the top five car manufacturers for many years with its solid strategy and execution. Honda’s core strategy has focused on high quality engine design.  This allowed the firm to grow from selling lawn mowers to motorcycles and then cars. Today, their website and sales collateral continue to emphasize various aspects of their engine expertise – from the combustion engines that drive their sponsored racecars to their market-leading hybrid engines. The promise of superior engine performance — a key aspect of customer satisfaction — is at the heart of all their messaging. This straight line between key elements of their corporate strategy and their markets means faster execution.

How can your firm learn from Honda’s example and accelerate the translation of your organization’s strategy into market impact? Examine your strategy process and ask the following questions:

In what way does planning identify and maximize your firm’s unique know how or what you do best?

Honda’s strategic intent leverages the firm’s knowledge of engine design and manufacturing. Honda built that knowledge systematically as its primary source of competitive advantage. What is the core knowledge in your firm that you could similarly develop?  Does your strategic plan call this out and identify how it will be nurtured and grown over time?

How does your planning seek to leverage the connection between your strengths and customers perceived value?

Many companies seek to create value for their customers. Yet, sometimes there’s a mismatch between what customers value and what the companies think they do or should value. It boils down to evidence. In the course of your strategic planning, this year or in recent years, have you conducted the research to know what customers’ really value about your product or service?

In what way does planning actively identify new potential markets or opportunities through existing strengths?

In the case of Honda’s commitment to engines, they’ve been able to evolve from lawnmowers, to motorcycles, to cars, and now to diversified types of cars including hybrid vehicles. What’s the equivalent strength in your company that creates a platform for new market development, innovation or product evolution?

How does it explore alternatives for positioning your firm or products in ways competitors can’t match?

High performing companies’ plans always address the strengths and weaknesses of competitors. Look deeper than what their advertisements say. Look to their ability to deliver consistently. Focus in areas where you have considerable head start on competitors or untapped opportunities.

In answering all of these questions, keep in mind the power of stakeholder listening and dialogue to tap new perspectives to create new insights and breakthrough thinking.  Employees, customers, value chain partners, community groups may all have unique perspectives that will give your firm an edge.

Streamlining the path to execution is the way to realize more value from your strategic planning process. Using a strategy process that answers these questions enables the firm to accelerate the translation of strategic plans into value propositions, messaging strategies, brand promises and other foundational elements of good marketing.

By Kathleen Hosfeld

Over a Christmas holiday in 2004, I was working on an article that describes the strategy framework we use at Hosfeld & Associates.  As I often did, I shared my draft with my dad, Bob Hosfeld, a retired Alcoa executive, whose perspective always expanded my awareness on any topic we discussed.

There were two key questions in the model at the time:

• What is the change we want to create in the world with our work?  This question spoke to the larger purpose and intention of the company.
• What are the means we will use to create this change? This question speaks to the particular strategy the company will employ to create this change. What is the work it is uniquely positioned to do?

So far so good, I thought.  Dad, however, replied to the effect: “This is all well and good, but it won’t matter at all to the rank and file.”

“What do you mean Dad?”

My father had worked his way up through the executive ranks at Alcoa by first working at smelting facilities in Washington state. Aluminum smelters take the ingredients of aluminum, melt them down and form the basic products that are sent off for further shaping or fabrication.  What came to his mind were the men and women who worked the “potlines,” doing hard physical labor, with the potential for injury, day-in, day-out.

“Your questions are for the white collar people at the top.  What the person on the potline cares about is relationships.  Can I go to the break room at lunchtime and sit with people I like and trust? If I’m injured, will the company care for me and help me get back to work?”

“So for them it’s about how we treat each other in the workplace?”

Dad agreed. This gave birth to the third question in the model :

• How do we want to be together as we do this work?

I published the article we worked on in 2005 just before Dad passed away. Much has changed since then in terms of the expectations that people have toward their work. Increasingly more employees expect their employer to have a purpose that transcends profit alone. They do care about the first two questions more than they once did.

Yet, lately I’ve been realizing the genius of Dad’s contribution to the model.  Too often an inspirational purpose is designed only for the benefit of customers “out there.”  While that’s important, it forgets that one of the largest impacts a company can have is on its employees. Translating our noble purpose into values that we intend to live out every day within the company does two things.  First, it gives us a way to “be” the change we seek to create in the world.  Second, it creates the authenticity that comes from “walking the talk.”   When employees see it, they believe it.  When it matters to them personally, they see how it can matter to the customers they serve.  They are then more compelled to live it themselves.

Brand, strategy or purpose. They all suggest values to which we aspire and seek to live out.  Claiming and institutionalizing these values is the way to make the change we seek here and now.

By Kathleen Hosfeld

Looking to reap the many benefits of a stakeholder centric approach to business but wondering where to start?

First, recognize that you’re not starting from zero. You already have relationships with stakeholders. Many companies can benefit from taking an appreciative approach to identifying what they are already doing well. From there you can measure the gap between the current state and the desired future state of each relationship.

Second, accept that movement toward a stakeholder centric model represents both cultural and operational change and will take time.  This movement will take a combination of both “soft” skills and “hard skills.”  An effective change initiative will address individuals and teams, structures, behaviors and beliefs.

Third, get rid of the notion that this is just corporate social responsibility or good PR.  It’s actually a different approach to business altogether.   It means inviting stakeholders into the value creation process of your company.

While every company’s situation will differ, there are eight basic steps to implementing a stakeholder approach to a business:

1.  Determine the strategic context:  What are you trying to accomplish? Are you formulating business strategy or functional strategy?  Are you seeking the overall competitive advantage of the firm or are you working in service of a specific business unit, service or product’s performance?
2. Prioritize stakeholder influences in this strategic context:  Evaluate stakeholders using the criteria of power, legitimacy, urgency, interdependence, cooperation, and conflict. Consider all the stakeholders in your value chain. Note that research shows that investing in employees make the most significant contribution to overall financial performance. This is likely a good place to start.
3. Assess stakeholder interests and satisfaction: Many executives think they know what stakeholders want, but it’s rare when they actually do. Assessing stakeholder interests and the current state of their satisfaction can take many forms: discussion, surveys, group processes. What’s important is to make this determination based on data.
4. Harmonize stakeholder interests: Compare the interests of all key stakeholders to identify areas of commonality and difference. Look for the third way when needs or interests seem to compete.
5. Develop stakeholder strategies: Creating stakeholder strategies is an iterative process with the preceding step. Inherent in each stakeholder strategy is the best way to form a two-way exchange  that creates value for all parties. This step should include a determination of measurable outcomes.
6. Implement stakeholder strategies: Create a detailed action plan that defines accountability for full implementation of the stakeholder strategies, and support the plan with resources.
7. Evaluate: Using the measurable outcomes defined above, evaluate stakeholder efforts’ success in creating value for all.

Additional articles about the stakeholder model are available here.

By Kathleen Hosfeld

Two of my “summer reads” are books that make the case that strong relationships with key stakeholders are driving financial performance and are central to how business is being reinvented. The first is Patricia Aburdene’s  book: “Megatrends 2010: The Rise of Conscious Capitalism.” The second is “Good Company, Business Success in the Worthiness Era,” By Laurie Bassi, Ed Frauenheim, and Dan McMurrrer with Larry Costello.

Aburdene’s book follows the framework of her hugely successful megatrends books written with John Naisbett, and cites seven interrelated trends that encompass corporate social responsibility, spirituality in business and so-called “conscious capitalism.” The term conscious capitalism, which Aburdene used in speaking engagements for several years prior to the publication of the book, has been picked up by both academics and business people alike.  A conscious business embraces three things:

• a strong sense of mission and purpose,
• a stakeholder perspective – which cultivates strong relationships with key stakeholders rather than prioritizing stockholders or profit as the sole directive, and
• conscious leadership.

“Conscious leadership” in this setting means leading holistically through the lens of relationship-oriented values.  Recently, practitioners have also begun to articulate the cultural dynamics of conscious business as having these key values: Trust, Authenticity, Caring, Transparency, Integrity and Learning.

(Note: This definition of conscious capitalism is complimentary to but not the same as the conscious business model developed by Fred Koffman. That model emphasizes self-knowledge and self-awareness as the basis of conscious behaviors and choices.)

Both Aburdene’s and Bassi’s books look at the question of “why” businesses are changing their practices. Aburdene, while citing multiple drivers of economic necessity and changing values, shines a spotlight on the spiritual values and practices from which the conscious capitalism arises. Bassi and colleagues, who also cite a spectrum of drivers, highlight the changing values and expectations of stakeholders and their influence on company behaviors.  They have created their own term – “worthiness”— which connotes the qualities that make a company worthy in the eyes of customers, employees and other stakeholders.

Good Company emphasizes the role of the employee in all three important “worthiness” areas:  being an employer, seller and steward.  I like the summary of one Amazon reviewer who said “Good Company shows how a strong leadership culture that’s serving all of its stakeholders and society pays off for everyone buying from, working for, investing in, and doing business with the company.”  A worthy company does not choose one stakeholder over another. Everybody – including the community and environment – wins.

Both books include stories of real businesses and executives doing well as a result of a broader stakeholder perspective. One of the things I appreciate about Good Company is that the authors also point out when companies who are doing well in some areas stub their toes in others.  This reads to me as imminently practical and realistic. The new paradigm is still emerging and all of us still in that transition will arrive at various degrees of consciousness – worthiness, goodness, sustainability, etc. — at different times.

(In another article, I will explore the  updated business case for a stakeholder view .)

More about the books:

Megatrends 2010

Good Company

By Kathleen M. Hosfeld

“We don’t have time to be strategic, Kathleen!”

That’s the tongue-in-cheek greeting I get whenever I touch base with one of our clients.  It’s a sentiment that many executives probably share.  Yet it always reminds me of Hall of Famer John Wooden’s quote: “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”  If you have the chance to do it over.

According to a research by Chris Bradley and colleagues, reported by McKinsey, most companies fail to meet even three of ten standards for good strategy.  These standards include the following:

• Will your strategy beat the market?
• Does it tap a source of advantage?
• Does it put you ahead of trends?
• Is there conviction to act on the strategy?
• Is it translated into an action plan?

Their research suggests a strong case for companies’ need to spend more time on strategy formulation.   The challenge is “right-sizing” the strategy process for the time you have without sacrificing the quality of the thinking.

If time is short, then strategy processes have to be strategic themselves and focus on what is essential. Three of the insights from the Bradley article, “Managing the Strategy Journey” point to these essentials. First, strategy requires the engagement of a cross-functional team of executives across silos. Second, there’s typically an intensive effort at the beginning to clarify strategy followed by a disciplined ongoing process of refinement and implementation.  Third, the intensive process at the beginning needs to result in all members of the strategy counsel creating a shared understanding of 1) where they are, 2) what will happen if nothing changes, and the 3) compelling future state to which they aspire.

There are several ways to engage the intensive effort at the front end. Bradley describes a process of spending 2-4 hours each week or every other week engaged in a structured strategy conversation.  He and co-authors recommend spending as much time on strategy as is spent on operational issues.  The strategy process is then integrated into the annual process of forecasting tied to the budgeting.

A different approach to the intensive front-end piece is to structure a series of executive intensives, possibly 2 to 3 two-day meetings, with homework between sessions.  These then can also be integrated into forecasting and budgeting.

While the Bradley article describes a process appropriate for large corporate clients, the basic insights of the article captured above, and the two approaches to structuring the process can be tailored to work-teams and middle-market size organizations. Experiment with what works for your organization.

For additional inspiration, you can read the entire Strategy Journey article here.

It refers to an earlier article on classic tests of a strategy which was published last year.  That article along with links to a wealth of supporting resources is here.

There are signs that the social media bubble is preparing to burst. As with the dot com bubble, this does not signal that social media is going away – far from it. Yet a tempering of expectations seems to be looming, and this allows us to re-examine one of the foundations of competitive success: knowing and serving the customer.

Evidence of a social media “market correction”: General Motors recently announced that it was withdrawing its $10 million dollar paid advertising from Facebook.  According to the New York Times, GM continues to spend $30 million maintaining its “free” Facebook page (Hey GM, I know someone who’d do it for $1 million with a $10 million expense budget. Call me.) This budget is focused on creating user testimonial stories and clever graphics they hope will “go viral” – but probably also includes a margin for “we don’t know what we are doing so we’re going to try a lot of stuff and see what sticks.”

Recently, the clutter and chaos of social media has been depicted in graphic form: Graphic for social media  Here’s the equivalent graphic for mobile computing And the differences between different social media platforms have also been depicted through humor. I like this one, but you can enter “social media explained” into the image search of Google and find many more, with applications to specific industries.

In response to this cacophony, the venerable McKinsey & Co. consulting organization has created educational materials to orient C-Suite and senior managers.  McKinsey Social Media Videos  This collection of videos provides an initial orientation, a baseline description of how consumers engage with social media and some advice about the balance of traditional advertising relative to social media.

As writer David Court points out in another article, one of the biggest challenges facing organizations in communications and marketing is that they don’t know what influences their customers. GM has discovered that paid advertising on Facebook does not; as a result GM is turning its attention to  “earned media” – the reviews, the mentions, the articles that are user- or journalist-generated and considered more authentic and reliable by consumers. I expect to see other companies follow suit.

Effective use of social media requires a strategy based on a relational knowledge of the customer.  While some of this should be derived through formal research, it’s also a function of a heart-felt connection with those the company is trying to serve.  If you’re looking for a place to start with social media, start there.

Mergers of teams, business units and whole companies often trigger questions about organizational identity.  Yet, such situations are not the only times organizations and companies question who they are, what they stand for and how they want to live that out.  New leadership, significant regulatory changes, an examination of values of sustainability or the triple bottom line, declining market share or profitability can all trigger executives to step back and ask big questions of identity and purpose. The need to strengthen brand strategy or branding campaigns can also highlight fractures in shared identity and strategy.

In a recently completed project with a non-profit organization, we asked the question: “Who are we together?” and the client reached its answer in a uniquely soulful way: by listening to each other.  I’ve led quite a few processes that help organizations find clarity of direction and a strategy for how to achieve their objectives. This situation was unique.  There was not enough social cohesion in this organization to allow leaders to chart a new course in the normal way.  There was conflict, lack of clear roles, and a history of false starts in finding a new direction.

This organization needed to build trust – trust in leadership as well as trust in their decision-making processes. In the process of finding a new identity and future direction, many organizations conduct inventories of assets or skills. This is not a bad thing to do; we did it in this case, too.  But, we went beyond merely cataloging shared values and assets. We got people talking about them. And about what mattered to them as individuals.

We designed a series of conversations to begin to build trust within small groups of individuals.  These groups reported out their conversations to the wider organization. One of the common comments from the small groups was how good it was to talk among themselves in a thoughtful and supportive way. We gradually increased the number of people in each conversation. As the groups got larger, we changed the structure of the conversation to make sure that all voices were heard equally and that groups learned how to synthesize the essence of their own talking and listening. By the time the process was complete, leaders were able to synthesize the reflections of all who participated.

We didn’t start the conversation with “What should we do together?” Instead we started with the question “Who are you?” We asked people to share their own personal perspectives in response to some distinctive questions. This personal piece was an important building block. Then we moved into the question “Who are we together?” After these two questions had been satisfied, we asked “What do we want to do together? What is our shared work?”

In his book, Community: The Structure of Belonging, author and consultant Peter Block says that the “small group is the unit of transformation.” In this instance, listening together in small groups has led to a powerful outcome that will guide one organization for some time to come.