Reinventing Strategic Planning:
Best Practice of the Month
Common Mistake #7: Ritualistic and meaningless SWOT analyses vs. Best Practices Assessments
Best Practice #7: Conduct an in-depth, robust and data-rich Current State Assessment
Many organizations conduct a SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) as a way to begin their Strategic Planning. There are two problems with this. The first problem is that a SWOT in most organizations is too superficial an analysis. Secondly, it is not rigorous enough with just conducting a brainstorming of the each of the four letters. Instead a much more rigorous analysis should be done of both the SW Internal Assessment and the OT External Assessment.
Most of the measures are, not only activity measures, but also ONLY for the next year (or even next three months for public firms). Rather, a three-five year Continuous Improvement Matrix of all the Key Success Measures/Goals should be an essential component of each Strategic Plan.
Internal Assessment (SW):
We strongly recommend an Organization-Wide Systems Assessment of the type that the Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award for Performance Excellence provides. We at the Haines Centre have conducted a two-year study of our own Systems Assessment compared to the Baldrige one and created a newer version that is “built on the Baldrige” called the Business Excellence Architecture.
This Enterprise-Wide Assessment, built on the Baldrige, is seven times richer than the usual SW as it has seven more categories or elements in which to do a SW. These categories include the ones in the Baldrige and some others as well, since the Baldrige is a static snapshot and organizations are dynamic in nature. Hence our seven organizational categories:
- Building a Performance Culture
- Reinventing Strategic Planning into Strategic Management
- Leading Enterprise-Wide Change
- Creating the People Edge
- Achieving Leadership Excellence
- Becoming Customer Focused
- Aligning Distribution and Delivery
External Assessment (OT):
This was conducted previously in Phase E: Future Environmental Scanning, and we discussed the crucial need to look into the future for the trends and disruptions that might affect us. Once this has been done with rigor as described there, then thinking and working backwards from it to the implications to today’s Current State will give us a much richer set of Opportunities and Threats to exploit. Without this future orientation, the tendency is just to look around us in a brainstorm of what we already know, running blindly, without a real peering into the dynamic and disruptive future.
For related Best Practices, visit www.SystemsThinkingPress.com for:
Article: Creating Customer Value
Model: Enterprise Wide Assessment
Instrument: Business Excellence Architecture
