by Tara Powers

There is continuous talk in business about having a compelling mission and vision for your company but who really cares? Well, you should. Whether you are a large corporation or a small business owner, having a vision is essential to be able to communicate a picture of the future of your business that others can see, understand, and support. A vision helps motivate people into action. A vision engages, excites, and empowers people to move forward in a consistent direction together. A vision makes people more willing to make small sacrifices today for the hope of a better future. A vision helps people know what to do.

Convinced yet? I thought so. Then read on to develop an effective vision for your business with 7 key characteristics to include in your visioning strategy discussion.

7 Key Characteristics to Developing an Effective Vision

• Be sure your vision tells a story that people can imagine. Can they see it? Can they see themselves in the story?
• Appeal to the long – term interests of your key stakeholders. What do they care about? How are their values tied to your future?
• Be sure people believe its possible.
• It’s exciting. People are excited to hear about it, talk about it, and share it with others. That excitement builds momentum that begins to shift culture and align behaviors with how you will get there.
• The vision helps to identify what people should be focused on and what they should prioritize.
• It’s easy to talk about and explain to others.
• It’s flexible enough to remain relevant even when shifts in the industry, technology and customer needs take place.

When reading through these 7 characteristics ~ how does your company vision hold up? Perhaps this article will prompt you to engage in crucial conversations about your vision, where you’re heading, and how to ensure that your vision is compelling enough to propel your company into the future.

© 2009 Powers Resource Center

International trainer, consultant, and founder of The Toxic Workplace, Tara Powers partners with organizations interested in improving their company culture to boost their bottom line. If you’re ready to make changes in your business that will make employees happy AND make you money, get your FREE tips now at PowersResourceCenter.com.

by Ashley Andrus

I recently took 7 little boys to play laser tag for my son’s 8^th birthday.  As I was headed out the door my friend and team expert Nora Burns (who very politely declined an invitation to come along) said, “I suspect there will be some life lessons learned with this adventure…”  She was totally right.

It’s not so much that there are brand-new lessons to be learned, but the experience was a good, solid reminder of what you can accomplish with sheer, unstoppable energy and a “you’re goin’ DOWN, Mary!” attitude.  You don’t need a college degree.  You don’t need to have read all the latest business best-sellers.  You don’t even need a driver’s license.

Here are the 3.5 reminders I walked away with:

1. DON’T QUIT.

You’re going to get tagged.  So?  5 seconds penalty then you’re right back in it.  Your parents told you not to quit.  Your high school counselor.  Your coach. Your teachers. Your best manager.  They were right.  Never-say-die doesn’t solve all problems, but it’s a pretty effective strategy for lots of real world endeavors.

Take negotiation.  Remember how you used to negotiate when you were a kid?  The high-level G8 talks went something like this:

YOU: Can I have some ice cream?
MOM: No.
YOU: But dinner isn’t for an hour.
MOM: No.
YOU: Dad would let me.
MOM: No.
YOU: But it’s like 90 degrees out.
MOM: No.
YOU: Please?
MOM: No.
YOU: Please please?
MOM: No.
YOU: Mmmoooommmmmm.  Come on.
MOM: Ok but only because you are driving me insane and you have to eat it outside and you can’t have ice cream again for a week and if you ask me for anything else today you are grounded until you are 12 and I mean it.
YOU:  Deal!

When’s the last time you negotiated like that in real life?  When’s the last time you said, “Come on, life…hit me” then you took the hit, shook it off, and jumped right back in the deep end of the pool?

2. WORK AS A TEAM.

You’re little.  You’re less experienced.  Your target-to-body-mass ratio is way less favorable.  But when four of you stick together and stalk a larger target (say…I don’t know…a slow-moving adult in a strobe-lit black light laser tag maze), it’s easy to turn the tables.  Most likely, your prey will run away, making it easy for you to shoot her in the back.  Even if the prey chooses fight over flight, honestly, she can only hit one of you at a time, while the other three of you fire at will.  There’s something to be said for throwing a sheer mass of resources at a project.

And another thing: you don’t need to be best friends to work together as a team.  Heck, you don’t even need to KNOW the other team members.  Size up the situation: other kids you don’t know playing?  Well, of COURSE the kids are going to team up on the adults.  They don’t have to have been best friends since kindergarten to instinctively know how to work together.  Futurist and trends expert Warren Evans observes “a core competency of tomorrow’s workforce will be the ability to work with strangers.”   The world is changing.  You aren’t going to work with the same folks for the next 15 years.  You may not even work with the same folks for the next 15 weeks! The Shift Happens folks have a thought-provoking video entitled “Did You Know?” about the future of technology and tomorrow’s workforce that’s well worth the 5 minutes to watch.

3. FOCUS ON YOUR GOAL…

…but stay flexible enough to shift targets rapidly. During the laser tag games the kids utilized the patented Amoeba Attack Strategy.  Those of you who have seen young kids play soccer may know it as “swarmball.”  It goes something like this: Follow an adult.  Fire mercilessly. Hit the target, wait the 5 second penalty, shoot again, take him down again. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Oops, adult escapes through the maze. Find new adult.  Return to step 1.

The main goal never changes: take down an adult.  But the specific target—the precise individual—changes.  That happens in business, too.  Your organization’s objective might be to deliver world-class service. To manufacture cutting-edge products. To find a cure for cancer.  The top-line goal and strategy don’t typically change very often.  The specific tactics and tools available to you do.  Make sure you remain flexible enough to shift from lane to lane, going 80 MPH, without running off the highway.

3.5 HAVE FUN.

Really, that’s the whole point, isn’t it?  When you’re little, you plan the theme of your birthday party. You know exactly where you want to have it and who you’re going to invite. You envision the whole experience, and it’s awesome.  You smear icing on your face and gorge on ice cream.  You make funny faces with your friends.  You blow out your candles and make a wish. You laugh. And then you grow up and you forget that you still have that control.  You get to choose your career. The people you hang out with.  The attitude you bring to the table.

And if those things aren’t making you happy?  It’s never too late to start a new game.

Ashley Andrus is President of Zoe Training & Consulting. Her passion is making HR folks and meeting planners look like *rock stars* by providing one-stop access to 90+ speakers, trainers, facilitators, coaches, and consultants.

by Penny McDaniel and Anne Neal

What is strategic planning? And what do you need to know about the process to determine how strategic planning could benefit your municipality? This article provides a brief overview of strategic planning—the benefits, process, obstacles, and strategies for insuring accountability and follow-through.

Strategic planning is a systematic process where you identify why your local government exists, whom it serves, benefits derived from the services you provide, and your administration’s vision for serving its citizens. Your strategic plan serves as a blueprint for how your local government will achieve its vision, and it answers three basic questions: “Who are we?” “What do we want?” and “How are we going to get what we want?” At each stage of the process you will need to involve various people and groups, and this is where the power of strategic planning comes into play.

Does strategic planning sound like a long, drawn-out process?  Well, it can take a while to do it right.  What’s the old saying?  “Anything worth doing, is worth doing right.”  This may be quite true, but we think there needs to be a lot of benefits for embarking on a time-consuming and sometimes difficult process.  Participants in previous strategic planning workshops determined a number of benefits for undergoing this process:

• Helps engage the community and involve a wider group of stakeholders
• Creates a plan that has the community in mind
• Focuses on broad issues
• It’s fun to envision the future
• Identifies clear impacts and decisions
• Helps us keep a focus
• Proactive v. reactive (not crisis management)
• Assesses resources, strengths, and weaknesses
• Makes it easier to measure success
• Adds to the stability of the community
• Gives us a sense of achievement
• Provides stability through term-limits / changes

There are many, many approaches to strategic planning; however, there are a couple of common threads among most plans.  The predominant starting point is a solid understanding of the organization: its vision, mission, values, history, key contributors, accomplishments, and setbacks, all answering the question of “Who are we?”  Being able to see the organization within the environment in which it operates is also beneficial.  There are a variety of environmental scans that help organizations understand the pressures and dynamics that are affecting them and that could affect their strategic plan.

In our workshop we asked participants to conduct an environmental scan on trends in local municipalities.  Here are some of the trends they came up with:

What would you add to these trends?

Still answering the “Who are we?” question, one common thread in most strategic planning processes is to conduct a SWOT analysis to explore the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats of the organization.  In the Technology of Participation ToP®* Strategic Planning Method, we also look at the benefits of success and the dangers of success (unanticipated consequences of success that you might want to plan for).

Once the group has a pretty good handle on its identity and environment, the next couple of steps have to do with setting goals, objectives, strategic directions, and developing action plans to accomplish them. This helps identify “What We Want” and “How We’re Going to Get It.”  The ToP®* method of strategic planning includes the following process:

We’re not suggesting that strategic planning is an easy process. It requires a strong commitment from both your executive level and governing board. To secure top-level support you will need to assess the resources needed to develop and implement a successful plan. Resources to consider include staffing needs and compensation for their time, hiring a professional facilitator, your organization’s technological ability to design, implement, and monitor the plan, and meeting and facilities expenses. If the roof has caved in and you’re in crises mode, strategic planning is not the best method for dealing with the crises. Take care of the crises first and then consider creating a strategic plan.

Additional challenges include identifying who makes the decisions at each stage of the process and when you need to build consensus.  Using a skilled facilitator can guide you through this, and utilizing a participatory method—such as the ToP® Methods—when appropriate can make it a more inclusive process.  Making sure you have included all important stakeholders will help you avoid creating a plan that is unsupported.  When done right, strategic planning should engage and excite your staff and citizens in shaping the future direction of your local government.

The final plan should include specific information about goals, objectives, and clearly defined action steps that identify who is responsible for each action item, what resources are needed, when the action item is due, and how you will monitor progress and measure success.  As a basic rule, you should regularly review your action items; a good practice is to conduct quarterly and annual evaluations.  However, more frequent than four times a year may be necessary depending on external circumstances. To keep people committed and on track, communicate and publish results regularly and acknowledge departmental and individual accomplishments as they occur.  It may be helpful to research other municipalities’ strategic plans or to benchmark your processes.  Keep your focus on the strategic plan and strategic directions.  Many leaders get off track because they focus most of their time on operational or tactical issues and don’t think strategically. Leaders who spend about 20 percent of their time thinking strategically and working their plan are more likely to be successful achieving the goals and vision of their strategic plan.

If your organization has never engaged in the strategic planning process, it can be helpful to start with a project or department to get some experience and success before embarking on a plan for the whole municipality.  Utilizing a professional facilitator can help your municipality navigate the strategic planning process.

Penny McDaniel, MA, has more than fifteen years of experience working in the field of training and development, facilitation, and personal growth. Penny specializes in helping people develop their leadership skills, improve new and existing team effectiveness, and assist individuals in connecting with and achieving their personal vision and creating shared vision in their organizations. Penny believes that every individual and every organization should be challenged to reach his or her highest potential. Her commitment as a trainer and facilitator supports that process.