Service Offerings
Strategic Business Planning
A strategic business plan is a disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that guide:
What an organization is
What it does
Why and how it does it
Strategic planning is about having the right people in the room, working on the right (often difficult) issues. Planning is not something you do every 5 years. It should be a continuous process that you update every year. And, there is no time more important for planning than when times are tough.
My approach to strategic planning is collaborative and iterative. I lead clients through a process that allows me to listen, learn, and record the strategic plan as it unfolds. Typical steps involve:
Planning to plan - identifying a core planning team, the length of the plan (3 years, 5 years) and determining how decisions will be made (consensus, other)
Creating the future state - developing core values, vision and mission statements
Defining the roadmap for how the vision and mission will be achieved - the goals and strategies
Developing critical success indicators (or key performance indicators) - quantifiable measures of success in achieving the organization's vision, mission, and values on a year-by-year basis, and the dashboard that will report progress
To learn more, click here
Surveys and Focus Groups
It may seem that employee and customer surveys are a "nice," but discretionary idea when financial resources are limited. I b
elieve just the opposite. There is no time more important for understanding customers and assessing employee opinion than when the economy or your business is threatened. Well crafted surveys can lead to cost-effective decisions, whether it's seeking customer input on a new searchable database, or asking employees about topics that will help them understand your business better.
Through today's technology, conducting quantitative surveys on line is easy and cost effective. For qualitative results (brainstorming, etc.), discussion boards or online focus groups are ideal. I rely on online methods, as well as the more traditional ones.
No matter what method I use, my reports always include conclusions and recommendations. Others may collect and report the raw data ("x% said this..."), but I will tell you what it means and offer my opinion about what you should do about it.
To learn more about some of the projects I have been involved in, click here
Corporate Communications
In the hundreds of newsletters, articles, web content, fact sheets, and reports I have written, I always have two objectives - make the material simple, yet interesting; and, capture the "voice" of the client.