Shift Your Business Into Drive with a Balance Score Card

To achieve a balanced business perspective consider using a Balanced Scorecard as part of your strategic planning initiative. A Balanced Scorecard is an approach that is used to align your business to the vision, mission, core values and strategy of the organization. The emphasis is to turn strategy into forward thinking actions that the senior team can implement against key performance indicators. To embark on a Balanced Scorecard, the company must have a mission and vision and know their financials, the present business structure and levels of employee expertise. They must also have extensive knowledge regarding customer satisfaction levels.

There are four key elements in a Balanced Scorecard: Customer, learning and growth, financials and business processes.

1. Customer: Research has shown that having a customer-centric view focused on satisfaction is one key to success. If the customers aren’t happy they’ll move on. Good or poor customer performance is a leading indicator for the future success or failure of a business. The ultimate question is this: What is the value proposition that you deliver on in your customer markets? Knowing your value as defined by the customer and having a clear understanding of what your customer is willing to pay is essential. This part of the Balanced Scorecard helps you focus on your markets and customers.
   
2. Learning and Growth: This part of the Balanced Scorecard includes your business culture, employee and business attitudes, self improvement initiatives and your investment in employee development. It is known that successful long-term businesses invest in the success of their people. High performance is driven by dedicated happy people. Most organizations today are operating on a knowledge platform. It is the unique knowledge of the people that keeps things going. Unfortunately, when people leave their knowledge leaves too and getting it back is painful. Things to consider include: employee satisfaction, retention, skills, experience and aptitude and the business’s beliefs, values and attitude. Ask yourself this: What kind of infrastructure is needed to foster long-term business success enabling us to grow and change to meet ongoing demands?
   
3. Financials: Data on company financials is important. The key is having the right kinds of data along with timely and accurate information. For management, just having return on investment information might not be enough. As data becomes more centralized, other financial data and key performance indicators become important. For example, consider cost-ease-benefit analysis or risk analysis to consider long-term impact. This is a slight shift that changes thinking.
   
4. Processes: This refers to the internal processes of the organization. Most businesses have a maturity line when it comes to processes. They are usually chaotic, reactive, proactive, service or value providers. These can all be measured. The management team needs to know what is working and what is not working in relation to the customers’ needs and the business mission. Understanding the present state of business processes allows for a focus on a desired future working state that will provide positive, measurable results for the business. The best people to do that work are the people who do the work. The key is to know what existing and future business processes must be focused on to excel as a business.

Having a Balanced Scorecard that is aligned to the mission, vision, core values and guiding principles of the business is an important part of your success. If constructed well it becomes part of a strategy map and a communication tool that allows you to easily share your work and progress with stakeholders. With a Balanced Scorecard you can forward think and create the success you deserve.

3 Requirement Categories to use in Strategic Planning and Business Analysis

Recently while facilitating the strategic planning program with a company in the technology industry we had to make some decisions on how to categorize the requirements. Since the company had a lot of different types of requirements we had to revisit the definition of a requirement (see article Four Requirements That Make a Difference in Creating Solutions).

Due to rapid growth, expansion and culture of the company (very employee centric) the items on their strategy map ranged from the strategic to the operational. The strategy map needed to be vetted. The senior team thought it prudent to review the options for organizing their plans to ensure they took a good approach prior to moving forward. Every organization I have ever worked with always wants to discuss the best way to organize their strategy map prior to proceeding.

The options discussed included categorizing requirements by either stakeholder, sequence or purpose.

Stakeholder: Organizing by stakeholder means grouping all the requirements by one stakeholder group or individual together. In this case it could be by department, business unit or by the business leader. The challenge is this approach is that often requirements are required by multiple stakeholders. Often stakeholder groupings are seen at the road map level (execution plan) and not the strategy map level in planning.

Sequence: Organizing by sequence groups requirements from the highest level with least details to the most detailed. This would mean that you would follow the standard requirements format.

• Business Requirements – strategic, tactical, operational
• Stakeholders – logical groupings that have influence and impact on the business
• Solutions – functional and non-functional (quality)
• Transformational – Implementation and Change 

Purpose: Organizing requirements by purpose has to do with creating links in the process of the business. It has a lot to do with a logical grouping of activities or actions that must be taken. At the strategy map level this does not make a lot of sense. However, it can be argued that when you categorize strategic elements by business impact zones (Process, Technology, Business Development, People and Culture) you are categorizing by purpose. The challenge is something called traceability.

The technology client found it useful to review the different requirement categorizing options. In this case the leadership team was familiar with business analysis best practice and wanted to review the options.

Since we were dealing with a company that grew rapidly and had a vast amount of information in a strategy map that needed to be vetted it was logical to choose to categorize by Sequence Business Requirements. This allowed the leadership team to break down the strategy map into strategic, tactical and operational business elements. They ended up with three maps for each level. 

They realized that as a leadership team they could focus on the things that would make a difference in their business (strategic) and their teams could handle the other components (tactical and operational). This provided the senior team focus. Great lesson learned. 

This Weeks Red Question: In what way has your team(s) clearly categorized your business requirements so that your people focus with purpose?

9 Known Group Characteristics Present during Facilitated Planning Sessions - - Here’s how to identify them and what to do about them

Recently I presented a breakout session on Group Dyamanics and the Characters in the Room to about 100 participants. The audience was a combination of business leaders and professionals all striving to improve their abilities to effectively work with groups. An interesting dialogue happened so I thought I would share. Thanks.

As a business leader your business acumen is important to develop. One of the skills you need is the ability to facilitate to solve business problems. Sometimes the group dynamics create challenges that need to be overcome.

In working with groups, there are a number of dynamics at play. It is helpful if you consider the different group characters and how to deal with them. Here are nine for you to think about.

The Isolate:  This is that one person who remains outside the group or is thinking about previous topics. Consider spending time helping people get acquainted or have discussions using pairing and triads. Provide opportunities for debriefing or summarizing what was discussed. Get the participants involved.

The Monopoliser:  We all know this person. They monopolize the time and focus of the group. Be clear on your expectations, use your body language to hurry the speaker, or when they take a breath say “thank you” and ask for other comments. You can also use a parking lot to write their points down. It is best NOT TO INTERRUPT, however, it is OK to watch for the talkers to draw a breath and leap into the instant of silence this creates to try to regain control. Move fast, but speak softly and gently.

The Facilitator as Expert:  Your best “Rule of Thumb”. . . do not go there. The facilitator should never set themselves up as the expert. You are there to understand the requirements and help establish direction. Consider avoiding answering every question yourself by letting group members respond to each other. Do not feel obliged to comment on everything that everyone says. Reduce your own authority by sitting down with the group.

Group Sharply Divided:  This is where the groups are together physically but not together in interests or point of view. Mix the group up and get people to move around the room. Put them in new requirement work teams and assign the groups a specific relevant task to complete.  Have team members present and then debrief. If a solution cannot be reached, get agreement to park it! Make sure you ask the group if they feel comfortable moving on even though the issue dividing them is not settled. Be prepared with several group exercises, tools and techniques. Most important, keep cool, detached, and unhurried. Use a light touch.

Antagonistic Duo:  These are the two people exchanging negative vibes and everyone is uncomfortable. Confirm that conflict is positive and ask them to continue their disagreement. Set the stage by moving them closer together, arrange other group members as observers, and establish a scribe. Most importantly make explicit ground rules for conflict. Ask group members for feedback. Get everyone involved by taking the issue away from the duo by saying, “You have highlighted an important issue for us. Here is an exercise for the entire group to participate in that continues exploring these issues but in a different way.

The Cozy Duo:  Here two friends are choosing to give each other comfort. They are making side conversations. This is not all right. Best solution is change up the teams and rearrange the seating locations at a break to split the cozy duo up. Position the change as an opportunity to get a different perspective.

Unresolved Members:  People are not engaged. It happens. Sometimes people do not understand why they are participating, they never wanted to participate, they just do not care or maybe they are bored. Break time! Check the thermostat and drop the heat in the room. Maybe change things up. Consider a group exercise, a short controversial video on the topic, have the group brainstorm on a new agenda and create consensus. Be brave and leave the room while they do it. The break may help you to refocus and help them to become more active. 

Highly Defensive Group:  In this case the group members have erected barriers to protect their personal or professional images. This is about self-preservation. You need to get people talking and sharing in a low threat way. Move slowly with no pressure. Focus on facts and intellectual work for a time, gradually introducing small amounts of selective attitude. Avoid role-playing. Be open to revealing more about yourself.  Sometimes this sets the stage for other people to reveal information.

The Big Group:  If the group has many members and no sense of inter-relatedness be prepared to use pairs, triads and work groups. Rearrange the group into round tables so they can see one-another. Get people discussing specific related topic. Make sure you walk around the room making contact with people. Establish “associate facilitators” to manage the different groups. The larger the group the more ground rules, definition of roles and leadership required. Avoid feeling and attitude work with large groups. Keep people on track.

The most important thing as a senior professional, business analyst, manager or leader in developing your facilitation skills is to have fun and enjoy the process. Find ways to enhance being a facilitator and applying requirements elicitation best practices. Develop your group dynamic skills along with the tools and techniques of requirements elicitation. Remember leverage the group unique character and get the members engaged.

The Red Question: In what way can you use the group character identification to help you facilitate your business planning meetings?

Richard Lannon 2008© Edited 2014©

Four Steps to Align Your Organization to its Strategic Plan

Often we want all the moving parts to connect together in our business. We want everything and everybody rowing in the same direction together. This is not always easy to accomplish. 

In today’s competitive climate with global competition we need to break down internal barriers and align the strategic thinking and goals and objectives of our departments.

The starting point is to ensure that you have developed the key strategic vision and mission along with our strategic agenda items. Once that is complete alignment planning as part of the strategic planning process can be embraced.

Alignment planning as part of your strategic planning initiative seeks to accomplish three main objectives:

•       ensure strong connection among the organization’s mission and its operational resources

•       fine tune departmental goals and objectives and discover implementation gaps

•       address issues that may exist around internal efficiencies and effectiveness.

There are generally four steps to the Alignment Planning Process for the strategic planning team to engage in. These include:

1. Outline the organization’s mission, programs, resources, and needed support areas
2. Identify what’s working well and what needs to be adjusted
3.  Identify how these adjustments should be made and determine the best approach
4. Include the adjustments as strategies in the strategic plan and roadmap with an alignment path

The challenge with the Alignment Planning is that you require a solid model to follow prior to applying it. You must have gone through a proper strategic planning approach to ensure your have identified and defined the direction of the organization.

If that work is done then you can benefit from bringing your strategic plans to the department and management level. You can engage them in the process of aligning the organization. Your management can help you engage the employees to avoid disconnects between your business strategy and operational reality. The final objective is to link the strategic and operations to establish employee commitment and motivation.

Alignment planning is part of the overall process when making plans for your organization. It is important that you embrace the need to establish business alignment. 

This Weeks Red Question: What areas of your organization could be better aligned to ensure operational efficiencies and connecting to the strategic plan?

3 Key Levels of Risk Planning and Analysis for the Business Enterprise

Recently I delivered a workshop on Risk Planning and Analysis for the Business Enterprise. I was asked about the various levels of risk within an organization. In response to that question, I explained that there are many levels of risk that could be organized along standard company structure. My preference is to use three structure approach - - strategic, tactical and operational.

Strategic Risk: Generally strategic risk is at the enterprise level and requires a business risk management enterprise plan. There are many models that can be used. At this level risk management, planning and analysis should be part of the strategic planning process. An enterprise risk management plan should be created that addresses strategic planning elements, cultural risk appetite and attitude, governance, stress testing, identification, measurement, response and control. These elements should be brought forward as a standard in the rest of the organization. On a regular basis the organization should complete an enterprise risk environmental scan to ensure they keep their business risk artifacts current.

Tactical Risk: This level of risk is at the project management level. Often it is part of the project management process for key approved initiatives. Its objective is the successful completion of the project while addressing risk concerns effectively and efficiently as possible. Often tactical risk analysis requires that the organization have a risk management plan that provides the guidelines as to how risk is to identified, qualified, quantified, responded, controlled and monitored. Guidelines should be provided by the business enterprise so that project teams do not create their own risk management standards.

Operational Risk: The here and now of any organization is the operational level. It is what happening with the front-line of the business from your customer facing employees, the manufacturing floor equipment and product assemblers, to the field maintenance people. Operational risk varies by company and by industry. One thing is for sure, operational risk needs to be aligned with business guiding principles to ensure people and equipment is functioning appropriately. For example, safety is a huge issue in a number of industries. Therefore, risk response mechanisms need to be put into operational place to minimize risk impact.

Risk management, planning and analysis are a huge discipline that impacts all levels of the organization. It is not something that is meant to be done neither in isolation nor with a single group. When you consider risk management consider all levels of your company. 

Maybe by putting together a solid risk management plan there will be a less of a need to carry a rabbits foot.

This Weeks Red Question: What is your integrated standardized risk management approach that aligns all levels in your organization?

Check out more about Richard Lannon www.richardlannon.ca 

How did I develop my technology support staff when I was a Senior Manager of IT Operations for a major professional service company?

Surprisingly, I get this question a lot. Really it came down to a plan that the people could get into. The key is to recognize that tech people want tech or hard skills training and the business wants business or soft skill training. Over a 4 year period I (we) developed a program that included:

1. Annual National Conference with focus on soft and hard skills training
2. Annual Regional Conference that focused on specific requirements for the region including hard skills and soft skills plus effective team building events
3. Individual SWOTs where the techie actually had say into the four quadrants
4. Individual tailored learning plans with SMART goals and objectives
6. The identification of levels for core competency development
7. Mentorship and Support tagging on company initiatives
8. One on one coaching sessions to build skills and sometimes just talk about what was important to them
9. Team hiring practices. All interviews would be conducted by HR for fit, the team for technical expertise and personal fit, the team lead for future fit and then head office for approval
10. Befriend HR professionals and leverage their expertise. We had 3 in our region
11. Working with your boss to best build your team
12. Sharing with peers the responsibilities of the job and cross training
13. Weekly meetings were people would do a quick round table of what they appreciated about the other person. We would record this and encourage people to put it in their personal evaluations
14. Monthly reports where we would do CAR stories (challenge, action, result) in three sentences. These could be placed in annual performance reviews
15. Opportunity to work with different teams in different locations across Canada
16. Opportunity to travel to work in different areas with different teams
17. Developed a cross-training matrix were people could back up other people when needed

These were the things we did to develop our technology team’s hard and soft skills. In the end it worked great. Skills improved and team members advanced to higher professional levels based on core competencies.

Questions: What are you doing to develop your teams?

A RACI Against Time

You just never know what is going to happen in your business life. Recently I had to work like crazy to get a bunch of deadlines completed to free my schedule so I could take an unexpected trip, half way across this wonderful country of ours, Canada.

As events unfolded, an unexpected team came together with each member naturally assuming a specific role. From leader and manager to subject experts, advisors, information generators, documentation creators, and experienced friends and family members, there was a natural stakeholder relationship created that fit a RACI – responsible, accountable, consult and inform. This was a good thing.

A RACI is a powerful tool for stakeholder analysis used to identify and understand key roles of individual team members in an organization. The simplest definition of a RACI goes like this:

Those who are Responsible:

These are the doers – the people responsible for the nuts and bolts.  If you and your team are reporting to a sponsor who is the final person accountable for the work, then you belong in this category.

Those who are Accountable:

The buck stops here. This is the person(s) who has the most at stake in events and happenings. They’re the ones who have the final decision or must present key recommendations to others in a final presentation. At the end of the day they sign the cheque. In most organizations this would be the sponsor, but it really can be anyone who has the final call.

Those we need to Consult:  The experts.

Every task needs people with the right information at the right time onboard, subject experts and advisors who can help the team leader gain a clear perspective.  You might have that person(s) in house (internal stakeholders) or need to outsource to find them (external stakeholders), but either way, they’re vital for getting the job done efficiently and effectively.

Those we need to Inform:

These are all the stakeholders that need to be kept in the loop. They need to know what is going on from a logical and rational perspective with key information.

Though my recent RACI was unexpected, it’s really helpful to make RACI a formal part of your business’ planning process, particularly if you are going to be involved in any strategic, tactical or operational planning. 

This will help clarify the different roles and responsibilities needed to complete projects, ensuring your people are able to work with focused intent and to the best of their ability. 

Question: For which business initiative can you use a RACI to help putting your team together?